ONLINE Wed, Nov 11: "Are you Stuck on a Plateau?"

Every path or journey has its ups and downs, and its plateaus.
For some, a plateau may be a place of rest, to regather energy before proceeding.
Or a period of healing, refocusing or waiting.
Not knowing what to do next.
Or procrastinating.

Do you feel you are on a 'plateau'?
Do you anticipate where to go from here?
Can you plan how to progress?
Do you consider advancing to another level?
Do you feel 'stuck' or what are you waiting for?

************************
Here are some additional thoughts regarding a plateau created by Lenny S.
His complete document is located here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eQY3aqKXBP2xyVbXH7f1G_WextaeSOZqD4KZfPZaOIU/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.cw0h9ji9pk09

The plateau: maximum potential, interrupted momentum:
Let's assume (not quotations from Mr Rose or Mr Gurdjieff) that a spiritual plateau is “the precarious moment where we have maximum spiritual potential but have our momentum slowed or stopped by ‘our egos".
One could add: “Plateaus - just another example of egos' adversity... as we progress spiritually, perhaps we could be on the verge of a quantum leap but our egos pull us back.”

The danger is not simply that nothing seems to happen. The old self may quietly take over the search: wanting reassurance, protecting an interpretation, postponing an uncomfortable recognition, or turning a genuine glimpse into the claim that we have arrived (typical of a new-be at E (on Jacob's Ladder). Potential is not a promise of an imminent breakthrough. The plateau asks whether our familiar way of seeking has reached its limit—and whether we will protect that limit or look beyond it.

”Turning” is as if "Going Perpendicular (in a two-dimensional reality) — not side to side.
Turning the inner head is a figure of speech, not a physical rotation or a choice between two competing thoughts. It is turning “in the Perpendicular,” “from the lower to the higher,” “FROM THE DARKER TO THE LIGHTER.” In GoPerpendicular.BE, I compare the ordinary search to circling the same ground: greater speed changes nothing if the direction never changes. Turning means ceasing to be wholly absorbed in the thought, mood, interpretation or reaction, and becoming aware of the process that holds us there. Between-ness is the KEY.

Rose writes: “When you are able to turn this internal head, whenever you wish, without any inability to continue thinking, you are half way home.” Between-ness in action. This is not a ban on useful thought. John Kent makes the distinction precise: “This is a shift in the actual level of the origin of one’s seeing and not merely a different direction of seeing from the same level.” Turning changes our relation to thought; merely exchanging one belief for another can leave the same identification intact.
- Rose, Psychology of the Observer, “The Practical Approach,” linked PDF p. 110 • Kent, ch. 15, Jacob’s Ladder

My account of learning to turn moves through confusion, understanding, seeing untruth, discovering my apparent powerlessness, and recognizing the roles of energy, tension, commitment and between-ness. This matters at a plateau: understanding the instruction is not the same as being free to live it. My Getting to Presence and Shifting to Between-ness writings describe remembering awareness in the midst of experience, rather than being swept away by every experience.
- The life of my vector • Getting to Presence • Shifting to Between-ness

Rose: rest without mistaking it for the destination - Rose calls a spiritual plateau “a resting place between two upward battles or periods of growth.” (i would say it could be between ANY “battles”) His example is a weary warrior resting in apparent peace; it need not feel barren. He distinguishes recuperation from laziness and cautions against forcing a resting seeker onward. For dry or discouraged periods, his “Obstacles” talk addresses apathy and physical or mental weariness: “When you build yourself a vector you carry yourself through these moments of despairing.” Rest can restore the search; indefinite comfort can replace it.
- Rose, “Defining the Truth,” part 2, “The Passive Person” • Rose, “Obstacles,” File 3

His reversal is therefore not a demand to manufacture a higher state. “We must back into the Truth by backing away from untruth.” At a plateau, this means examining the actual obstruction—fear, vanity, wishful certainty, identification—not painting a more luminous picture over it. Turning away from absorption does not mean refusing to see what is uncomfortable. It means seeing the obstruction without continuing to take it as our final identity . . .