Conversations 2004
Conversations 2004
Q: How do you budge an ego?
Belzebuub: You need to strip the ego to the bare and raw awareness. It is simple awareness versus egos.
Q: How do you do it when you are brought down time and again?
Belzebuub: You just do it.
One needs to learn to use the word. You must observe when you speak. This is very important. If you are forceful and pushy when you speak, that is a form of anger, although you don't perceive in that way. Anger is being fed in a subtle way. You need to work very hard at it, because you can have an immense problem with it.
Q: I have all those butterflies and I feel that thinness in my voice, when I am not observing.
Belzebuub: Yes, you need to observe all that, but anger is being fed through those pushy ways of talking. It’s better to speak clearly without pushing; just put your opinion without pushing.
Q: What governs remembrance? I often wonder about it and it concerns me, because if I don't remember, I cannot die to my defects.
Belzebuub: Yes, it is a concerning issue, because you want to do the work, yet you cannot remember to do it. The point is to realise that you are studying in daily life, that this is a school where you are studying. This is something that it is not taken into account very well. It may seem that it is not the case, but it is because of that we are here - to study and learn. You may sometimes have dreams where you are studying in a classroom. That is an experience that is not just for that night: the fact is that we are taken as students in the internal worlds, and that we are assessed there too.
Then, if you want to remember to do the work, you need to take yourself as a student who is going to study in a day and be marked at the end of that day. Then your main focus will be to study that day, to be marked at the end of it. In this way you will remember to do the work more and more.
Q: I also often tried and reflected upon what you said previously, that we have to record in our mind and think about the death. But how exactly do you record it in your mind?
Belzebuub: The mind is the driving mechanism. If you have something as a priority, your mind will be thinking about it. Likewise, you need to make the work a priority - surround yourself with the things of the work and also internally. You need to be watching the activities you do during the day and studying yourself internally. You need to have the frame of work in the activities and internally. The Egyptians for example, had symbols on their walls, temples, etc. - they were in that environment. Let’s take another example: someone who is interested in their job, they are deeply involved in that. With the work, you don't just do it here and there and then carry on with the mundane life, but your whole frame of mind is set upon doing the work by watching the activities you do during the day, and studying yourself internally.
Q: How do we study ourselves exactly?
Belzebuub: Retrospection plays a big role in it, because you go over your day and see what is going on, and understand yourself better, recognise things better.
Retrospection is in a way, a form of studying yourself. As far as I can see, through retrospection, you could even study past lives. With retrospection you can see what the egos are doing, and the way you spend your day. But you need to be careful, as some egos can be fed with it. Observation is the key factor in studying yourself. You can see what is going on, how does the ego operate - this is vital for understanding.
Master Samael talked about meditating on an ego, but it is possible not to get much out of it if you don’t have self-observation, because you don't know how the ego operates. Then, what are going to understand? This is why Master Rabolu said you may as well do a koan. Meditating on an ego also brings the risk of feeding egos if you don’t do it properly, but done properly it is an important practice, as it can give us understanding and information that we may otherwise have missed if we were to rely upon observation and action in the moment alone.
Q: I don't want to think about birthdays, they are frightening when they are getting too many.
Belzebuub: When the question of age is a concern, one must set one's goals into eternity, one must look ahead. One cannot set one’s goals on something temporary, and all of this life is temporary, although it does not seem that way.
Then, life is something temporary designed for the awakening; therefore, you cannot think that through exercises of concentration or meditation, one can achieve the awakening in life. There needs to be something that it is in accordance with life, for us to achieve that purpose, and that is self-observation.
Self-observation is not in itself a difficult thing to do. One cannot approach it from the point of view of being too difficult. The problem is that within it we need to overcome difficulties and overcome the resistance to do it.
Then, in order to achieve the awakening in life, we need observation, awareness and the inner death of our psychological defects. But we cannot make it more difficult than it is; it allows us to appreciate the beauty of things and brings enjoyment.
Q: (unknown question).
Belzebuub: Yes, one needs to put much effort to remember to do the work, as well as doing it.
Surprisingly enough, we are tested on initiative. For example, someone ends up in a very difficult situation, but he comes out on top; he works out something and he is ok.
Make sure you relax the body; it is an important way of checking how you are doing.