Look for the slowing down in your energy and consciousness, noticing it and experiencing this slowing or resistance is the beginning of understanding the octave or different energy. If I am unaware of this slowing down, I will forget that to complete my aim I must pass through the interval and this requires something new. If I don’t obtain it, the octave will stop moving upwards towards my goal and mechanically descend, ending back at its starting point. Octaves never stand still; they are always ascending or descending. Practices to Gather New Impressions of Myself Directing my attention. Noticing what is new. Sensing my body, a posture, a limb, my facial expression, gestures, general bodily movements etc. Connecting my three centers through simple somatic exercises linking my cognitive part with my body through my wish to be present to my existence—foot, toe, heel, etc. Struggling with a rhythm, etc.
Sadness Sadness is a natural human emotion (affect) that very often is covered up unconsciously by people. Instead of experiencing sadness, I defend against it by being angry, feeling out of sorts or in some way cover it over or distract myself so that I do not have to experience sadness. The latter has become habitual and is epidemic. A great deal of human activity such as that of consumerism, addictive drinking, gambling, and other such distractions can be painful attempts to avoid experiencing sadness.
Law of Three Pick some aim for the day. It might be as simple as doing something you have been putting off. For example, cleaning a room and remaining aware of each movement of your body through sensing as you clean. This is a small example of conscious labor. It is easier to begin with small tasks. Notice what happens when you seek to fulfill this aim. Perhaps little things pull you away, you get tired, or interested in something else, or you do not have the time to do it, etc. If you can persist in your aim, pay particular attention to your frustrations while accomplishing or not being able to accomplish it. Of course, you will need to pick some aim that is somewhat difficult for you and not simply something you enjoy doing, in order that frustration can raise its head. Then you may get a chance to see the Law of Three at work. Your effort to accomplish your aim is the active force. The resistance or passive force will be everything, inner and outer, that gets in your way. The reconciling force is more difficult to see. You have to discover this force inside you and see how it works in your own experience, how it tastes. If you are able to stay with your aim, simply try to notice what makes it possible to stick with it.
Often, these primordial laws remain a mystery to people in the Work because they have not worked with them experientially; that is, they have not looked for them in the subjective experience of their lives. Our individual, subjective lives are important in the scheme of things, and each of us has the opportunity to understand these laws in the midst of our lives.
It is useful to recognize two important attitudes in yourself: (1) your overall attitude toward your own life in particular; and (2) your attitude toward life in general. When we look at others, it seems easy to recognize an optimist or pessimist. However, it is not so simple to categorize our own over-all attitude toward life.
Finding your way toward your real self is not about beating oneself up for what one is not doing, but rather using your intelligence to work on what helps you to become a harmonious self-conscious person.
The aim is not to do your practice quickly, nor is it to change your state (although your state may change). Work at the practice without tampering with yourself, without trying to be special or produce a special effect. Simply do it. You may notice the following taking place: as your attention moves, an energy arises in each new limb in turn. This is a special energy for you as an individual, and it may be useful to you in ways you cannot now comprehend or appreciate. In my experience, I feel I am embarking on a sacred journey.
December 1, 2014 Deautomatization
In order to return and experience self-consciousness and to firmly establish this state in myself, I can deautomatize my behavior without upsetting the delicate balance of my centers. This can be done by bringing a relaxed and open attention to my actions. It is not about changing habits, stopping one thing or another or substituting a good behavior for a bad behavior. Instead, it is learning again to do one thing at a time and making what I am doing important, similar to a child trying something for the first time.
These are all steps in a larger process. We generally do the steps automatically while focused on the final outcome. And, we miss the process of being alive in the process we are engaged in, we are not present during the individual steps.
Development of my human capacities to capture impressions depends on practice. Self-remembering is a multi-faceted practice to capture impressions. Acceptance and compassion of all impressions I receive and experience is required.
December 8, 2014 Upside-downess of Consciousness
Gurdjieff says the organ Kundabuffer caused people to see reality upside down. On my first reading of this idea some fifty years ago, I certainly understood the words and I thought I understood what he was getting at. I realize now how superficially I took his words. Even now, Gurdjieff’s assertion requires me to ponder on the question of how do I see reality upside down? Let us look at a few of Gurdjieff’s ideas of the upside-down nature of human consciousness. Three examples: Our inability to notice our inner world and our preoccupation with the material world. Our tendency to be identified always. Our shared suffering from the “disease of tomorrow.” Our need to always inner consider, and the fragmentation of our once-unified psyche into many “I’s.”
At its simplest level, I see life upside down because I tend to make the physical world either the most important reality or the only reality. I place primary importance on my outer activities, such as acquiring things, a job, food, sex, and money. This visible, material world is where most of us spend the majority of our time and attention. There can be little energy left for people to develop either their creative abilities or their inner life. Further, my ability to…
All of this time and energy is spent on material objects that are at first new and then will become old and need to be recycled. My attention is easily caught by the material world, and in the process, I become lost. Another way I see reality upside down: I find myself overreacting to many aspects of my life that, upon closer inspection, appear relatively trivial. I am identified all the time. For example, I have constant worries about different things I either need to do, have not done, or will be blamed for if they are not done, or feel a responsibility and pressure to do, etc. The list is endless, but the common thread running through them is an instantaneous…
Exercise: See if you can find examples for yourself during your week of how you view and/or react to your reality in an upside-down manner. Ponder what you find and sense your body as you consider how you behave. Note: This is not about your behavior being good or bad, but rather about noticing how you take your life, i.e. what is important to you, how we lose ourselves,…
December 14, 2014 The Year Comes…
Consider any aims you might have had and/or clarify an aim you may wish to take for the coming year. The aim for next year may be one that you share with others or keep to yourself. Sometimes sharing it can act as a…
Requirements, Entitlements, & Specialness
If others do not treat me in accordance with my images, it automatically activates an inner negative pattern. Often, I hear people say, “He acts so entitled.” It may be relatively easy to see an attitude of entitlement in others’ behavior, but my own entitlement is often hidden from view.
My entitled attitude is immediately activated when someone says he will do something and doesn’t keep his word—I believe he has not considered my feelings. I am annoyed when I see some government agency that is organized inefficiently, causing me to have to expend extra energy due to “their stupidity.” Most people carry around a huge suitcase of habitual requirements that are continually activated by life situations.
The aim is not to change anything now, but rather to realize that most of your actions in such situations are not actions at all. They are reactions to unknown requirements that are automatically recorded in your memory banks. For now, do not change anything. Again, your aim is not to be good, but to be aware of yourself in life. Awareness comes as a result of impartial, compassionate observation. Gradually, you will develop more ability to choose how you wish to be in front of your life situations.
January 19, 2015 The Unconscious Pleasure of Repeated Experience
Television, movies, the Internet, and advertising take advantage of our suggestibility to bring us into a trancelike state that is very similar to that of dreaming during sleep. In this trance state, people can be made to believe what others wish simply through suggestion.
Whether we take Kundabuffer as a parable, a symbol, a metaphor or a psychological and physical reality, it behooves us to verify for ourselves when Gurdjieff says in Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson the following:
January 26, 2015 Reactions and Wasting Energy The habitual nature of all our psychological processes—our thinking, emotions, and reactions to information received from the five senses—is one of the primary reasons we tend to continually repeat the same behavior patterns during our lifetimes. What we refer to as being “conscious” or
Criticism will not help me with learning to conserve my energy. Rather, it is interest in my behavior, interest and compassion for what is noticed and seen that leads to increased understanding. This type of self-observation or self-experiencing is unique.
First, it is not only intellectual observation—that is, one that is almost always analytical or descriptive and comes to me in words.
What makes this self-observation different? C. Daly King says “Self-observation presumes a real and valid distinction between the observer and the observed, between the being himself and his observed organism.” The result of this separation is awareness. Self-observation is a capacity that is neither thinking, nor emotion or movement, but a clear experience of my existence while I am engaged in or reacting to whatever I am experiencing.
Gradually, as my real “I” grows and is able to bear my manifestations, new integration or transformation can take place.
What is the experience of it? JUNE 5, 1950. When one begins to see that one can only begin to remember oneself for seconds at a time, it seems negligible. But what one must understand is that it is difficult exactly because it is the beginning of a new state for us, the key to a new world. If it were easy and if results came more quickly it could not have the importance which it has. —Rodney Collin Observing “I” is a faculty that records my existence just as it is. It is a unique experience in that it actually has two parallel functions.
Self-remembering continually wakes me up to the fact that what is observed is not as important as the fact that I exist, a fact that is easily lost in the intellectual center’s tendency to describe or the emotional center’s tendency to like or dislike. Gurdjieff used the term “self-remembering” to indicate I need to recall and bring myself back to recognize the true source of the observation that exists alongside my observing “I.”
Because we can become so involved in trying to observe, we lose touch with who is observing. By the word “who,” I do not mean my ordinary associative mind or my personality, but my potential real “I”—a new and relatively free and independent reality within me.
Try, over a period of time, to get a taste for this double awareness, the awareness of your “I” observing coupled with the awareness of your existence. Self-remembering is the simultaneous awareness of oneself being—being both the observer and the observed.
What I can derive from the Work is determined by how much I value it, the energy I am willing to invest in my aim, and my understanding of the reasons Work exists. This aspect of self-remembering signifies the realization that a higher structure of being exists in potential within us, greater than the ordinary self. That higher structure is somehow “remembered” in us, even though we usually have no awareness of it. However, this “memory” is crucial to finding what is essential inside us and making a connection with it. This essential part of us is the link with our true self, the part of us that remains when false personality falls away, the part we will be able to depend on, irrespective of time or place. In many ways, it is our personal connection to the higher, to what is God for us.
it most beautifully when he says: As we have seen, no phenomenon is produced by two forces; every phenomenon and every real result requires three forces. The practice of self-remembering or division of attention is connected with the attempt to produce a certain phenomenon, the birth of consciousness in oneself. And when this begins to happen, attention recognizes with relief and joy not two but three factors—one’s own organism, the subject of the experiment; the situation to which this organism is exposed in the moment; and something permanent which stands on a higher level than both and which alone can resolve the relation between the two. What is this third factor which must be remembered? Each person must find it for himself, and his own form of it—his school, his teacher, his purpose, the principles he has learned, the sun, some higher power in the universe, God.