Pure Awareness Sutra 2018

Pure Awareness Sutra

through Tenabah c2018

1. I am not my thoughts,

thoughts come and go,

but I remain.

2. I am not my emotions,

emotions come and go,

but I remain.

3. I am not my sensations,

sensations come and go,

but I remain.

4. I am pure awareness,

where thoughts, emotions,

and sensations,

arise, abide, change,

and pass away.

5. Here and now,

I choose to rest

in pure awareness

as pure awareness.

6. Here and now,

I choose to let

thoughts, emotions,

and sensations

flow without me.

7. I choose to not

resist any thoughts,

emotions, or sensations.

8. I choose to not

cling to any thoughts,

emotions, or sensations.

9. I choose to not

identify with any thoughts,

emotions, or sensations.

10. I choose to not let

any thoughts, emotions,

or sensations define me

or limit me.

11. I choose to be pure awareness.

12. I choose to not be any thought.

13. I choose to not be any emotion.

14. I choose to not be any sensation.

15. I choose to not be any body.

16. I center myself

in pure awareness,

being the pure seeing itself,

without any seer behind the seeing,

and without identification

with what is seen.

17. Pure awareness

is unconditional love,

accepting everything as it is.

18. I am unconditional love.

19. I accept everything as it is.

20. Pure awareness

is intuitive wisdom,

seeing everything as it is.

21. I am intuitive wisdom.

22. I see everything as it is.

23. Pure awareness

is creative freedom,

manifesting everything as it is.

24. I am creative freedom.

25. I manifest everything as it is.

26. Pure awareness

is creative imagination,

manifesting everything as it is.

27. I am creative imagination.

28. I manifest everything as it is.

29. I am pure awareness,

pure consciousness,

pure love,

pure wisdom,

pure freedom,

and pure creativity.

30. I am above and beyond

thoughts, emotions, and sensations.

31. I am not any identity

based on thoughts, emotions,

and sensations.

32. No thought, emotion, or sensation

defines who or what I am.

33. In the silence of

no thought,

no emotion,

and no sensation,

I am still present.

34. In the activity of

thought, emotion, and sensation,

I am still present.

35. I choose to be present

in the dramas of the world,

without being caught in them.

36. I serve the healing

of the world, with compassion

and with non-attachment.

37. I take care of my body

in this world, with compassion

and with non-attachment.

38. I help my family and friends,

in this world, with compassion

and with non-attachment.

39. Pure awareness is breath of space,

the heartbeat of creation, pulsing

everywhere, permeating everything.

40. I am breath of space,

the heartbeat of creation, pulsing

everywhere, permeating everything.

41. Pure awareness is breath of time,

the heartbeat of creation, pulsing

everywhen, permeating everything.

42. I am breath of time,

the heartbeat of creation, pulsing

everywhen, permeating everything.

43. I inhabit my body through the fusion

of breath of space, breath of air,

and breath of energy.

44. I am an embodied breath.

45. I am not a breathing body.

46. I am the breath of life in the body.

47. I am the heartbeat of the body.

48. I am the wakefulness inside the body.

49. I am breathing from the breath itself inside the body.

50. I am the breath that moves the body

and floats the arms and legs.

51. I am the vibration inside the breath.

52. I vibrate inside every cell as the pulse of the breath.

53. Pure awareness is like the sun,

radiating everywhere equally,

illuminating everything,

experiencing everything.

54. I am like the sun,

radiating everywhere equally,

illuminating everything,

experiencing everything.

55. Pure awareness is like the sky,

allowing clouds

of thoughts, emotions, and sensations

to float within its spaciousness,

without clinging to them,

without identifying with them,

without reacting to them,

and without resisting them.

56. I am like the sky,

allowing clouds

of thoughts, emotions, and sensations

to float within my spaciousness,

without clinging to them,

without identifying with them,

without reacting to them,

and without resisting them.

57. Pure awareness is like the sky,

without boundaries,

no place

where my awareness ends

and your awareness begins.

58. There is only one awareness.

59. We are this one awareness.

60. Pure awareness is like the ocean,

with the ocean expressing itself,

through individual waves.

61. I am like the ocean,

expressing itself

through my individual wave.

62. Pure awareness is like a mirror,

reflecting everything without distortion,

without reaction,

and without interpretation.

63. I am like a mirror,

reflecting everything without distortion,

without reaction,

and without interpretation.

64. Pure Awareness is luminous presence,

simply being itself.

65. I am luminous presence,

simply being itself.

66. Pure Awareness is luminous presence,

the unity of being, space, and energy.

67. I am luminous presence.

68. I am the unity of being, space,

and energy.

69. I am pure consciousness,

the unity of awareness, wakefulness,

and noticing.

70. I am pure love,

the unity of empathy, acceptance, and kindness.

71. I am pure wisdom,

the unity of peace, humility, empathy, curiosity, patience, contemplation, attention, and knowing.

72. I am creative imagination,

the unity of freedom, creativity, unconditionality, motivelessness, spontaneity, and joy.

73. Noticing my enlightened Buddha Nature,

I become enlightened.

74. Understanding my enlightened Buddha Nature, I become enlightened.

75. Accepting my enlightened Buddha Nature,

I become enlightened.

76. Consciously feeling

my enlightened Buddha Nature

with non-dual awareness,

from being the pure seeing

rather than any seer,

I stay enlightened.

77. I am non-dual awareness.

78. I am the seeing without a seer.

79. I am the seeing,

in unity with the seen,

without identifying with the seen.

80. I am not my memories,

my thoughts, my emotions,

my sensations, my reactions,

my perceptions, my bodies,

my possessions, my relationships,

my interpretations, my beliefs,

my opinions, my causes, my intentions,

or even where I focus my attention.

81. Here and now,

I choose to remember

who and what I truly am,

and not let any past memory,

or future fear,

or even future hope,

replace this.

82. I am the wakefulness

that breathes from the breath itself.

83. I am united with the One Awareness

that breathes in all of us as ourselves.

84. I let myself be breathed by this One Awareness

and rest in this breathing as this breath

and let this breathing undo all my illusions

about who and what we all are.

85. Merged with this One Awareness,

I am breathing inside everyone

as I am being breathed.

86. In the Unity of Being Breathed,

the Breath itself is One,

and we are free.

Moving Through the Bardo in Quantum Slipstream

 

This article is linked with the following YouTube video and provides the background to understand and use the video:

https://youtu.be/oqJPGy61XPU

I have been writing notes underneath the YouTube videos that I have been composing, but it has been limiting what I can say to a certain number of words.

THE LAW OF FALLING

One of the odder chapters in the book BEELZEBUB'S TALES TO HIS GRANDSON by Gurdjieff is entitled "The Law of Falling".  In this book, Gurdjieff describes space ships that went through space that "fell in the right direction".  When I first read the chapter, I did not get the inner meaning of the space ships.  But then I read COMMENTARIES ON BEELZEBUB'S TALES by John Bennett and found this book unlocked the symbolic key to understand the meaning of the chapter, and after understanding how to decode the chapter, I found I could unlock other chapters of the book as well.

The law of falling has to do with "gravity waves" moving throughout the universe at 3.75hz and how Robert Monroe was found to have left his physical body behind and move into his energy body or lucid dreaming body at this frequency.  It is a state of surrender to Divine Grace, where you surrender and let go, and fall into the pull of Divine Grace, and let it move you through all the challenges of the spiritual path.

The archangels who invented this "surrender drive", which is the essence of the spiritual path in many spiritual traditions, however, found that the devotees of this path had trouble when their space ships encountered the gravitational power and atmosphere of other worlds.  When they were near a world, they would have to shutdown their surrender drive and deal the situation on what Star Trek called "impulse drive" and even modify impulse drive with "thrusters" to navigate the issues of the local environment.  Very gradually, they would get unstuck from the gravitational pull of a world, reach "escape velocity" of this pull, and they return back into empty space, and then activate "surrender drive".

In the book by John Bennett, the atmosphere of a world is our meeting with other human beings, especially family, friends, acquaintances, and enemies who "push our buttons", "activate our issues", and "pull us into their emotional dramas".  The atmosphere is the charged emotional environment and its intensity.  When we understand how to "let go" in meditation, we are soaring down the spiritual path and processing everything very well.  We are doing high level processing in a high state of consciousness, and then we are pulled down through a sanskaric activation, and are back at a slower and more mundane level of working through our issues and overcoming our ego state.  We are entangled or caught in the atmosphere of another world or another complex human psychological process, one which may even be actively pushing its own agendas on us, trying to coopt our energies for their own purposes, and even trying to jam our analysis of what is going on so that we can figure out how to free ourselves from this "gravitational eddy" that we have now got stuck in.

Another group of archangels solves this atmospheric gravitational eddy problem by developing a back up engine.  This back up system will absorb the emotional energy of the atmosphere and then, at the right time, transform it and fire it out of the impulse drive engine, boosting the power of this drive in the process.  This is the equivalent of doing "Tonglen" in Buddhism, where one breathes in the negative afflicted emotional energy of the atmosphere and transform it into positive loving energy that we gift and breath out into the atmosphere.  This energy conversion system allows us to dissolve our ego state more quickly and free us from the gravitational grip of the other person.  In other words, we realize, how much it seems to be about the other person, that it is always about something inside of us and the other person has hooked into, and we learn how to breathe in the afflicted emotional energy and let it transform our ego state, and when we do so, we boost out of this whole situation, and then, when out in space again, we activate surrender drive, and continue.

The improved space ships worked better than the older ones that only knew how to surrender in ideal conditions.  Their upgrade allowed them to use adversity and gravitational eddies in order go back into "outer space", beyond the gravitational pull of an atmosphere, and then engage "surrender drive".

Surrender drive is like "warp drive" in Star Trek, while atmospheric navigation is like impulse drive and control thrusters in Star Trek.  One has to use them when they "drop out of warp" (or drop out of dynamic surrender into the sacred and have to engage the situation and surrender the ego in an ordinary way).

In other words, "surrender drive" or "warp drive" does have issues with ordinary space and time.  There are a lot of reasons why one "drops out of warp" (loses the feeling of surrender and falls to a lower vibration).  When it encounters minimal resistance, we soar.  When we get pulled into a lower frequency, it still takes time to ramp up to escape velocity and re-engage warp (surrender drive), and, again, feel the spaciousness of a high state of consciousness.

What I would like to propose is a further upgrade beyond what Gurdjieff indicated in his chapter, and that is to upgrade "warp drive" to "quantum slipstream drive".

QUANTUM SLIPSTREAM DRIVE

There is not a lot of write up in the Star Trek canon about the difference between "warp drive" and "quantum slipstream".  What warp drive and trans warp drive is about is dropping into a subspace field where the laws of ordinary space and time are no longer fully operative, and the speed limitations of relativity (that we cannot go faster than the speed of light, which would limit us to travel 1,000 light years to the nearest solar system) are transcended.  However, when we are back to interacting with people in ordinary space and time, we naturally slow down and have to deal with them under the laws of ordinary space and time.

Quantum slipstream does not involve punching a wormhole through subspace and moving inside a subspace tunnel.  What it does is to find or create a "fold" in space and time, and ride inside of this fold.  This means we are interacting with ordinary space and time in a new way.  It is like being in a subspace and subtime field while interacting with ordinary space and time, moment to moment, within a bubble which on the inside is beyond space and time, and on the outside (the bubble membrane itself) is part of ordinary space and time.  This means that we do not have to vibrate down to where others are to interact with them, and therefore they do not have to hinder us.  We can flow within slipstreaming while seeming to interact with them through a kind of translation matrix, and still stay centered in our surrender drive even better.

This would represent a second upgrade to the drive system of our "space ship" or "meditation matrix".

UPGRADE PROCESS #1

In order to upgrade our space ship to the new drive, we need to understand the previous versions and their limitations.  Then to understand "space" and "time" in a dual way.  We understand space as it is from a higher order of reality, where space, time, and matter are illusions and "dreams in consciousness".  This means that every planet is an illusion and there is no matter or emotion to transform through tonglen or ordinary ego reduction in the spiritual traditions of planet Earth.  Every ego is seen to be unreal, a construction in consciousness that we made and then believed we are, and made real to us, and then believed it was us.  Part of the upgrade is that we realize that no one has an ego.  And that every ego is an illusion.  If we make the egos of others be real, then we are stuck in our own unreal ego that we have now made real.  The making real of the ego is how we get stuck in our ego.  If we see it as an illusion, then we are free from its grip.

The key idea is that we cannot make the egos of others real and make our ego unreal to us.  The same logic that makes the egos of others as real to us will also make our own ego real to us.  This key idea needs to be deeply internalized in order for the upgrade or initiation to happen to a higher vibrational level than "warp drive level surrender" required, where the ego merely needed to be transcended or broken through, whether real or unreal.  In slipstream, the ego must be seen to be an illusion that we are making real and getting stuck in.  If we do not make it real, then we cannot get stuck in it or in any atmosphere in any world.

UPGRADE PROCESS #2

The second key idea is that we do not need to prove to them that they are wrong for making their ego real.  We can stay in the higher view that they are already pure conscious awareness that they have chosen to be lost in an ego state where they are choosing to believe it is real and make it seem real by believing in the state, and let them do so.

Meanwhile, we do not have to believe in what they are doing to themselves and still see that they are pure awareness that is imagining their world and believing it is real.  We can see where they imagine they are and where they actually are simultaneously.  If we can do this, then we can "stay within the quantum fold" and keep on flowing.  It is part of what Jesus was trying to share when he taught people to be "in the world, but not of the world".  To be more precise in terms of this quantum slipstream drive, "seem to be in the world to others, but not believe you are in the world at all".  You stay in the center of the bubble, and let your bubble interact with their bubbles, while flowing inside and staying in your own process.

UPGRADE PROCESS #3

The third idea is that we stay in "circular surrendered breathing" which I have covered before.  This breathing has several components:

(1) Whisper chanting "ah" on the inhale and "dheeh" on the exhale.

(2) Breathing in and visualizing liquid light coming from a six inch sphere floating above your head and coming in through the soft spot at the top of the head.

(3) Visualizing the liquid light relaxing, energizing, and renewing all the cells it flows into, and then feel it come into a nine inch diameter sphere in the heart center, and from there, on the exhale, pumping into the whole body, nourishing and energizing each and every cell.

(4) On the exhale, one whisper chants "dheeh", and feels one merges with all the wisdom of the higher Buddhas to surrender, trust, allow, and abide in a power coming from Luminous All Pervading Space (God) and to let this Power do everything for us with our moment to moment permission.

(5) One removes all pauses between inhale and exhale, and feels a continuous breathing that merges inhale and exhale together.  The feeling is of one continuous circle of breathing with only a gentle "turning" between inhale and exhale.  There is a feeling of flowing and adapting to each moment which is the purified spiritual wisdom essence of the water element.

(6) One lets go of the subtle ego called the "breather" or the one who imagines it controls the breathing as an entity that is not the breathing.  One instead "breathes from the breath itself as the living breath itself".  In Buddha's words, you breathe from inside the breath, rather than being a thing that is trying to control the breath from outside the breath.  This controller ego is what gets enmeshed in subtle power struggles with every ego in an atmosphere or world.  When we release this, inside our breathing, then there is nothing to hold us in the illusory dramas of a world.  There is therefore no gravitational pull to break free of.

(7) After feeling that we are breathing from the breath itself as the breath itself, there is one more step, which is to "let us as the breath be breathed by Luminous All Pervading Space" (God).  This removes any last trace of something that needs to be surrendered to God or Space.  We let our process by held.  It is like linking into a tractor beam that gently pulls us past everything and keeps us on track.  Because it is not from us, we do not have to struggle with anything.  This is Quantum Slipstream Divine Grace.

This circular surrendered breathing is the drive system of a quantum slipstream upgraded space ship.

UPGRADE PROCESS #4

The fourth and last upgrade needed to engage in quantum slipstream drive is to concentrate on the crystal at the third eye point, and hold the thought "engage quantum slipstream drive".  If we ever hit a bumpy patch of space, time, and an atmospheric drama gravity well, we concentrate on the thought "engage quantum slipstream drive" and engage in the seven gears of circular surrendered breathing.  This process restabilizes us in quantum slipstream.

Some secondary processes are, (1) "I let them have their illusion, even if it is about me, (which it always is, since egos generally want to make every other ego real and struggle with each other) and let myself have my reality, which includes them in unity with me, and thus I am instantly freed."  This would correspond to the highest level of "forgiveness" that Jesus had taught.  (2) "I release them to do whatever they want, and give myself permission to live from my freedom too, and then use my freedom to do circular surrendered breath".  (3) "There is nothing real in this situation to fight or resist or even transform."  (4) "I let this illusion be as it is and flow beyond it".  (5) "I surrender into the all pervading light and let it take me home".  (6) "I used to work hard in impulse drive and even with the limitations of warp drive, but I do not have to any more."  (7) "I can bypass all this unless I make it real, try to avoid it or struggle with it, I do not need to fight an illusion, only see it as such and let it go."

A dream taught me how to engage this quantum slipstream and I found that when I moved through the thickness of the "dark night of the soul" that is dissolved.  It was no longer being held together by my belief in this dark night or in the belief of those early spiritual warriors who struggled long and hard to go beyond it, and who believed that those who came after them would have to work as hard or they were "avoiding the inner work".  I found I moved through the same spaces, but they did not feel solid or heavy any more.  I found that when I was tempted to make the obstacles real, and my body was tightening something inside as a reaction to "what is", that I would remember to re-engage quantum slipstream and go into circular surrendered breathing and was instantly freed again.  It felt like "traction control" in my Saturn car when it was on an icy road.  Whenever the car seemed to slide on the ice, traction would instantly engage and realign the car, and it would not deviate from its chosen course.  The body part would spontaneously relax, and even ancient tension patterns would melt away in this drive state.

Narcissism Part Four (Random Notes)

 I found that, in studying many Narcissist videos and in reading books, a few notes are worth mentioning here.  One is that the term "Narcissist Personality Disorder" (NPD) is worth not using.  This is for a number of reasons that is worth mentioning here.  The term is a clinical term and technically requires a diagnosis from a psychiatrist to establish.  The term has some issues worth mentioning.  The NT, Narcissist type, is a person with a certain kind of profile and cluster of behavioral strategies that are interlocking and tend to work together.  Looking at it this way, whether or not it is a pathology or a disorder does not arise.  One problem with labeling the NT as an NPD is that there is some issue with calling it a disorder.  In a usual pathology, there is a sense that the person is handicapped by having this disorder.  Yet an NT is highly functional and therefore does not fit this understanding of what it is.

In a strictly legal sense, the requirement of a doctor diagnosis to label someone NPD is curious, because the NT, being invested in forming a "public mask" has no wish to undergo a diagnosis that will expose them in this regard.  It is also clear that the number of NTs who have been diagnosed as NPD is very few compared to those who have never submitted to such a process.  Rather than get into a legal mess and confusion about this, it is better to side step this issue completely.

The term "Narcissist Type" is more general and is unlikely to cause the same issues.  It is also not clear if NPD and NT mean the same thing.

My reason for writing notes here is because this NT is a type that has the potential to cause people harm.  If it were not so, I would not bother to compile these notes.  The writing I am doing here is just to "future proof" the reader and also for a person who is suffering in a relationship with an NT to recognize what is happening and learn to break free from what is a toxic relationship, or, if not able to do this, to understand what is going on so that one can more successfully adapt to the situation.  With awareness and understanding of what is going on, one can form more realistic expectations of what is possible and take more clear steps to claiming one's own life and fully living it.

One issue with the NPD term is that the psychiatric community and the clinical counselling community seem to believe that this NPD person is not curable and that the NPD person is not "redeemable".  Because of my spiritual understanding of the Uttara Buddhist Tantra, everyone has "buddha nature" and therefore everyone will eventually get enlightened, everyone will get "redeemed".  It may take many lifetimes, but it will happen to everyone.  Part of the reason why NPD people are considered not redeemable is practical.  The covert narcissist type will insincerely plead for help and keep hooking in a person who is trying to leave them.  As humans, we have the tendency to be helpful and especially want to help those that we love get cured.  This helpful love can keep us trapped in such toxic relationships.  So councilors will say that they are not redeemable or not curable to help people to break free of them and leave them, to save those under their psychic grip.

The councilors are probably right in this regard that they are not really redeemable, but not for the reasons that I would regard as true.  In order to walk a path of spiritual healing and spiritual liberation, a person has to sincerely want to be healed and allow themselves to be healed.  NTs do not want to do this, because their strategies are perceived as working for them and they do not want to give up what works for them.  Unless some crisis happens, where they realize what they have lost by living their strategies, they are not yet ready to be helped and healed.  Part of their strategy is to plead for help to hook people in, to play helpless to suck people into their drama vortex to emotionally manipulate them, and to wear a mask to hide their real agenda to control people to make them give them what they want.

In my notes here, I do not care if an NT and an NPD are the same.  My wish is not to do anything clinical or to pathologize any one through a label.  I am also not interesting in trying to cure anyone who is not open to, ready to, and willing to be healed and helped by another.  I believe that free will is sacred and that every step on the spiritual path requires willing choice.

I am writing down these notes because the NT exploits several natural human tendencies which are essentially good.  One is to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume that, even when bad traits show up, people are essentially good.  This means that, even when an NT is "unmasked", people will assume that it was a temporary lapse into bad behavior in a good person.  An NT, because they, like all sentient beings, have "buddha nature", they are "good people".  But this goodness is, in a sense "buried twice", once behind their public mask and then again behind their angry hidden self that they believe that they are.  People need to be aware of their commitment to live from this "angry hidden self" and stay away from them until they are ready to confront and come to terms who they have made themselves to be.

In Tibetan Buddhist, the NT is called an "Asura".  It is sometimes called the realm of the "jealous gods".  Karmically, they have worst karma and more suffering than most human beings.  In one Buddhist system, the Human realm is placed above them, and in another Buddhist system, the Human realm is placed below the Asura realm.  They are both right.  This is because they seem to get the upper hand over humans.  They can generally outwit, manipulate, dominate, and subjugate humans through a kind of psychological control and push pull emotional dynamic that keeps humans confused, reactive, tormented, and submissive.  They use a kind of jealous competition, paranoid psychic scanning, subliminal undermining, push pull emotional victim drama, and predatory seduction to work on humans.

To merely get sensitized to the Asura type (AT) is not enough.  Unlike many other types, this NT or AT is predatory.  They want to hook in others and exploit them for their own purposes.  They realize that this usually requires them to be covert, to hide and lie about their real motives, to work from behind a positive social mask and act like an expert, a helper, and a good person.  They "love bomb" and make you feel that they are great and can even make people fall in love with them before they undermine the person and exploit the person.  In order to be immune to their predation and their strategies, one needs to deeply understand one's own self.  The AT will study the people around them behind the pleasant chit chat that they do in the love bombing phase.  They will find weaknesses to exploit, desires that they can hook into and manipulate through pulling these strings, and guilt levers they can activate.

Some ATs are not so skillful in their manipulations, but as the AT evolves, they will get better and better at it.  Some are very good at what they do.  Hence, these notes.

Narcissism Part Three: Early Warning Identifiers

 This is the third article I am writing in regarding to the Narcissist Type.  I have been studying this subject both in my direct experience and viewing several discussions on videos with counsellors who are trained to work with people who are suffering from "Narcissistic Abuse" within a relationship.  I am writing this article for several purposes.  One of these purposes is to review what I am learning and to be able to place the understanding of the Narcissist type on the Enneagram and to map out the dynamics of this type.  At this point, I am organizing my notes to upscale the video discussions to a higher level of empirical and psychological precision.  The discussions that I find are excellent and very empirical and experiential in an informal way, but still lack a precision that I feel that I need to feel complete with this subject.

One issue that I have is that I have looked at a few videos that are trying to give people some "early warning identifiers" so that people can disengage soon enough to avoid getting "enmeshed" in this Narcissist type.  What I have found is that the Narcissist type, probably through their own history of being wounded in their formative past experiences, unconsciously wishes to "trauma bond" with someone and pull this person into a relationship or friendship where he or she will engage in a dysfunctional power struggle which is characteristic of enmeshed family systems that so many people were raised within as children, with a high probability that the parents were Narcissist types.  The Narcissistic Abuse is part of the trauma bond experience and when fully formed can be a difficult bond to terminate and move on from.  In other words, the abuse itself is not merely an unpleasant aspect of the experience of being with them, but serves a function in keeping the relationship or friendship continuing through time.  The abuse is also not merely part of their need to be in control (which many of the counselors focus on) or their need to "win" in the power struggle that they create with their target person, it serves to create a dysfunctional bond that emulates their dysfunctional family system that they were raised in.  The bond can be very strong and be very hard to break.  It anchors into the target person as a "survival imprint" and the target person can be very anxious and even feel guilty if he or she tries to leave the relationship or friendship.

In some of the videos that I have been studying, the identifiers for the Narcissist type, especially the "Covert Narcissist", are, in my opinion, not early enough.  They identifiers are excellent to verify that one is already in a relationship, friendship, or business partnership with an Narcissist type, but not so excellent when it comes to sensitizing oneself to "early warning identifiers" so that one can disengage early enough that one pulls out of the enmeshment before it fully forms.  The "early warning identifiers" (EWIs for short) also need to be precise enough so that one does not accidentally mislabel a person who is not a Narcissist type and unwittingly lose a chance to form a good and worthwhile friendship or relationship.  One challenge with forming the EWIs is that most people have some narcissist traits and therefore the mere presence of Narcissist traits is usually not enough to form a valid EWI.

What I needed to do in my notes is to define a "narcissist scale" that goes like this:

(1) potential narcissism.  What Freud called "primary narcissism", where children have a kind of natural and innocent self centeredness that could develop into an Narcissist type.

(2) mild narcissism.  Where an ordinary person evolves some of the personality traits of a narcissist, but they have not congealed into a full blown Narcissist type.

(3) covert narcissism.  Where the traits develop into strategies and congeal into a full blown Narcissist type personality.  What I feel the line that is crossed is when the Narcissist type uses lying deliberately, not from fear of punishment or fear of being shamed, but as a strategy so hide their real agenda so that it can work upon people who do not see through the camouflage.  The hiding of the agenda is necessary for the strategies to work.  In other words, the deception is necessary.  Many of the counselors have emphasized this and have noted, intuitively, that Narcissist types do not merely lie.  Their lying is different and functions differently.  This is often not fully explained well.  They are called "masters of lying" or "compulsive liars", but neither of these descriptors touches upon the "how and why" of their unique style of lying.  It is also clear to me that the Narcissist type uses several different lying styles.  For instance, they wear a public persona mask and hides who and what they are (lie#1).  They will deny that they did something even when they are caught "red headed" or with a "smoking gun" (lie#2, and which may be reinforced by "gaslighting" where they will convince their target that he or she must have been mistaken and aggressively pressure the person to disconnect and lose confidence in their own experience and what they are learning from their experience, which can cause very serious psychological damage and render them vulnerable to be exploited by others).  They can make up a story and pull people into a victim drama to shift blame and control those around them through guilt (lie#3).  They can be vague and elusive when one is trying to pin them down and figure out what is going on (lie#4).  They can be overly complimentary in the beginning to make you feel safe around them (lie#5).  They can exaggerate faults to make a person feel worse about themselves and undermine their necessary self esteem (lie#6).  They can minimize their own faults or minimize how impactful their faults are to those around them (lie#7).  They can pretend to forget their agreements to rationalize breaking the agreements (lie#8).  They can hide their "pervasive anger" behind a pleasant mask so that one is surprised later on when the anger bursts out of them (lie#9).

(4) overt narcissism.  This is the stage where the traits are out in the open and can be verified more easily, though even when an Narcissist type is overt, there is still a mask of illusion.  They will still blame others, for instance, for what they do.  If they burst out in anger and show their pervasive anger, they will say that "they had to do it" because others "forced them" and they "had no choice".  This blaming others for what they do (lie#10) can fool some people who believe that the Narcissist type only needs to get rid of their enemies or to punish them to feel better.  When the Narcissist type is overt, there are styles of overtness.  They can work a community or group, and hold sway over them.  They can rise to power through a corporate ladder, steal other people's ideas and work to prove to bosses that they are worth promoting, etc.  They can pretend that others are "behind them" when targeting someone (the flying monkey effect, lie#11).

(5) tyrannical narcissism.  This is the stage where a person may rule through fear, murdering or poisoning opponents, torture people so as to make others comply for fear of being tortured, use censorship and media control, slander rivals with lies and propaganda, and even expand his or her empire to dominate other countries.

By having this scale, one can see that the EWIs are about differentiating between stage 2 and stage 3.  The mild narcissism is a trait of relatively ordinary people and because of this we forgive others when these traits show up.  The traits are not united into a fully organized strategy and life pattern that appears in stage 3.  What this scale implies is that stage 4 and 5 Narcissist types must start with being a stage 3 covert narcissist first.

I felt I made progress in forming my EWI list when I realized that Narcissist 3 types will operate behind a mask public persona when we first meet them.  They intend to fool us into believing the mask and therefore the mask is the key to forming a reliable EWI.  This is because the "mask" is part of a strategy and is not merely a random developmental trait that is forming due to the social pressures and dysfunctional family stresses that we all pass through.

The mask will pretend to be an expert or authority about certain things, will pretend to be good, generous, and even altruistic, and generally the mask will minimize faults.  It will have subtle arrogant flavor and may even communicate that they are better than others.  This is because an Narcissist type 3 is in competition with everyone and needs to prove that they are superior to others.  If someone seems to be more expert than they are or if their altruistic ethics are questioned, they will be tempted to put their rivals down, belittle them, and point out any fault, and even wait in ambush to jump on a weakness when it shows up.  It can be seen very early, even in the very first meeting.  There is aggression and "love bombing" with an exaggerated goodness or expertness being shown.  They might pretend to already be a success or an expert or very good at something, before they have taken the time to form those skills.  They feel that they do not have to work at achieving things like other people, because they have natural talent and are "entitled to success" and blame others not recognizing their talent for their failure or blame others for sabotaging them.