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                                                                                (from June 2021 back to August 2018)


ALL AND EVERYTHING by G.I. Gurdjieff
Ten Books in Three Series
FIRST SERIES: Three books under the title of “An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man,” or, “Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson.”
FIRST SERIES: To destroy mercilessly, without any compromises whatsoever, in the mentation and feelings of the reader, the beliefs and views, by centuries rooted in him, about everything existing in the world.

          
                                                    Note that some long readings have their own hyperlink ​
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Posted January 14, 2021
First Initiation

Suggestion: Print out the reading if you can; read it each day under quiet conditions.
Questions: What parts of me are touched by this reading? My feeling, my thinking, my body...
                 What questions begin to arise?


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Jeanne de Salzmann

 "The moment of receiving an impression
           is the moment of becoming conscious.
 It is the act of seeing." (Jeanne de Salzmann)​  
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                                          "If I work more often I'll see more clearly
                                          what my work should be."      (Sylvia March)
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​               Nothing can change of itself."   (G.I. Gurdjieff)

                                            ARCHIVES (June 2021 back to January 2021)
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Posted May 23, 2021
“But why is it,” I asked after a time, “that we have to suffer to understand? Why can’t we learn without suffering?”
 
“We have no real and permanent I,” he answered. “Rather, we are composed of many different ‘I’s. Each of these ‘I’s is like a total person, a complete belief system. One ‘I’ takes us over completely. Very often this ‘I’ knows nothing about all the other ‘I’s.  One ‘I’ may do something then and the others know nothing about it.  Realizing this truth – that what you call ‘Patterson’ isn’t real – demands a very large payment.” (p 28)
 
Lord Pentland had said that in self-remembering we had to get “the taste” of an observing I – one that would see “Patterson” and not get drawn into his world.  For “Patterson” could never observe “Patterson”.  It was important, too, he said that our observation differentiated four basic centers in ourselves: thinking, emotional, moving, and instinctive.  Each was a “mind” in itself and had its own thinking, associations, language, memory and so forth. The thinking center worked by means of comparison.  The emotional center worked with feelings and emotions: feelings were always pleasant or unpleasant, never neutral.  The moving center controlled all movement as well as dreams and day dreams.  The instinctive center was made up of breathing, digestion, the five senses and, of course, the sex instinct.  In observing ourselves we were to relate the phenomena to the proper center. It took a great deal of energy and discrimination to sustain self-observation and so quite often, I found it was only “Patterson” observing “Patterson”; that is one ‘I’ watching another ‘I’.  It was depressing.  But, of course, that was a state as well.  In making these feeble attempts, I came to the realization that I was asleep, virtually always identified with my thoughts and states.  That galvanized in me a strong wish to wake up.  At the same time, I noticed this feeling of hopelessness. 
 
“No effort of this kind is ever lost,“ Lord Pentland counseled.  “It makes a mark, something accumulates.  There will come a time, when you would normally fall asleep, you’ll find yourself present.  Right now you are only remembering yourself by thought, by memory. Later, it will be different…”
 
Soon, the summer recess was at hand.  Lord Pentland began with the last meeting rather quickly.  “As this is the last meeting,” he declared, “why don’t we ask the question --- Why am I here?”
 
No one volunteered an answer and so he continued: “I mean to say what is it that brings me here?  Of course, there is a renewal of energy…but what else might there be?” 
 
Helen said it was because of the “great sense of life” it gave her.  “Most of my life is filled with dead spaces.”
 
“Yes, that is all very well,” Lord Pentland agreed.  “But that’s an explanation, isn’t it? When I am faced with an unknown, what is the first thing I do? I give an explanation.  If I don’t have one, I find one.  But we all had the chance to do other things, but we came here instead.  Isn’t that some clue? Do you follow?”
 
No one said a word. He had asked me that same question when we first met. Now, six months later, I still had no clear idea.
 
Lord Pentland continued, but now in an altogether different voice.  “There will come a time when each of you will have to ask yourselves: “Why am I here?”  And the answer will have to fulfill not just the inner life but the external life as well.  You will measure your answer against something in the external world…”
 
“To find out why I do things,” Lord Pentland declared, “I must begin not to do them.  Suppose for example, that I make up my mind that I will not buy a morning paper as I usually do.  A struggle will ensue. I will find out then why I buy it.”  (pp 54-55)
 
(William Patrick Patterson with Lord Pentland; Eating the “I”)
 
 
TASK SUGGESTION:
We continue the effort to develop our understanding of self-observation in order to shine a light on the beliefs, conditioning, conventions, etc. that affect how we manifest in life, this week by trying the suggestion given by Lord Pentland at the end of this reading.

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Posted May 16, 2021
We have an image of our presence on earth as if we were making a sketch: a big ball – that’s the earth – and a little fellow standing on it. That’s me. Yes, that’s how my eyes see things, and since photographs confirm it, I’m convinced it’s true. But it’s not like that at all.
 
Yes, on this round planet there certainly is a bodily form, but my being is not limited to this physical presence. It’s quite a strange idea, scarcely believable, and yet if I knew how to read what we’re told about the lateral octave…
 
The lateral octave is an octave, not one note. An octave is eight notes: and, in a sense, this octave is me. It is also the whole of humanity and many other things besides: but it is me. Where is my center of gravity? Below an interval. And so it is quite obvious that I am much more easily in contact with forces of a certain kind that are in operation there, exactly as if I had magnetic soles on my shoes, gluing me to the planet. I cannot move.
 
But I am learning…and through this apprenticeship a certain keen attention becomes an infinitely precious component. If I learn to open inwardly to every aspect of this unknown in my being, I discover that my being also exists on the other side of the interval. I must not dream about it. It is not actualized at present. I must not imagine it; but through this effort of opening myself to deeper levels, I come into contact with forces that are on the other side, in the direction of the Higher, and I sense that they are perhaps greater, that is, more vivifying. In any case, they are closer to the origin of creation, and therefore have a much greater power. The unfortunate thing is that, until now, I did not know it and could not open to it. You have enough strength to try. After that, it is a matter of this energy penetrating, and what’s more, coming from both poles… This penetration will work in me.
 
But it is necessary to pay. A struggle awaits me, a real struggle. For the moment it can frighten us; sometimes we balk at it. This goes on for quite a while, but one day you will love it and you will know why you love it – this struggle is your own fire, your own vital quality. It is for this quality that I will come to love it; otherwise I will never be able to do so.
 
In awakening to this, I understand that I must die to my illusions. I don’t have to die to anything troublesome: I have to die to illusions, to memories. Afterwards, I can be born because I am truly renewed in spirit.
 
How clear all these texts are, if you begin to live them! How simple it is! Certainly it is long and hard, but it is simple.
                                                                                                                                                       (Michel Conge; Inner Octaves; p 40)
 
QUESTION:
In moments when I experience myself ready to give in to the pull of a descending inertia, I remember my ascending wish for self-discovery, to know who I am. What is the taste, the feeling, of struggling to remain in between, within this ‘intersection and circulation of forces?’ 


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Posted May 9, 2021
Two readings on the Ray of Creation:
On one occasion when speaking of the orderly connectedness of everything in the universe...

​The chain of worlds...


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​Posted May 2, 2021
"Man's possibilities are very great. You cannot conceive even a shadow of what man is capable of attaining. But nothing can be attained in sleep. In the consciousness of a sleeping man, his illusions, his 'dreams' are mixed with reality. He lives in a subjective world and he can never escape from it. And this is the reason why he can never make use of all the powers he possesses and why he always lives in only a small part of himself.
 
"It has been said before that self-study and self-observation, if rightly conducted, bring man to the realization of the fact that something is wrong with his machine and with his functions in their ordinary state. A man realizes that it is precisely because he is asleep that he lives and works in a small part of himself. It is precisely for this reason that the vast majority of his possibilities remain unrealized, the vast majority of his powers are left unused. A man feels that he does not get out of life all that it can give him, that he fails to do so owing to definite functional defects in his machine, in his receiving apparatus. The idea of self-study acquires in his eyes a new meaning. He feels that possibly it may not even be worth while studying himself as he is now. He sees every function as it is now and as it could be or ought to be. Self-observation brings man to the realization of the necessity for self-change. And in observing himself a man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in his inner processes. He begins to understand that self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening. By observing himself he throws, as it were, a ray of light onto his inner processes which have hitherto worked in complete darkness. And under the influence of this light the processes themselves begin to change. There are a great many chemical processes that can take place only in the absence of light. Exactly in the same way many psychic processes can take place only in the dark. Even a feeble light of consciousness is enough to change completely the character of a process, while it makes many of them altogether impossible. Our inner psychic processes (our inner alchemy) have much in common with those chemical processes in which light changes the character of the process and they are subject to analogous laws."
                                                                               (G.I. Gurdjieff; In Search of the Miraculous; p 145)
 
 
SUGGESTION:
Refer back to last week’s reading in addition to the passage above,
I search for a way of observation that may lead to recognizing and acknowledging the truth in myself that “all three centers are filled with habits.” At the same time I work towards developing a further understanding of why we struggle with habits.


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​Posted April 25, 2021
“The next object of self-observation (after the work of centers) must be habits in general. Every grown-up man consists wholly of habits, although he is often unaware of it and even denies having any habits at all. This can never be the case. All three centers are filled with habits and a man can never know himself until he has studied all his habits. The observation and the study of habits is particularly difficult because, in order to see, and ‘record’ them, one must escape from them, free oneself from them, if only for a moment. So long as a man is governed by a particular habit, he does not observe it, but at the very first attempt, however feeble, to struggle against it, he feels it and notices it. Therefore, in order to observe and study habits one must try to struggle against them. This opens up a practical method of self-observation. It has been said before that a man cannot change anything in himself, that he can only observe and ‘record’. This is true. But it is also true that a man cannot observe and ‘record’ anything if he does not try to struggle with himself, that is, with his habits. This struggle cannot yield direct results, that is to say, it cannot lead to any change, especially to any permanent and lasting change. But it shows what is there. Without a struggle a man cannot see what he consists of. The struggle with small habits is very difficult and boring, but without it, self-observation is impossible.
 
“Even at the first attempt to study the elementary activity of the moving center a man comes up against habits. For instance, a man may want to study his movements, may want to study how he walks. But he will never succeed in doing so for more than a moment if he continues to walk in the usual way. But if he understands that his usual way of walking consists of a number of habits, for instance of taking steps of a certain length, walking at a certain speed, and so on, and he tries to alter them, that is, to walk faster or slower, to take bigger or smaller steps, he will be able to observe himself and study his movements as he walks. If a man wants to observe himself when he is writing, he must take note of how he holds his pen and try to hold it in a different way from usual; observation will then become possible. In order to observe himself a man must try to walk not in his usual way, he must sit in unaccustomed attitudes, he must stand when he is accustomed to sit, he must sit when he is accustomed to stand, and he must make with his left hand the movements he is accustomed to make with his right hand and vice versa. All this will enable him to observe himself and study the habits and associations of the moving center.
 
“In the sphere of the emotions it is very useful to try and struggle with the habit of giving immediate expression to all one’s unpleasant emotions. Many people find it very difficult to refrain from expressing their feelings about bad weather. It is still more difficult for people not to express unpleasant emotions when they feel that something or someone is violating what they conceive to be order or justice.
 
“Besides being a very good method for self-observation, the struggle against expressing unpleasant emotions has at the same time another significance. It is one of the few directions in which a man can change himself or his habits without creating other undesirable habits. Therefore, self-observation and self-study must, from the first, be accompanied by the struggle against the expression of unpleasant emotions.
                                                                                  (G.I. Gurdjieff; In Search of the Miraculous; p 111)
 
  
TASK SUGGESTION:
“All three centers are filled with habits.” 
From all that is given in the reading I decide on a way to work that may lead to seeing this in myself.

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Posted April 18, 2021
“Having fixed in his own mind the difference between the intellectual, the emotional, and the moving functions, a man must, as he observes himself, immediately refer his impressions to this or that category. And at first he must take mental note of only such observations as regards which he has no doubt whatever, that is, those where he sees at once to what category they belong. He must reject all vague or doubtful cases and remember only those which are unquestionable. If the work is carried on properly, the number of unquestionable observations will rapidly increase. And that which seemed doubtful before will be clearly seen to belong to the first, the second, the third center. Each center has its own memory, its own associations, its own thinking. As a matter of fact, each center consists of three parts: the thinking, the emotional and the moving. But we know very little of this side of our nature. In each center we know only one part. Self-observation, however, will very quickly show us that our mental life is much richer than we think, or in any case that it contains more possibilities than we think.
 
“At the same time as we watch the work of the centers we shall observe, side by side with their right working, the wrong working, that is, the working of one center for another: the attempts of the thinking center to feel or to pretend that it feels, the attempts of the emotional center to think, the attempts of the moving center to think and feel. As has been said already, one center working for another is useful in certain cases, for it preserves the continuity of mental activity. But in becoming habitual it becomes at the same time harmful, since it begins to interfere with right working by enabling each center to shirk its own direct duties and to do, not what it ought to be doing, but what it likes best at the moment. In a normal healthy man, each center does its own work, that is, the work for which it was specially destined and which it can best perform. There are situations in life which the thinking center alone can deal with and can find a way out of. If at this moment the emotional center begins to work instead, it will make a muddle of everything and the result of its interference will be most unsatisfactory. In an unbalanced kind of man, the substitution of one center for another goes on almost continually and this is precisely what ‘being unbalanced’ or ‘neurotic’ means. Each center strives, as it were, to pass its work on to another and, at the same time, it strives to do the work of another center for which it is not fitted. The emotional center working for the thinking center brings unnecessary nervousness, feverishness and hurry into situations where, on the contrary, calm judgement and deliberations are essential. The thinking center for the emotional center brings deliberation into situations which require quick decisions and makes a man incapable of distinguishing the peculiarities and fine points of the position. Thought is too slow. It works out a certain plan of action and continues to follow it even though the circumstances have changed and quite a different course of action is necessary. Besides, in some cases the interference of the thinking center gives rise to entirely wrong reactions, because the thinking center is simply incapable of understanding the shades and distinctions of many events. Events that are quite different for the moving center and for the emotional center appear to be alike to it. Its decisions are much too general and do not correspond to the decisions which the emotional center would have made. This becomes perfectly clear if we imagine the interference of thought, that is the theoretical mind, in the domain of feeling, or of sensation, or of movement; In all three cases the interference of the mind leads to wholly undesirable results. The mind cannot understand shades of feeling. We shall see this clearly if we imagine one man reasoning about the emotions of another. He is not feeling anything himself so the feelings of another do not exist for him. A full man does not understand a hungry one. But for the other they have a very different existence. And the decisions of the first, that is the mind, can never satisfy him. In exactly the same way the mind cannot appreciate sensations. For it they are dead. Nor is it capable of controlling movement. Instances of this are the easiest to find. Whatever work a man may be doing, it is enough for him to try to do each action deliberately, with his mind, following every movement and he will see that the quality of his work will change immediately. If he is typing, his fingers, controlled by the moving center, find the necessary letters themselves, but if he tries to ask himself before every letter: where is the “k”? ‘Where is the comma?’ How is this word spelled?’ he at once begins to make mistakes or to write very slowly. If one drives a car with the help of one’s mind, one can only go in the lowest gear. The mind cannot keep pace with all the movements necessary for developing a greater speed. To drive at full speed, especially in the streets of a large town, while steering with the help of one’s mind is absolutely impossible for an ordinary man.
 
“Moving center working for thinking center produces, for example, mechanical reading or mechanical listening, as when a man reads or listens to nothing but words and is utterly unconscious of what he is reading or hearing. This generally happens when attention, that is the direction of the thinking center’s activity, is occupied with something else and when the moving center is trying to replace the absent thinking center; but this very easily becomes a habit, because the thinking center is generally distracted not by useful work, by thought, or by contemplation, but simply by daydreaming or imagination.
 
“‘Imagination’ is one of the principal sources of the wrong work of centers. Each center has its own form of imagination and daydreaming, but as a rule both the moving and emotional centers make use of the thinking center which very readily places itself at their disposal for this purpose, because daydreaming corresponds to its own inclinations. Daydreaming is absolutely the opposite of ‘useful’ mental activity. 'Useful' in this case means activity directed towards a definite aim and undertaken the sake of obtaining a definite result. Daydreaming does not pursue any aim, does not strive after any result. The motive for daydreaming always lies in the emotional or moving center. The actual process is carried on by the moving center, that is, its attempts to avoid the efforts connected with work directed towards a definite aim and going in a definite direction, and partly to the tendency of the emotional and the moving centers to repeat to themselves, to keep alive or to recreate experiences, both pleasant and unpleasant, that have been previously lived through or ‘imagined’. Daydreaming of disagreeable, morbid things is very characteristic of the unbalanced state of the human machine. After all, one can understand daydreaming of a pleasant kind and find logical justification for it. Daydreaming of an unpleasant character is utter absurdity. And yet many people spend nine-tenths of their lives in just such painful daydreams about misfortunes which may overtake them or their family, about illnesses they may contract or sufferings they will have to endure. Imagination and daydreaming are instances of the wrong work of the thinking center.
 
“Observation of the activity of imagination and daydreaming forms a very important part of self-study.”
                                                                                                              (G.I. Gurdjieff; In Search of the Miraculous; p 109)
 
 
SUGGESTION:
We continue our exploration of the experience of seeing and sensing the body.
Through these efforts, what material do I begin to gather about the workings of my centers?


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Posted April 17, 2021 (Saturday Workday)
"We want to 'do,' but in everything we do we are tied and limited by the amount of energy produced by our organism. Every function, every state, every action, every thought, every emotion, requires a certain definite energy, a certain definite substance.
 
"We come to the conclusion that we must 'remember ourselves.' But we can 'remember ourselves' only if we have in us the energy for 'self-remembering.' We can study something, understand or feel something, only if we have the energy for understanding, feeling, or studying.
 
"What then is a man to do when he begins to realize that he has not enough energy to attain the aims he has set before himself?
 
"The answer to this is that every normal man has quite enough energy to begin work on himself. It is only necessary to learn how to save the greater part of the energy we possess for useful work instead of wasting it unproductively.
 
"In beginning to struggle with all these habitual sides of his life a man saves an enormous amount of energy, and with the help of this energy he can easily begin the work of self-study and self-perfection… (p 178)
 
"A great deal of energy is spent on work which is completely unnecessary and harmful in every respect, such as on the activity of unpleasant emotions, on the expression of unpleasant sensations, on worry, on restlessness, on haste, and on a whole series of automatic actions which are completely useless. As many examples as you like can be found of such unnecessary activity. First of all there is the constantly moving flow of thoughts in our mind, which we can neither stop nor control, and which takes up an enormous amount of our energy. Secondly there is the quite unnecessary constant tension of the muscles of our organism. The muscles are tense even when we are doing nothing. As soon as we start to do even a small and insignificant piece of work, a whole system of muscles necessary for the hardest and most strenuous work is immediately set in motion. We pick up a needle from the floor and we spend on this action as much energy as is needed to lift up a man of our own weight. We write a short letter and use as much muscular energy upon it as would suffice to write a bulky volume. But the chief point is that we spend muscular energy continually and at all times, even when we are doing nothing. When we walk the muscles of our shoulders and arms are tensed unnecessarily; when we sit the muscles of our legs, neck, back, and stomach are tensed in an unnecessary way. We even sleep with the muscles of our arms, of our legs, of our face, of the whole of our body tensed, and we do not realize that we spend much more energy on this continual readiness for work we shall never do than on all the real, useful work we do during our life.
 
"Still further we can point to the habit of continually talking with anybody and about anything, or if there is no one else, with ourselves; the habit of indulging in fantasies, in daydreaming; the continual change of mood, feelings, and emotions, and an enormous number of quite useless things which a man considers himself obliged to feel, think, do, or say.
 
"In order to regulate and balance the work of the three centers whose functions constitute our life, it is necessary to learn to economize the energy produced by our organism, not to waste this energy on unnecessary functions, and to save it for that activity which will gradually connect the lower centers with the higher. (p 196)                        
                                                                                                   (G.I. Gurdjieff; In Search of the Miraculous)
 
Suggestion for the day:
Each time I remember, I return to the wish to be in relation with my body, beginning with an awareness of the part of my body that is active in that moment.
Where are the tensions; which are necessary and which are unnecessary for the work being done?
I then expand this awareness to carry out the same inquiry with the rest of my body.

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Posted April 10, 2021
We are trying to understand a state of quietness in which we could become conscious of the reality of life. This would be without expecting something, without wishing for something, and without belief or fear. For this I need to be seated in a right posture, neither too high nor too low, feeling that this place is my own, in this spot and in this body. I am quiet in front of quietness itself.
 
I consider myself. I look at my state and what it allows, and at the same time I look at the different parts of myself. I see they are each occupied differently. The body is passive, heavy, asleep. I sense its weight. The head is restless, dreaming, suggesting ideas and images. I sense its tension. I even sense in which part of the head I am tense. My feeling is indifferent. But in my way of looking, something is in question — myself, what I am. And I see that I cannot answer. In the state I am in, I cannot know. I am not free. I am in question, so I listen. How do I listen?
 
My thought stops for a moment to see better, and the attention that is freed turns to my body. Under this look, my body awakens and becomes sensitive, very sensitive. A contact is established between the body and this thought. And if the thought keeps the fullness of its vision and the body the warmth of its sensitivity, this awakens another part of myself that was beginning to be felt as missing. Their intensity wakes up the feeling. I am touched, and I feel a current is established in me which is like a closed circuit. I feel that I am here, that there is a Presence with an energy which fills this body. And it is the feeling I have for this existence, this Presence, that allows the awareness to last. This feeling is fragile, unstable, but I am helped by the deep need I have for it. I learn what it would be to have a sensitivity that touches everything in me. It is never enough. I do not feel; I am not touched deeply enough.
 
When my thought, my sensation and my feeling are turned in the same direction with the same intensity, there is a change in the state of consciousness that transforms me. This state cannot be easily undone from the outside, but can be demolished in a flash simply by my inner weakness, my passivity. I need a thousand times to experience both this possibility and this fragility together, in order for a new wish, a new will, to appear. I have to know what I wish, what I profoundly wish. I have to know the need of my being.
                                                                                              (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 192)

                                                            
                                                                         










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Posted April 3, 2021
SUGGESTION:
Work each morning in quiet, still conditions...
 
“To be open:
                    …in touch with the breathing
                    …in touch with the body
                    …in touch with the influx of impressions.”
(William Segal; Voices At the Borders of Silence; p 247)
 
Try again later while engaged in some simple, solitary activity.


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Posted Saturday April 2, 2021
How do I understand the effort...the experience...of sensing?
 
"To be open:
                        ...in touch with the breathing
                        ...in touch with the body
                        ...in touch with the influx of impressions."
(William Segal; Voices At the Borders of Silence; p 247)
 

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Posted March 28, 2021
TASK:
When eating, sense your hands.
 
Revisit 'First Initiation' reading and others from the folders we're making.


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Posted March 21, 2021
What new questions about sensing and seeing have arisen from your work and from recent readings you’ve found on your own or that had been sent out to the group? Decide on a way to work with one or more of them at a practical level. Bring your work to Thursday’s meeting.


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Posted Saturday, March 20, 2021
Sensation is the essential experience on the road to consciousness. I need to understand what it would be to have a conscious sensation.
 
We wish to know who we are. My body…knows nothing of my wish and lives a life of its own. Nevertheless, it could participate in the process of knowing. It is the receptacle, the vehicle for the energy in us. If we look within ourselves, we see that the energy is concentrated either in the head or in the solar plexus. Perhaps there is a little in the spine, but nothing in comparison with the other centers. And there is nothing in the lower part of the body. It is as though the body had no real importance. Yet, it is only in and through the body that the energy can act…
 
The position of the body is very important. My automatic posture holds back the energy and conditions my thinking and feeling. I need to see this, to live it, so that a conscious suffering appears which calls for a new posture, a conscious posture that, like an electromagnetic field, allows the action of this energy on the body. Its position must therefore be precise, and be maintained by a close and continual cooperation between my thinking, my feeling and my body. I need to feel at ease, with a sense of well-being and stability. Then the position itself can allow the mind to come to a state of total availability, naturally becoming empty of agitated thoughts. In the right posture, all my centers come together and are related. I find a balance, an order in which my ordinary "I” is no longer the master but finds its place. The thought is freer and also my feeling, which now is purer, less avid. It respects something…
                                                                                     (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; excerpted from p 213)

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Posted March 14, 2021
“…To ponder the significance and meaning of being alive.
 
“When I enter into this questioning, I enter into a mystery. It is not to affirm myself as a personage, or to profess some extraordinary understanding, but to enter into the mystery of who I am. And in order to enter into this process by which I become more interiorized, I see the need to put aside all of the old, habitual methods and crutches that I tend to lean on. And for that I need to be still – in all the parts, not just in the head, but also in the body and in the feeling. It is only then that I can truly appreciate and acknowledge Gurdjieff’s essential directive, that “When I am not collected, I am simply a piece of meat.” I need to be reminded of this fact, not just once or even occasionally, but as often as I forget, because nothing is possible without my being collected. So I see that I need an attention that isn’t taken, isn’t captured, isn’t fragmented – an attention that is free. And of course, I need to see all the ways in which I allow the attention to be taken.
 
“So instead of resorting to some trick or leaning on some tired old hand-me-down axiom of the spiritual endeavor, I take in the impression of myself here now, in this place, in this moment, without comment, as impartially as I am able. This is the threshold, if I am to come to something real. I must begin to question all of my habits. But first, to see them. I have nothing to prove, nothing to achieve; rather I allow this burden of my conditioning to ease, to lighten. I need to be emptied of me and mine, and for that I need to be still, not allowing this attention to be taken and taken too far.
 
“And so, in a miniscule way, there is already a new movement in me – a movement towards unity. The body “materializes” without my “doing,” not only because there is space but primarily because there is someone there to observe it. It begins to take its place, almost tangibly. The mind has quietened, not totally, but it is quieter. And it is linked to the body as it registers the structure and this growing sense of verticality.
 
“But nothing is possible without a sense of tranquility. I’m aware now that the feeling is drawn to this order, is drawn to this meeting between the head and the body. I’m aware, then, of another dimension to my being. I’m aware of this vertical current, this evidence of something higher, something from a higher part of the mind, as Meister Eckhart has expressed it. And I begin to sense that I’m here to be the link between this current of life and this other, unknown vertical dimension. I need to respect that, and respect that in my neighbor. Even now, I sense that I am being helped, supported, because of the presence of the others who are joined with me in this exploration.
 
“And so, in re-initiating this process, I see anew that this is a work, not for me or mine, but for Presence – the presence of the higher. And I am here to enable that to appear, and to serve it.
 
“If I have remained with this wish, I begin to see that without this new alignment between the head, the body and the feeling, these higher energies are denied to me. They don’t enter, they can’t enter, into an unconscious piece of meat. I need to be collected in order to serve this possibility, in order to be available to this. I return again and again to this centering action of the attention. And I need to be emptied of me and mine, emptied of all acquisitiveness. So in moments, I have this taste, this fleeting taste of an attention that is free, an attention that is able to penetrate and reach the essence. And so I see the need to keep this inquiry open, to respect the mystery of who I am. I am never done with it. It is really only on such a basis that I can make any serious exploration.”
                                                                                                                (Frank Sinclair; Of the Life Aligned; pp. xiv-xv)

TASK:
When quiet, relaxed, I take a decision to work with sensing the body during several simple activities of at least 10” that I anticipate engaging in. Each time I begin with the wish to approach sensing as a taking in of impressions of myself here now…like a look from Above in which I am seen.


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Posted March 7, 2021
Today we have nothing but the illusion of what we are. We think too highly of ourselves. In order to respect myself, I have to recognize a part in myself which is above the other parts, and my attitude toward this part should bear witness to the respect that I have for it. In this way I shall respect myself. And my relations with others will be governed by the same respect.
 
You must understand that all the other measures – talent, education, culture, genius – are changing measures, measures of detail. The only exact measure, the only unchanging, objective real measure is the measure of inner vision. I see – I see myself – by this you have measured. With one higher real part, you have measured another, lower part, also real. And this measure, defining by itself the role of each part, will lead you to respect for yourself.
                                                                                                                                                (Jeanne de Salzmann; excerpt from “First Initiation”; 1941)
 

QUESTION:
What is the connection between seeing and sensing?

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Posted February 28, 2021
SUGGESTION:
To work with a question, an aim, an interest that is resonating with me from my practical work with recent readings and exchanges. In light of the reading below and the new questions it brings in relation to attention, what possibilities arise for a continued exploration of myself?
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Until my attention is divided, there is no work. As long as I’m in my ego, as long as I think just following one idea or applying one idea to myself is work, is practice, nothing can come. Now, very often, that is how I begin to work. And then at a certain point the attention divides...at a certain point I feel a relaxation.
 
I begin to be aware of a current, a movement of relaxation. Now, do you suddenly switch to putting all your attention on the relaxation? That wouldn’t be consciousness. To be aware, partly the tension attracts my attention and partly I feel myself relaxing...
 
Then I can really say I’m between. It’s not a thought, not something of an image —the attention is divided. It’s so brief, it’s so insecure, I can hardly say that I experience it. Then I experience it again, maybe. Maybe another moment of relaxation, where partly the attention is taken by this current towards relaxation, towards going down in myself, but some of the attention remains behind on the tension. And so, again, for a moment I’m between...
 
Sometimes in movements you feel in between. You know something with the head a little bit and with the leg a little bit and somehow when both are going you feel insecure. You feel the attention divided. It’s the same thing...
 
One knows that this situation with the attention divided is quite a different situation than when the attention is distracted... When my attention is divided, there’s a sort of balance. And there’s a place in between, but it’s not a place that’s secure, that’s permanent.
 
To be attentive, I have to free my attention. What a work that is. My attention clings to things... But work is a question of freeing my attention again and again from what it is sitting on and bringing it back to myself.
 
What is that kind of attention which, through becoming connected with myself, has a sort of organic knowledge and knows better than my ordinary mind how to deal with these things? That’s what we mean by in search of the miraculous. We mean in search of this kind of attention... This kind of attention is my possibility, my right. And it knows much better than we do, than I do, in all sorts of ways.
                                                         (John Pentland; Exchanges Within: Questions from Everyday Life; excerpts from pp 279–280, 328 & 378)

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Posted February 21, 2021
SUGGESTION:
What in particular resonates with me from all that is proposed in this week’s reading from Michel de Salzmann? What new questions about learning to see myself arise in light of what is said regarding attention, responsibility, the possibilities inherent in not knowing...?
 
[Refer back to ‘First Initiation’ and other readings in the folders we’re making of our 2021 work together. Continue to look for new readings that in some way support the questions that have come up, that may even suggest a possible way of working with them, and add them to your folder. 
Bring your Work to Thursday’s meeting.]

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Posted February 20, 2021
Saturday Workday:
SUGGESTION
We begin with a wish to remain in question over what it is to bring a sense of ceremony, a sense of the sacred, to the mundane work we will engage in during our two-hour practical work period.
 
“…While playing our part, while being engaged without cheating in the situation that calls us, can we at the same time neither affirm nor deny, neither resist nor follow, assume that we neither know nor don’t know, that we are able or unable? Can we be acutely present to what is, without judgment or indifference, without any solution or escape? It would mean being aware on all fronts, renouncing the known for the unknown, withstanding the inevitable principle of repetition, staying still within our movement.”  (Michel de Salzmann)

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Posted February 21, 2021
​SUGGESTION:
What in particular resonates with me from all that is proposed in this week’s reading from Michel de Salzmann? What new questions about learning to see myself arise in light of what is said regarding attention, responsibility, the possibilities inherent in not knowing...?

[Refer back to ‘First Initiation’ and other readings in the folders we’re making of our 2021 work together. Continue to look for new readings that in some way support the questions that have come up, that may even suggest a possible way of working with them, and add them to your folder. 
Bring your Work to Thursday’s meeting.]

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Posted February 18, 2021
THE ACT OF QUESTIONING
"We have, all of us, something in common..."

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Posted February 14, 2021
SUGGESTION:
I bring into question some belief I hold about how I am, about what I ‘know’ of myself.
 
“All I wish to suggest at present is that you should try to look at things and phenomena around you, and especially yourselves, from a point of view and an angle that would perhaps be different from what is usual or natural to you.”      (G.I. Gurdjieff; Views From the Real World; p 41)
 


FURTHER READING from Tuesday Reading Group:
“This second descent of the Most High Commission to that planet was due to the fact that in spite of the measures they had taken, of which I have told you, there had not yet crystallized in the Reasons of the majority of its sacred members a complete assurance of the impossibility of any undesirable surprise in the future, and they now wished to verify on the spot the results of those measures.
 
“It was just during this second descent that the Most High Commission decided in any event, if only for the sake of their own reassurance, to actualize certain further special measures, among which was also that measure, the consequences of which have not only gradually turned into a stupendous terror for the three-brained beings themselves who arise on this ill-fated planet, but have even become, so to say, a malignant sore for the whole of the great Universe.
 
“You must know that by the time of this second descent of the Most High Commission, there had already gradually been engendered in them—as is proper to three-brained beings—what is called ‘mechanical instinct.’
 
“The sacred members of this Most High Commission then reasoned that if the said mechanical instinct in these biped three-brained beings of that planet should develop towards the attainment of Objective Reason—as usually occurs everywhere among three-brained beings—then it might quite possibly happen that they would prematurely comprehend the real cause of their arising and existence and make a great deal of trouble; it might happen that having understood the reason for their arising, namely, that by their existence they should maintain the detached fragments of their planet, and being convinced of this their slavery to circumstances utterly foreign to them, they would be unwilling to continue their existence and would on principle destroy themselves.
 
“So, my boy, in view of this the Most High Commission then decided among other things provisionally to implant into the common presences of the three-brained beings there a special organ with a property such that, first, they should perceive reality topsy-turvy and, secondly, that every repeated impression from outside should crystallize in them data which would engender factors for evoking in them sensations of ‘pleasure’ and ‘enjoyment.’
 
“And then, in fact, with the help of the Chief-Common-Universal-Arch-Chemist-Physicist Angel Looisos, who was also among the members of this Most High Commission, they caused to grow in the three-brained beings there, in a special way, at the base of their spinal column, at the root of their tail—which they also, at that time, still had, and which part of their common presences furthermore still had its normal exterior expressing the, so to say, ‘fullness-of-its-inner-significance’—a ‘something’ which assisted the arising of the said properties in them.
 
“And this ‘something’ they then first called the ‘organ Kundabuffer.’
 
“Having made this organ grow in the presences of the three-brained beings and having seen that it would work, the Most High Commission consisting of Sacred Individuals headed by the Archangel Sakaki, reassured and with good consciences, returned to the Center, while there, on the planet Earth which has taken your fancy, the action of this astonishing and exceedingly ingenious invention began from the first day to develop, and developed, as the wise Mullah Nassr Eddin would say—’like a Jericho-trumpet-in-crescendo.’
                                                                      (Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson: Chapter 10, Why "Men" Are Not Men; pp 87-89)
 
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Posted February 7, 2021
'To awake,' 'to die,' 'to be born'
"There is a book of aphorisms..."

​SUGGESTION
With the addition of the passage above we continue to explore the questions that come up for us related to what Mme de Salzmann calls “the First Initiation of man into self-knowledge”…learning to see things in ourselves that we’ve never seen before, to see them actually.
 
Look for reading(s) that in some way speak to these question(s) and that may even suggest a possible way of working with them. Revisit the first two readings for 2021 as well as any others that you’ve added to your folder.

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Posted for Saturday Workday, February 6
Working with our lies
But how can we discover how we really are when ego and reactions quickly move in to deny the truth of it? Gurdjieff advised us to find ways to go against our habits, suggesting that we intentionally interfere with our automatic pilot by inventing alarm clocks to disturb our sleep. Or that we purposefully place ourselves in situations which force us to be aware of ourselves no matter what happens. Such efforts can be as simple as assuming an uncomfortable physical position and staying in it, or as difficult as finding a new relationship with someone whom we can’t stand, whose manifestations we can’t bear.
 
One well-known task he gave his students was to “like what ‘It’ does not like.” This immediately provoked a separation between my comfortable go-with-the-flow persona and my determination to experience the present moment. When I accept to go against what’s automatic in myself by placing a small crowbar in the constantly turning wheel of my mechanical habits of thinking, feeling or doing, I know I’ll be forced to make an effort. As soon as I go against my usual comfortable adaptations, and do what ‘It’ doesn’t want to do, a whole series of reactions appear, revealing all my stories and excuses.
                                                                           (Patty De Llosa; The Practice of Presence; pp. 15 - 16)

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Posted January 28, 2021
"I have already said before that sacrifice is necessary," said G. "Without sacrifice nothing can be attained. But if there is anything in the world that people do not understand it is the idea of sacrifice. They think they have to sacrifice something that they have. For example, I once said that they must sacrifice 'faith,' 'tranquility,' 'health.' They understand this literally. But then the point is that they have not got either faith, or tranquility, or health. All these words must be taken in quotation marks. In actual fact they have to sacrifice only what they imagine they have and which in reality they do not have. They must sacrifice their fantasies. But this is difficult for them, very difficult. It is much easier to sacrifice real things.
 
"Another thing that people must sacrifice is their suffering. It is very difficult also to sacrifice one's suffering. A man will renounce any pleasures you like but he will not give up his suffering. Man is made in such a way that he is never so much attached to anything as he is to his suffering. And it is necessary to be free from suffering. No one who is not free from suffering, who has not sacrificed his suffering, can work. Later on a great deal must be said about suffering. Nothing can be attained without suffering but at the same time one must begin by sacrificing suffering. Now, decipher what this means."
                                                                                (G.I. Gurdjieff, In Search of the Miraculous; p 274)
 
SUGGESTION
Given the reading above and exchange from Thursday evening’s meeting, what question(s) come up when seen in the light of this passage below from ‘First Initiation?’
Find a reading that in some way speaks to these question(s) and a possible way to work with them. Add the reading to our on-going notebook.
 
“You must understand that all the other measures – talent, education, culture, genius – are changing measures, measures of detail. The only exact measure, the only unchanging, objective real measure is the measure of inner vision. I see – I see myself – by this you have measured. With one higher real part, you have measured another, lower part, also real. And this measure, defining by itself the role of each part, will lead you to respect for yourself.
 
“But you will see that it is not easy. And it is not cheap. You must pay dearly. For bad payers, lazy people, parasites, no hope. You must pay, pay a lot, and pay immediately, pay in advance. Pay with yourself. [With sincere efforts, wholeheartedly, without expectations.] The more you are prepared to pay without economizing, without cheating, without any falsification, the more you will receive. And from that time on you will become acquainted with your nature. And you will see all the tricks, all the dishonesties that your nature resorts to in order to avoid paying hard cash. Because you have to pay with your ready-made theories, with your rooted convictions, with your prejudices, your conventions, your “I like” and “I don’t like.” Without bargaining, honestly, without pretending. Trying “sincerely” to see as you offer your counterfeit money.”

Posted January 14, 2021
First Initiation

Suggestion: Print out the reading if you can; read it each day under quiet conditions.
Questions: What parts of me are touched by this reading? My feeling, my thinking, my body...
                 What questions begin to arise?


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                                   2020
                          Note that some long readings have their own hyperlink 
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Posted December 13, 2020
In reply to a question about the second food, air, Gurdjieff said:
 
“There are two parts to air, evolving and involving. Only the involving part can vivify the “I.” At present this involving part serves only for general cosmic purposes. Only when you shall have in yourselves a conscious wish will you be able to assimilate this, for you, good part of air, which comes from the prime source.
 
“The secret of being able to assimilate the involving part of air is to try to realize your own significance and the significance of those around you. You are mortal, and some day will die. He on whom your attention rests is your neighbor; he also will die. Both of you are nonentities. At present, most of your suffering is “suffering in vain”; it comes from feelings of anger, jealousy and resentment toward others. If you acquire data always to realize the inevitability of their death and your own death, you will have a feeling of pity for others, and be just toward them, since their manifestations which displease you are only because you or someone has stepped on their corns, or because your own corns are sensitive. At present you cannot see this. Try to put yourself in the position of others – they have the same significance as you, they suffer as you do, and like you, they will die.
 
“Only if you always try to sense this significance until it becomes a habit whenever your attention rests on anyone, only then will you be able to assimilate the good part of air and have a real “I.”
 
“Every man has wants and desires which are dear to him, and which he will lose at death. From realizing the significance of your neighbor when your attention rests on him, that he will die, pity for him and compassion toward him will arise in you, and finally you will love him.
 
“By doing this constantly, real faith, conscious faith, will arise in some part of you and spread to other parts, and you will have the possibility of knowing real happiness, because from this faith objective hope will arise – hope of a basis for continuation.” 
                                                                             (Teachings of Gurdjieff: The Journal of a Pupil; C.S. Nott; pp. 114-115)
 

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Posted December 10, 2020
Our body, for example, is not truly involved in self-remembering. I always ignore the experience of my body on the earth, belonging to the earth, and go off into speculations or emotions that deprive me of all possibility of being unified, of being whole. This can be seen at each instant. Either my energy is concentrated in my thought - in judging, approving, disapproving, looking for arguments…or I am taken by my emotional reactions - in opposing, being afraid, envying, wishing to dominate. In every case, my body is isolated, apart. It tries to safeguard its appetites, all the time paying dearly for the demands of the other parts. Here there is no Being, only parts of Being. When I feel a Presence in me, my body becomes secondary, fades away as if it did not exist, because I recognize a life - something alive - coming from a much higher level than my body. I perceive this Presence as a whole, which has its own existence and which, in a certain way, does not need my body. At the same time, this life is the life of my body. This real life is active and, in submitting, my body is passive.        
                                                                                                                 (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 287)
 
SUGGESTED TASK:
As I begin to see a reaction in myself, can I make an internal stop and see how fragmented I am at the moment? At the same time, can I begin to include an awareness of myself in this situation?   What do I notice in this process? 
 
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Posted December 8, 2020
When I awaken in life by chance, I see that I am not prepared. My engagement is not by conscious choice and my attention is scattered. In order for me to be present, there must be a certain wish or will, a certain quality, that does not come from my ordinary person. My effort has to be made with something beyond my ordinary means, beyond my ordinary “I.”
 
For this I have to take a decision. I decide to remember myself and to remain related in two directions at a predetermined moment in a specific circumstance. Usually, my moments of work are isolated and unconnected. When I remember myself alone in the quiet, I go away from what I am in life. I refuse what I am in life and cannot know it. Then, when I try in life, I have nothing prepared in advance, nothing on which my effort can be based. My effort is therefore weak, slack. So I need to connect the moments when I work in the quiet with the moments of work in life. I need to connect them consciously by a decision. Something of what I experience in life must enter my work apart, and something of my work apart must come into my work in life. In my work in the quiet, I try to find again the impression of what I am in life, feeling also the resistance. If I am then able to project again the impression of both aspects of myself on a future moment of work, my decision to be present can be voluntary. The relation accepted ahead of time can be made at the desired moment, provided my effort is clear. But taking a decision to work is very difficult because the decision has to touch these two aspects of myself at the same time. My capacity reflects my limited power to do.
 
Our entire Presence must be here at the moment of this decision, including our ordinary “I.”
                                                                                                                    (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p. 92)
 
SUGGESTION:
I take as an aim to ‘bear one unpleasant manifestation of one person’ that I know I will come in contact with each day. Referring back to last week’s reading as well as the one above, what preparation can I try in order to “connect moments when I work in the quiet with the moments of work in life?”

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Posted December 5, 2020
…My attention is my own and fundamental answer to my existence. It is both my response and what I can be responsible for. An opening as well as an engagement, it is my becoming present to what is, it is hic et nunc my participating in the actuality of being. Arising as a basic act of knowing through actual being, my attention is simultaneously awakening to myself and to the world. All the rest, I mean all the other responses which are formal, all my acting out, all my outward manifestations proceed, so to say, by themselves, depending in their quality on the quality of my attention…
 
Paradoxically, this basic act of knowing, which is attention, is only actualized when we don’t know – that is, when there is a question. Its level and, so to say, its degree of ‘totalization’ are proportional to our questioning. You have surely noticed that when a question is vital – when it takes us in the gut, as you say – it suspends all unnecessary movements, emotional and physical as well as mental. It clears the way for real awareness and sensitivity, which are components of my total power of attention. It is only between my not knowing and my urge to know that I find myself present, mobilized, open, new – that is to say, attentive.
 
Attention in its active form is therefore inseparable from interrogation; it is essentially, in its purity, an act of questioning. This act is the privilege of our human existence. An animal contents itself with being. The responsibility of man is to question himself on the meaning of his being…
                                   (Michel de Salzmann; excerpted from “Man’s Ever New and Eternal Challenge” in On the Way to Self Knowledge; pp 54-60)
 
 
SUGGESTION FOR THE DAY:
I continually return to the question, “What is it to relax inside,” with guidance from the passage below:
 
…While playing our part, while being engaged without cheating in the situation that calls us, can we at the same time neither affirm nor deny, neither resist nor follow, assume that we neither know nor don’t know, that we are able or unable? Can we be acutely present to what is, without judgment or indifference, without any solution or escape? It would mean being aware on all fronts, renouncing the known for the unknown, withstanding the inevitable principle of repetition, staying still within our movement. (ibid)
 

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Posted December 3, 2020
However, self-observation by itself is not sufficient for awakening. It is only a preliminary step requiring a certain degree of awakening, but the awakening remains in a certain sense passive - man has hardly emerged from sleep before he falls back into it.
 
It is only in beginning to “remember himself” that a man really begins to awaken: in trying to rediscover, collect, and live what, behind these personages, he feels to be more truly himself. This effort brings an “impression of oneself” with a special “taste” which cannot be mistaken - when a man experiences it, he begins to be less imposed upon by his personality.
 
It is only in beginning “to remember himself” that a man can truly awaken. It is only with a real and long enough awakening that a man becomes present to himself. And it is only with “presence to himself” that a man begins to live like a man.  
                                                                                    (Jean Vaysse , Toward Awakening, p. 155-56)

Task:
As I begin to see a reaction in myself, can I make an internal stop and see how fragmented I am at the moment? At the same time, can I begin to include an awareness of myself in this situation?   What do I notice in this process? 


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Posted December 1, 2020
Question: How can we gain attention?
G: There is no attention in people. You must aim to acquire this. Self-observation is only possible after acquiring attention. Start on small things.
 
Question: What small things can we start on? What should we do?
G: Your nervous and restless movements make everyone know, consciously or unconsciously, that you have no authority and are a booby. With these restless movements you cannot be anything. The first thing for you to do is to stop these movements. Make this your aim, your God. Even get your family to help you. Only after this, you can perhaps gain attention. This is an example of doing.
 
Another example—an aspiring pianist can never learn except little by little. If you wish to play melodies without first practicing, you can never play real melodies. The melodies you will play will be cacophonous and will make people suffer and hate you. It is the same with psychological ideas: to gain anything, long practice is necessary.
 
Try to accomplish very small things first. If at first you aim at big things you will never be anything. And your manifestations will act like cacophonous melodies and cause people to hate you.
 
Question: What must I do?
G: There are two kinds of doing—automatic doing, and doing according to aim. Take a small thing which you now are not able to do, and make this your aim, your God. Let nothing interfere. Only aim at this. Then, if you succeed in doing this, I will be able to give you a greater task. Now you have an appetite to do things too big for you. This is an abnormal appetite. You can never do these things, and this appetite keeps you from doing the small things you might do. Destroy this appetite, forget big things. Make the breaking of a small habit your aim.
 
Question: Would a good task be to endure the manifestations of others?
G: To endure the manifestations of others is a big thing. The last thing for a man. Only a perfect man can do this. Start by making your aim or your God the ability to bear one manifestation of one person that you cannot now endure without nervousness. If you "wish," you "can." Without "wishing," you never "can." Wish is the most powerful thing in the world. With conscious wish everything comes.
 
(G.I. Gurdjieff; Views From the Real World; p 90)
 
 
SUGGESTION (from the same reading above):
“Sit for a period of [time] alone. Make all your muscles relaxed. Allow your associations to proceed but do not be absorbed by them. Only [afterwards] when everything in you is quiet, make your decision about your aim. Take a piece of paper and write your aim on it. Make this paper your God. Everything else is nothing. Take it out of your pocket and read it constantly, every day.”
 

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Posted November 22, 2020
It is important to work now. Now is the only possibility, not later. To realize this possibility something is required from you.
 
It is a moment when the ideas are not enough. There is a force, a higher one; it is in us, but can have no action as long as our state does not allow it—as long as our centres are not related. At that stage the ideas do not cooperate, one has to feel the inner inadequacy, be touched, suffer from it and give all one's attention to this inner relation which will open the door to the higher energy.
                                                                                                                  (Jeanne de Salzmann; Heart Without Measure; p.131)
  
TASK SUGGESTION: 
As soon I notice that I have become identified with someone or something, with a gentle attitude, let go of it.
How do I work with this suggestion?
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Posted November 15, 2020
It is necessary to observe yourself differently than you do in ordinary life. It is necessary to have a different attitude, not the attitude you had till now. You know where your habitual attitudes have led you till now...  You want knowledge, but what you have had until today was not knowledge. It was only mechanical collecting of information. It is knowledge not in you but outside you. It has no value…
 
To new things one must learn to have new attitudes. You see, now everybody is listening in his own way, but a way corresponding to his inner posture. For example, "Starosta" listens with his mind, and you with your feeling; and if all of you were asked to repeat, everyone would repeat in his own way in accordance with his inner state of the moment...
 
And all this is because only one center is working—for instance, either mind or feeling. Yet you must learn to listen in a new way. The knowledge you have had up to today is the knowledge of one center - knowledge without understanding. Are there many things you know and at the same time understand? For instance, you know what electricity is, but do you understand it as clearly as you understand that twice two makes four? The latter you understand so clearly that no one can prove to you the contrary; but with electricity it is different. Today it is explained to you in one way - you believe it. Tomorrow you will be given a different explanation - you will also believe that. But understanding is perception not by one but by not less than two centers… It is necessary that everything you listen to here, everything you talk about among yourselves elsewhere, should be said or listened to not with one center but with two. Otherwise there will be no right result either for me or for you. For you it will be as before, a mere accumulation of new information.
                                                                                                      (G.I. Gurdjieff; Views From the Real World; excerpts from pp 167-170)
 
 
TASK SUGGESTION:
I take as an aim to observe myself as I listen to another speak.
What is there to see in each of my centers as I listen?
What allows me to see my attitude?

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Posted November 15, 2020
So this is a very deep work. And I try to listen wordlessly. I’m not here to justify my subjectivity, and why I want this and don’t like that. Because that is done mechanically. The automaton affirms itself at every turn, and to each affirmation I blindly say “I, I, I.” And we must see this slavery, we must see this betrayal of the higher through our stupidity, our arrogance, our sleep. I must trust the silence and I must stand unknowing in that presence. I accept to be emptied. A friend in Toronto reminded me that his friend, the Dalai Lama, had said to him, ”Emptiness is consciousness.” I need to open myself to this emptiness. And there come these moments when, in silence, I can open to energies in me that have not yet taken a form – of a dream, or egoism.
                                                                                                                                           (Frank Sinclair; Opening to the Real; p 91)
 
Question:
How to I experience or understand this idea of emptiness that Frank Sinclair mentions? 

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Posted November 8, 2020
When our machine runs better we are less apt to err. What we study here is fundamentally the misuse of functions, the wrong functioning of centers – one center taking what belongs to another and mixing energies. Here the main instrument is our head, practical head. When I have to speak about something of business, where am I? If I sense I am not really in my head, or if I am agitated, I will not use the right instrument. I must find another state of myself where I know what I am going to speak about; my material is clear. Then I can be more impartial. My head is generally a blind slave to the lower range of my emotions – from that all my dreams arise. It is also a slave to my body. Try to think when under a cold shower – or after a large meal.
 
When I am by myself and have a tendency to dream – wake up and study – see you are injuring your head. When your head appears to refuse, it is not your head at all – your emotions block your head. But I always excuse my emotions. When I am met by refusal – then I exercise my wish to work, my wish to be, putting one thing in front of the other.
                                                                                   (Henriette Lannes; Inside a Question; p 16)
 
Suggestion:
During the meeting this week, please be prepared to share what you tried during the week regarding Henriette Lannes’ statement from this week’s reading:
“When I am met with refusal - then I exercise my wish to work.”
Can I begin to see a shift in the workings of my centers? What do I experience?

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Posted November 8, 2020
Exchange in a Group
"The group, the fact that we are together, creates a possibility of consciousness. What we engage, what we give, is more important than what we wish to take. Each time the possibility is renewed, we have the opportunity to engage our attention and to serve. This possibility is something great that we must strive to maintain. We have to look at it as precious, as sacred."
                                                                         (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 113)
 
SUGGESTION:
This is an excerpt from a section in The Reality of Being (pp 113-119) entitled "Exchange in a Group." For those who don’t have the book, these pages have been posted above. 
​
Read. Ponder. 
What does it mean to 'bring my work' to a meeting?

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Posted November 2, 2020
Seeking a balance between tension and relaxation opens me to the struggle with the ordinary “I.” When I am relaxed and have a sensation of all of myself, I am not separated from my inner being. I am one…
 
This is the struggle to be what I am, a struggle between the subjective “I” incarnate in my tensions and the unknown life in me… My entire life is shaped by this struggle, and I must understand it if I wish this life to be conscious.
                                                                                                                       (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 66)
 
TASK:
When actively engaged I notice the muscles I’m using, the bodily tensions I’m experiencing, and I try to use only the amount of force needed in the part of the body being active while letting go in the rest of the body of all that is not necessary.
 

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Posted October 31, 2020
We need to find a balance between tension and letting go. I do not succeed in knowing myself because I try to know myself as immobile, static. But I am energy that is constantly moving, either toward the inside or toward the outside. The movements come from my different centers. When the movements go toward the outside, the relation with the inside is broken and there is no inner support, no center of gravity. There is tension that seems like a wall. When the movements go toward the inside, the tension disappears but makes room for a slackness that very often ends up in passivity.
 
I do not know how to engage outside, and I do not know how to live inside. I do not know the laws of life. The engagement and return of my energy—the tensing and letting go—take place without sense, order or verification. There is no balance between them and no aim. Inside, my attention, my will, is always passive. At the same time, my body and my functions are active. So long as this relation remains as it is—inwardly passive, outwardly active—no new possibility will appear. I have to feel the necessity to change this relation so that my body and my functions accept a state of voluntary passivity. This can take place only if I actively situate the center of gravity of my attention, the voluntary attention of my whole Presence, the echo of “I.”
                                                                                                                            (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 138)
 
TASK:
When actively engaged I notice the muscles I’m using, the bodily tensions I’m experiencing, and I try to use only the amount of force needed in the part of the body being active while letting go in the rest of the body of all that is not necessary.

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 Posted October 29, 2020
"Knowledge is one thing, understanding is another thing…
 
"Knowledge by itself does not give understanding. Nor is understanding increased by an increase of knowledge alone. Understanding depends upon the relation of knowledge to being. Understanding is the resultant of knowledge and being. And knowledge and being must not diverge too far, otherwise understanding will prove to be far removed from either. At the same time the relation of knowledge to being does not change with a mere growth of knowledge. It changes only when being grows simultaneously with knowledge. In other words, understanding grows only with the growth of being.
 
"In ordinary thinking, people do not distinguish understanding from knowledge. They think that greater understanding depends on greater knowledge. Therefore they accumulate knowledge, or that which they call knowledge, but they do not know how to accumulate understanding and do not bother about it.
 
"And yet a person accustomed to self-observation knows for certain that at different periods of his life he has understood one and the same idea, one and the same thought, in totally different ways. It often seems strange to him that he could have understood so wrongly that which, in his opinion, he now understands rightly. And he realizes, at the same time, that his knowledge has not changed, and that he knew as much about the given subject before as he knows now. What, then, has changed? His being has changed. And once being has changed understanding must change also.
 
"The difference between knowledge and understanding becomes clear when we realize that knowledge may be the function of one center. Understanding, however, is the function of three centers. Thus the thinking apparatus may know something. But understanding appears only when a man feels and senses what is connected with it.
 
"We have spoken earlier about mechanicalness. A man cannot say that he understands the idea of mechanicalness if he only knows about it with his mind. He must feel it with his whole mass, with his whole being; then he will understand it.
                                                                                                                        (G.I. Gurdjieff; In Search of the Miraculous; p 67)
 
 
QUESTION:
How do I experience the difference between mechanicalness and an understanding in myself? 

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Posted October 27, 2020
How can one awaken? How can one escape this sleep? These questions are the most important, the most vital that can ever confront a man... When a man understands that he does not remember himself and that to remember himself means to awaken to some extent, and when at the same time he sees by experience how difficult it is to remember himself, he will understand that he cannot awaken simply by having the desire to do so.      p 143
 
 
If liberation is possible it is possible only as a result of great Labor and great efforts and, above all, of conscious efforts towards a definite aim.     p 30
                                                                                            (G.I. Gurdjieff; In Search of the Miraculous)
 
QUESTION:
In a moment of return, what role does wish/aim/desire play in leading me to make an effort?
 

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Posted October 22, 2020
The emotional center becomes capable of real feeling only when a stable presence, relatively independent of the surrounding circumstances, has been developed. This presence is built up around a feeling of self which animates it and gives to its life at every moment a sense of being what it is. Schematically, we may say that emotions belong to personality and feelings to the real being - I. The feeling of self which accompanies awakening to oneself is the first real feeling that a man can have; further evolution of the emotional center, going hand in hand with the attainment of a real I, approaches progressively the level of refinement of the higher emotional center, makes contact with it and finally merges with it. Not until this level is reached do the great “objective” feelings of Faith, Hope and Love become possible for man.
                                                                                                     (Jean Vaysse; Toward Awakening; p 84) 

Task:
How do I experience the difference between a state of presence in myself and the experience of reactions and identifications in life circumstances?
 
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Posted October 20, 2020
What is difficult to understand is that without conscious effort nothing is possible. Conscious effort is related to higher nature. My lower nature alone cannot lead me to consciousness. It is blind. But when I wake up and I feel that I belong to a higher world, this is only part of conscious effort. I become truly conscious only when I open to all of my possibilities, higher and lower.
                                                                                                                    (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 27*)
 
For me more and more, the real sense of ‘I’ results from the meeting of forces in oneself. It doesn’t mean a lessening of possibilities. No. Possibilities are given from above and possibilities are given from below. What else do you want?
                                                                                                                     (Michel de Salzmann, Guerneville, Ca**)
 
 
QUESTION FOR TUESDAY EXCHANGE:
What is it to make a conscious effort?
 
* The full reading from which this excerpt is drawn can be found on our website under the Members tab
** From the booklet “Community: The Necessary Intermediary Between Heaven & Earth,” given out at the 2020 January 13th Celebration  
 

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Posted October 17, 2020
Question: What is it to make a conscious effort?
A Conscious Effort (full reading)

Excerpts:
What is difficult to understand is that without conscious effort nothing is possible. Conscious effort is related to higher nature. My lower nature alone cannot lead me to consciousness. It is blind. But when I wake up and I feel that I belong to a higher world, this is only part of conscious effort. I become truly conscious only when I open to all of my possibilities, higher and lower.
                                                                                                                                    (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 27)
 
For me more and more, the real sense of ‘I’ results from the meeting of forces in oneself. It doesn’t mean a lessening of possibilities. No. Possibilities are given from above and possibilities are given from below. What else do you want?
                                                                                                                                    (Michel de Salzmann, Guerneville, Ca)
 
 

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Posted October 11, 2020
"This is precisely what people do not understand. Therefore their aim must be the development of the activity of the emotional center. The emotional center is an apparatus much more subtle than the intellectual center, particularly if we take into consideration the fact that in the whole of the intellectual center the only part that works is the formatory apparatus and that many things are quite inaccessible to the intellectual center. If anyone desires to know and to understand more than he actually knows and understands, he must remember that this new knowledge and this new understanding will come through the emotional center and not through the intellectual center."
                                                                                                                                       (G.I. Gurdjieff; In Search of the Miraculous; p 235)
 
 
Task Suggestion:
In an effort to bring attention to my emotional center I will experiment with the following :
When I find myself in the midst of a leak by the way of expressing a negative emotion... I will sense, come back to a presence inside myself. Can I see and accept myself as I am and yet allow the leaks to transform?  Can I face myself as I am? 
 
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We do not give enough importance to the moment of awaking, the moment we see ourselves as we are in our sleep. We believe that to awake is to enter into an entirely different life, which will have nothing in common with the one we lead. But, in fact, awaking means, above all, to awake to ourselves as we are, to see and feel the sleep, the identification. The moment itself when we emerge and see the identification is the only moment from which an impetus could come. Only then do I have a chance to wake up. Afterward, in the next instant, I justify, I lie. During the moment of the impression, I realize that the level of my state is very low. I am concerned and wish to get free. Then I wish to be present. In seeing myself taken by my imagination, suddenly I am awakened, as though by a light. I wake up by becoming aware of my dream. I recognize a great possibility: I can awake when I am not entirely taken.
 
…To see, to know, becomes the most important aim. It is necessary to understand that I can be able and can wish, that I can work to be present. I need to wish to stay present and to be able to stay present.
 
The way in which I question myself, in which I try to know what I need, is very important. I can no longer begin from a vague wish that I take for granted. I have to know why I work and what effort I am making.
                                                                                                                                            (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; pp 80-1)
  
TASK:
Early in my day I make a quiet effort to open to a feeling for seeing myself as I am.*
Later, in moments of awaking I pause, trying to receive impressions of myself that include at least the taste of the feeling from my morning effort.

* a quiet effort:
- through a sitting, perhaps?
- a simple sensing exercise while still, or in movement like a meditative walk?
- revisiting and pondering the reading while trying to maintain an awareness of my posture?
- or in yet another way that interests me?

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Posted October 6, 2020
"Centered in our ordinary "I," most of us do not love and are not loved.  We have very little love in our hearts, which is why we beg for it and seek it in substitutes.  Our usual emotional state is negative, all our feelings are reactions.   In fact, we do not know what it would be to have a positive feeling, what it would be to love.  My ordinary "I," my ego, is always preoccupied with what pleases or displeases me, what "I like" or "I dislike."  It always wants to receive, to be loved, and impels me to seek love.  I give in order to receive. Perhaps this is generosity of the mind, my "I," my ego, but not with my heart.  Deep down, this "I" is always in conflict with the other person and refuses to share.  To live without love is to live in perpetual contradiction, a refusal of the real, of what is.  Without love, one can never find what is true, and all human relations are painful.
 
If I do not know myself totally, my mind and my heart, my pain and my avidity, I cannot live in the present.  What I must explore is not beyond the self, but the very basis from which I think and feel.  My thought craves continuity, permanence, and its wish gives rise to my ordinary "I."  This thinking is the source of fear, fear of loss, of suffering.  If I do not know my total consciousness--unconscious as well as conscious--I will not understand fear and my entire search will go astray and be deformed.  There will be no love, and my only interest will be ensuring the continuity of this "I," even after death.
                                                                                (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being, p 158)
                             
                                                                            *  *  *  *  *  *  * 

Feeling is the function of the emotional center. All the emotional processes are included - joy, sorrow, grief, fear, surprise, and so on - but observation soon shows us that we are often unable to recognize them and are constantly confusing them with the functionings of other centers. In particular, one important difficulty arises from the fact that instinctive shocks, which only concern the life of the organic body (for example, certain fears) are felt by us in a manner very similar to emotional shocks, and thus are very often taken for emotions.
 
The emotional center “experiences”: each time that an impression reaches it, it likes or dislikes, and experiences a personal approval or disapproval of the impression that is manifested in the form of an emotion. Because of this, each time something touches the person and his emotional functioning, it is automatically accepted or rejected, and at the same time a positive or negative emotion is expressed. This “something” is felt as desirable or undesirable. But these operations of the emotional center depend entirely on the level of presence; in man’s ordinary state, only one of his personages is there and so it is only a matter of emotions (partial feelings inherent in one single aspect of oneself) and not of real feeling (all-inclusive feeling inherent in the total presence of a really established inner I). Man in his ordinary state has no true feeling. He has only automatic emotions, the emotions of reaction, depending entirely on which personage is present. The personage changes according to circumstances, and its “feeling” changes with it; but man does not see these changes and, in his emotional part more than in any other, believes himself to be endowed with a permanence and a continuity which he does not have.
                                                                                  (Jean Vaysse; Toward Awakening; p 83)

TASK SUGGESTION:
When I observe myself experiencing ‘I like/I don’t like’ or ‘I agree/I disagree’ I try in that moment to receive impressions of both my physical state and my attitude.
What is it that I wish for? What do I want?

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Posted September 25, 2020
“In the sphere of the emotions it is very useful to try to struggle with the habit of giving immediate expression to all one's unpleasant emotions. Many people find it very difficult to refrain from expressing their feelings about bad weather. It is still more difficult for people not to express unpleasant emotions when they feel that something or someone is violating what they may conceive to be order or justice.
 
"Besides being a very good method for self-observation, the struggle against expressing unpleasant emotions has at the same time another significance. It is one of the few directions in which a man can change himself or his habits without creating other undesirable habits. Therefore self-observation and self-study must, from the first, be accompanied by the struggle against the expression of unpleasant emotions.” 
                                                                                        (G.I.Gurdjieff; In Search of the Miraculous, p 112)
 
Suggestion:
In continuing a look into our experience of the three centers, the emotional center might be a good place to take a deeper look as suggested In Search of the Miraculous.
How do I experience the struggle against the expression of unpleasant emotions during the week?

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Posted September 15, 2020
Perhaps you would agree with me from what you understood of the books you’ve read that Gurdjieff was a searcher. He says that for him his search was to find the sense and meaning of human life, and probably what you’ve read about him and the journeys he made in the central parts of Asia, to monasteries and temples there, has led you to think that he was a great searcher. He belonged to this tradition of people who have not been content to merely try to deal, as we are all trying, with the difficulties of living, but when at the same time searched for the meaning of what they were doing in living. And all I’m going to add to this conception of Gurdjieff as a searcher, which I’m sure each of us has, is the idea that he was a special kind of searcher – but not in the sense that you might think a special degree of searcher might be – that is, somebody who found answers. If you think that, it shows that your search is still very inexperienced.
 
Gurdjieff was a special seeker in the sense that he not only was able to keep his search alive – and to maintain it all of his life, but he was also able to reach a level still higher than that and understand what keeps a search alive; he understood how to search, which is the stage beyond searching…
                                                                                       (John Pentland; “Introducing the Ideas of G.I. Gurdjieff”; p 11)

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Posted September 8, 2020
It seems to me that the main reason why we can’t feel how “I” changes all the time, why we can’t suffer from that, why that awareness can’t be ever present which makes me want to search how not to be like that…I think the main reason is that we live very much in unquestioned belief of certain habitual thoughts and conceptions.
                                                                                          (John Pentland; “Introducing the Ideas of G.I. Gurdjieff”; p 14)
 
We do not understand the moment of receiving an impression and why it is so important. We need to be present because it is the shock of the impression that drives us. If there is nobody here at the moment an impression is received, I react automatically, blindly, passively, and I am lost in the reaction. I refuse the impression of myself as I am. In thinking, in reacting, in imposing my ordinary “I” in the reception of this impression, I close myself. I am imagining what “I” am. I do not know the reality. I am the prisoner of this imagination, the lie of my false “I.” Usually I try to awake by forcing, but it does not work. I can and must learn to awake by opening consciously to the impression of myself and seeing what I am at the very moment. This will be a shock that awakens me, a shock brought by an impression that I receive. It requires a freedom to be in movement, not to stop the movement.
                                                                                                                  (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 14)

Suggestion:
I return again and again to receiving impressions of my facial expression, my posture, my voice and my gestures

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Posted September 1, 2020
I don’t know whether you’ve understood for yourself how the thought of study, the thought of search, is quite easy to remember, but the attitude of studying, the attitude of searching is very, very difficult to find. It’s the biggest challenge that was ever put before anybody. It’s the third force, which nobody is able to remember, nobody is able to see. And as I feel it now, it doesn’t matter what is the object of our study. It’s such a rare thing to be interested in the meaning, the why of anybody or anything, that any question of that kind is a question from which we can start. And all of the questions which face us all the time about how to go on, how to hold on, what to do, what to avoid, the only useful question is the one we never remember – Why? Who?
 
We start with studying ourselves. It’s the quickest way. Gurdjieff’s system of ideas gives indications for a search outwards, a search towards finding my place in the universe, just as fully as his ideas give help for maintaining a search inwards. And there is a similarity between the two. But we start with the question inwards. Who am I?
 
…You probably remember how Gurdjieff speaks about the question, “Who am I?” I don’t know whether you’ve ever tried to put that question [to yourself], but if you ever do, if you ever try, one isn’t always successful in using it as a means of direct self-observation. One has to put it in a particular way – so that it penetrates through one’s thoughts. One has to put it so that one feels it. It’s not a rhetorical question, it is the point at which my search begins.
 
Of course, the point at which my search begins is “I”. “I” is not the whole of me, and in asking “who am I’” the question is:  what is driving me, what is making the whole of me tick? And it’s very important that if I ask that question I should try and see sincerely if there is an answer. I don’t know whether you’ve ever tried. If not, on behalf of your interest in Gurdjieff’s teachings…I advise you to surprise yourself sometimes when perhaps accidentally the Gurdjieff ideas come into your head. Instead of going on thinking about the ideas – associating in your mind – just take that opportunity to look in yourself and ask, “What’s driving me at the moment?” Whatever it is you are doing, whether you’re walking in the street, whether you’re talking to somebody, whether you’re eating, whether you’re resting…
“Who am I?”
 
That is to say, who is this part of me that is driving the rest of me of which I’m unconscious? “I” is hardly ever anything to do with what we’re outwardly manifesting. We’re being driven by some absurd appetite or some remote memory – to do what? To hurry down the street, to telephone a friend who has nothing to do with that memory. You’ll see if you look in this way that “I” is always changing and often has no sense at all. There’s no pattern to it. And that’s what I understand by the diagram of many “I”s.
 
It seems to me that the main reason why we can’t feel how “I” changes all the time, why we can’t suffer from that, why that awareness can’t be ever present which makes me want to search how not to be like that…I think the main reason is that we live very much in unquestioned belief of certain habitual thoughts and conceptions.
 
                                                                 (John Pentland; “Introducing the Ideas of G.I. Gurdjieff”; edited from pp 12-14)
 
SUGGESTION FROM READING:
When perhaps accidentally the Gurdjieff ideas come into your head, instead of going on thinking about the ideas – associating in your mind – just take that opportunity to look in yourself and ask, “What’s driving me at the moment?” Whatever it is you are doing, whether you’re walking in the street, whether you’re talking to somebody, whether you’re eating, whether you’re resting…
“Who am I?”
 
SUGGESTION CARRIED OVER FROM LAST WEEK FOR THOSE INTERESTED:
The habitual(?) in my inner world: Change something about the way I approach an inner work effort
The habitual(?) in daily life:  Change something about a familiar daily life routine
Just watch.

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Posted August 25, 2020
Whatever the state in which I find myself at this moment, whatever the sense of the force I manifest, the highest possibilities are here, hidden by the thick screen of my passivity in believing in my self-sufficiency. My destiny begins when I feel the call of another force in me and respond to it voluntarily…
 
I wish to see myself. But the energy of my looking, my seeing, is passive. I see what I look at only through an image, an idea. So I do not really see, I am not in direct contact with what I see. Held passive by the idea, my attention is not free. I react to the image of what I see, and things repeat in the same way indefinitely. My thinking reacts automatically, making comparisons and obeying commands from all the material accumulated over time. Can I have a thinking that is more active and not continually occupied in drawing from its memory? Such thinking would hold itself in front of a fact, sensitive and receptive, without making any judgment or suggestion, without any thoughts. It would hold itself simply by an urgency to know the truth. This thinking would be like a light. It would be able to see.
 
My sensing is also passive. I sense myself as a familiar form to which I return again and again, a form that corresponds to my usual way of thinking. Can I have a sensing that is more active, awakened entirely to the energy it receives? This sensing, like this thinking, would be without any motive to possess.
 
When I experience this more active thinking and sensing together, I discover a new wish, a feeling of urgency to be like this. It is only at the moment this intensity appears— of wishing to see, of wishing to know what is— that I awake to myself and to what I am as a whole. I awake not in order to change but to know the true, the real. What has changed is my attitude. It is more conscious. And I see that if this active wishing is not here, I will fall back into my dream.
 
My wishing to know and understand takes precedence over everything. It is not just an idea in my head, or a particular sensation or emotion. It asks everything of me all at once. Can I learn to listen to it?
                                                                                                    (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; excerpted from p 31)
 
 
SUGGESTION:
Change something about the way I approach a work effort such as working in the quiet (e.g., the time of day, the length of time, the sequence, the choice of what I sit on, etc.).
 
Do the same with something in the outer world that I routinely engage in (e.g., eat a meal at a different time of day, dress/undress in a different sequence of clothing, etc.).
 
“Let it be. Just watch.”

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Posted August 19, 2020
Perhaps there is no inclination to turn inward. Let it be, just watch. The power of attention more and more can fill your body. The greatest need we have is to know who I am, and I can know that only by this energy incarnating the body.
 
Everything we need is here in us. Everything for fuller being. There is a kind of sacred descent of attention that can bring this about. Seeing the obstacles, thoughts, feelings, yes, perhaps a pressure that keeps me from it. But if I can relax inside, just allow the pure attention to flow in, be in that. Very natural. It is what we are.
 
Attention: a sacred energy coming into me. Be sensitive to it. Recognize again and again that it is there.
                                                                               (Michel de Salzmann; from Fran Shaw’s Notes on The Next Attention)
 
 
Task Suggestion:
During my daily sitting, I begin to explore what it is to “relax inside.” How do I experience this?

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Posted August 9, 2020
To seek a result is to start from the idea I have of myself, whereas the aspiration towards a living reality involves another point of departure: There I stand aside, I consent to no longer being in authority in order to allow what is much more real to take over. A difficult decision to make, because at this stage we do not understand the difference between what is real and the idea we have of ourselves as a form.
 
That something should happen, that I should feel it desirable, Yes! But I do not realize that I identify with what is happening, whereas at that moment I could instead let this emotional turn be penetrated by the living reality, so that its energy would fill me instead of “my wanting to capture it.” I want to grab what is going to happen, I want to take over the fire, the truth, the quality. I am not wrong in thinking that these qualities exist, but I make the mistake of wanting to take hold of them…
 
The Universe is not for me, I have been created for the Universe. I can agree with that logically, but from the moment a gesture is required, without my realizing, I no longer accept.
 
Fire – we should not take it for ourselves, it should set us ablaze, which is quite the reverse. The higher levels are not for us. It is we who can merge into the higher levels. That is how inner liberation exists: it is a gift at a higher level not a capture from below.
                                                                                         (Michel Conge; Life: Real Life Behind Appearances; p 37)
 
QUESTION:
In a moment of awakening I choose to return...to come back...to begin again...
What is it that I return to?
Upon return, what is up to me?

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​Posted August 2, 2020
Question:
We often say that a moment of awakening, whether by chance or through an intentional effort, can call me back, that it is an opportunity to return. In my experience in these moments, what is it that I return to?
 

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Posted July 27, 2020
At present we are incapable of defining Life – it would be pretentious to believe we can – but we are able to taste it. I can recognize a sudden change appearing in me but I don’t understand clearly enough how this change comes about. I am more interested in what is going to happen than in how I should prepare myself to meet it. So I let go of the pursuit and hurl myself in the direction where I hope to find something.
 
I realize that there moments when I’m more alive than at others, but to what extent am I moved by that? How can I receive this impression “I am alive”? Do we agree that the taste of it exists? If so, that obviously implies that the rest of the time we are dead. When we are as if dead and we engage in some so-called inner work, what sort of quality can such work possibly have? What worth has the sensation or the relaxation that we claim to be ‘attempting’? I’m not saying this to sadden us, but rather to urge us to acknowledge that only one taste would lighten our way, and that is: “I Am Alive.”
 
Let us not be beguiled by so-called sensations that have nothing real about them. We have everything we need. So it’s simple.
                                                                                 (Michel Conge; Life: Real Life Behind Appearances; p 53)

 
Suggestion:
In moments of wishing to work that include impulses of wanting to do something else, an inner dialogue of I’m too tired, too resistant, etc., I ask myself ‘what do I need now?’
What is sensation telling me? 

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Posted July 19, 2020
​What we’ve understood – and Mr. Gurdjieff and Madame de Salzmann have made it so clear – that we cannot come to the unknown, to what is real, through the known. And it’s because we are trapped in this way that we know only the illusion of who we are, of who I am. How then to enter yet again and again into this process by which I could open to what is real? I come to that not by forcing, by doing, but rather through a process of opening and allowing this egoistic web to ease, to fall away.
 
So I need to be relaxed. At the same time a certain tension is needed. I relax in the thought, in the body, in the feeling. I open to the impression of being here now, being here now in this body. Very lightly, I’m aware of the breath, which is in itself an extraordinary exchange of energies. Without it, I would not exist. So I own to this fact, impartially, without thought or comment. And I see that I need to be in the present moment, now. And it is in the present moment that we human beings can act out our responsibility. And what is this responsibility? It is not merely to dream, to indulge, but to work for being. I wish to be more than just a verbal, mental, and emotional phantom.
 
I’m not doing anything, I’m simply watching, attending – wordlessly – to my present reality. This is not yet the real, but it is how I find myself. I let the thoughts flow, but I stay grounded in my atmosphere. I take my whole situation with kind of a global overview. I am a witness in this present moment. At the same time as I work for this elusive quality of being, I do not pretend to be somebody or something. I wish to be open to the silence. It is the silence that encompasses all. And I have this inkling, this intimation, in moments, that I’m really opening to intelligence. But this intelligence is not here to serve me and my shallow ambition and my equally shallow understanding.
 
And slowly, almost imperceptibly and invisibly, a new order begins to take shape, a new relation between the head, the body, the feeling – again, not of my doing. In a sense I enable this by respecting the silence. And it is as if the head, the body, the feeling, resonate at the same tempo, and not at odds with each other. And it is only now, then, that I can sense, as it were, a finer current, another current besides my temporal organic energy. And if you wish you may call this finer movement “presence.” It is not my presence, but Presence.
                                                                                                                                                (Frank Sinclair; Opening To the Real; p 39)


Suggested task:
Daily, for the time it takes to sit quietly with a cup of coffee, tea or cold drink, I in my own way seek to open, to be a witness to, the influx of impressions of the whole of myself.
If possible, I try again while taking a quiet walk or while engaged in some other simple movement.

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Posted July 11, 2020 addendum to Saturday workday
"The work is not only sensing one's right arm. Why all this sensing? Our attention is so scattered that it needs to be trained to be contained in the body, to relate with it, to remain anchored. These exercises are necessary; but that is not the work. The basic idea of the work is that our centres are not in harmony. But why should you believe this? Do you see this? Do you see what you lose when you are in pieces? The work is to bring these centres in harmony, so that there will be higher intelligence. "When you see active attention losing itself in passivity, it is important not to try to do something, but to stay in front of it and to suffer. That seeing is what produces new knowledge. You don't suffer enough." 
                                                                                   (Jeanne de Salzmann; Heart Without Measure; p 61)
 

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Posted July 10, 2020
It will be a long time before I understand the significance of my tensions. But I can see that they are here and that the energy in me is not free. Thoughts are tensions, emotions also. The energy is stopped by vibrations of inertia, which keep me in the lower parts of my being. I am held by my tensions, as though attached, engaged in satisfying the specific needs of one part without taking account of the whole. My energy is not free to pursue the unobstructed movement that is the life of a whole. I need, above all, to experience an energy that is liberated.
 
Usually I experience the energy in myself in a degraded form that is not contained. Nevertheless, I can perhaps know it in a form that is more pure, more still, and thus experience what I am. For this I must agree to have no tension. I must be able to remain without judging, without expecting anything, without hoping, entirely in the awareness of what is. I will then perhaps come to the perception of a living Presence in me, a global sensation of the life of the whole. My vision embraces my entire body, it sees the movements of the whole. Although I can intentionally put the accent on one part, on an arm or leg or the head, I must not lose the sense of the whole. As soon as I am stopped by the idea of a part, my sensation is distorted and my vision loses its meaning.
 
Seeking a balance between tension and relaxation opens me to the struggle with the ordinary “I.” When I am relaxed and have a sensation of all of myself, I am not separated from my inner being. I am one. In my true being, already I am, and I am free. I can live this as long as I keep a right attitude, a right inner posture, a balance of tension and relaxation. I feel centered, with a global sensation of myself. And yet I see the tendency again to become partial, to return toward tensions that are always the same and that preserve my ordinary “I.” I feel the need for a letting go that liberates me from them .
 
This is the struggle to be what I am, a struggle between the subjective “I” incarnate in my tensions and the unknown life in me. Either I am imprisoned by my ordinary sense of “I,” which prevents any contact with my real self, or I have a nostalgia for the "divine” that I feel at the root of my being, which shows me what I must serve. My entire life is shaped by this struggle, and I must understand it if I wish this life to be conscious. My tensions form the web of my life. They are always here, my mind drawn toward an aim and my body tensed toward what the mind imposes upon me. Even when I have no pressing aim, there are tensions crystallized in me. And in each tension, the whole of me is engaged.
 
In seeking to open to a sensation of myself, I see that I am still filled with tensions. The only sensation I have is of these contractions, like a wall that separates me from myself. My attention does not reach the Presence in me that lives another life. I feel the lack. The sense of this lack is the greatest truth I can approach today, the star that shows me the way. As long as I am conscious of this lack, purely attentive without interference from my thought or feeling, I see the limits of the world of the known, of form, which I have to abandon in order to face the unknown.
                                                                                    (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; pp 65-66)



Suggestion:
Each day I make several intentional efforts to work in the quiet with the following suggestion:
Lightly, gently, I “seek to open to a sensation of myself.” To experience the whole of myself…a “global sensation.”


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​Posted July 5, 2020
In order to see what is, I have to recognize that my state cannot be permanent. It changes from moment to moment. This state of impermanence is my truth. I must not seek to avoid it or place my hope in a rigidity that seems to help. I have to live, to experience this state of impermanence, and proceed from there. For this, I have to listen. Yet if I only listen to what I wish to hear, I will never be free. I have to listen to whatever appears, and in order to really listen, I must not resist. This act of listening, of being present, is a true liberation. I am aware of my reactions to everything that takes place in me. I cannot avoid reacting, but for reactions not to stop me, I must be able to go beyond them. I have to continue until I see that it is everything I know that keeps me from approaching the real, the unknown. I must feel all the conditioning of the known in order to be free from it. Then my search for silence, for tranquility, will be a quest not for security, but for freedom to receive the unknown. 
                                                                                                       (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 251)
 
 
Task suggestion:
I continue to explore a way of working that includes several stops during which I approach ‘seeing myself as I am’ as simply seeing what is, as per the reading.

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Posted June 23, 2020
Unfolding
Watching quietly, anticipating nothing. I am open to what is here, now. I look at myself reading these words. I read slowly. I see the way I’m sitting. I sense my body, the arising and movement of thoughts, of feelings – the way my breath comes and goes. I am the witness and the witnessing, passively watching and actively being watched.
 
I see that there can be a further letting go, a beginning relationship to an unchanging inner stillness. Like a white sheet of paper that retains its nature, I remain receptive but unstained, quietly in touch with what is taking place, attention wholly in the moment. Is there help in a stop? In an unfolding to a fresh time/space? Is there a way to be without doing?
 
Listening to the silence which is present in the stillness I become aware of a new web of relationships, of a unity bringing the body/mind structure to another threshold. I sense that there is another Reality that can be served. Again, a stop.
 
Will the fragility of my attention survive the experience of turning this page? 
(William Segal; The Structure of Man)
 
 
Suggestion:
During my morning sitting, I pick a time during my day where I will stop and take time to listen. In the stillness, am I able to be in contact with a silence that Mr. Segal mentions? What do I experience? 

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Posted June 16, 2020
"One needs to see that one is in pieces. Stay in front of that, and suffer for it. Then, a new feeling arises which can change something. The work is not turning the mind to the body. The ordinary mind must be absolutely quiet; only then can the higher mind be related with the body. This requires attention, active attention."
 
I wondered what would assist the cultivation of this active, direct attention. She said, "Seeing that I am in pieces and that I need unity."
                                                                            *******
She said, "Right now, the most necessary thing is to see, in fact, that your body and mind are not related, and to stay in front of that and to suffer for your inadequacy. Work often, but not for long, because it takes much energy; and sense the difference in levels between when you are related and when you are ordinary." 
                                        (Jeanne de Salzmann in quotes, with Ravi Ravindra; Heart Without Measure; pp 65 & 73)
 
  
 
SUGGESTION:
I work often, but not for long, with the struggle to return again and again to an active, direct attention. I explore blending my interest in a quiet, gentle way of working with the following suggestion:
 
“To be open:            …In touch with the breathing
                              …In touch with the body
                              …In touch with the influx of impressions.”
                                                                                  (William Segal; A Voice At the Borders of Silence; p. 247)


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Posted June 9, 2020
Sensation, consciously or unconsciously experienced, instantly evokes transcursion or passage throughout the whole of the body. To sight, hearing, touch, smell or taste must be added the muscular (light or heavy), kinesthetic, and sexual senses, the sense of temperature (hot or cold), of time and space, and finally – of consciousness.
 
Although one has a sense of himself distinct from body/feeling/mind configuration, the activities of the latter obscure and block relationship with one’s well-hidden reality. The understanding of this relationship, coming close to self, is the aim of all work. The preliminary knowledge that one’s activities and one’s thoughts belong solely to mind/body helps to clear the path.
 
In stillness one has the sensation of being opened to a more subtle cognition. It is a sensation akin to the one that comes when one is in communication with nature, with great music and art. Sometimes one experiences this energy in the presence of a man or woman with Being, or when an unexpected moment of grace, of sorrow, of shock frees one from routine associations. Suddenly there is an opening to another energy – the unmistakable taste of something higher and truer.
 
                                          I can be infinitely more relaxed than I am.
                                          I can be infinitely more sensitive to my sensations.
                                          I can be breathed.
                                          I can be open to a thought from above.
                                                                                                                                        (William Segal; Opening; p 23)
 
                                                                                            *******

Task:
I try to work as quietly and gently as I can in everything I do today. What is my experience?
 
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Posted June 2, 2020
For full reading click here: A Conscious Posture

Excerpted version of reading:
Sensation is the essential experience on the road to consciousness. I need to understand what it would be to have a conscious sensation.
 
We wish to know who we are. My body…knows nothing of my wish and lives a life of its own. Nevertheless, it could participate in the process of knowing. It is the receptacle, the vehicle for the energy in us…it is only in and through the body that the energy can act…
 
The position of the body is very important. My automatic posture holds back the energy and conditions my thinking and feeling. I need to see this, to live it, so that a conscious suffering appears which calls for a new posture, a conscious posture that, like an electromagnetic field, allows the action of this energy on the body. Its position must therefore be precise, and be maintained by a close and continual cooperation between my thinking, my feeling and my body. I need to feel at ease, with a sense of well-being and stability. Then the position itself can allow the mind to come to a state of total availability, naturally becoming empty of agitated thoughts. In the right posture, all my centers come together and are related. I find a balance, an order in which my ordinary "I” is no longer the master but finds its place. The thought is freer and also my feeling, which now is purer, less avid. It respects something…
 
I feel a greater unity between my body and what animates it. A center of gravity, my vital center of energy, has formed by itself… This center of gravity must become second nature to me, my measure and my guide. I must feel its weight in everything I do. Otherwise an opening to the higher centers cannot take place.
 
When I experience being this living Presence, conscious of itself, I feel that it is the Presence that is breathing. The freedom of my center of gravity depends on the freedom of the breathing. When I let the breathing take place without interfering, another reality appears, a reality I did not know. I need to see that this experience is my essential food and must return to this state as often as possible.
                                                                       (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; excerpted from pp 213-215)
 
                                                                                                *******

SUGGESTION TO TRY SEVERAL TIMES PER DAY:
I wish to experience myself as a three-centered being. 
I begin with sensation…

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Posted May 26, 2020
Essence contains psyche and subjective bodily essence. It is very difficult to distinguish, my head cannot understand, it has to be experienced. What we study is man’s psyche – but where does it begin and the other finish? We have no idea what we are, what we are made of.
 
The ordinary physician describes a psychic desire but does not know where it is placed, ordinary knowledge stops there. We can only, little by little, with great difficulty, by dint of living in ourselves, experiencing in ourselves, get some different notion. We try not to be impatient, to be together, to feel ourselves as a togetherness, able to move, able to experience in ourselves. Then we will be able to see our thoughts and feelings passing through, and penetrate with more depth into our being.
 
Keep the struggle – see how terrible is this strength of dreaming. That struggle will help me to experience things in a more real way.
 
Anything that is of a different order has to originate in us from some different source. If something originates from some automatism I can only expect repetition and deadness. If I receive something that penetrates to a layer which is not automatic, it can call for more alive things, because it is an active place in me. I need to be fed in my reality.
 
How to listen? We have to learn everything all over again. We have to learn to see again, to speak again. Are we willing? It is easy to go on in the old grooves.
 
We can receive a great benefit from that effort outside and inside. Something very important for our outside is involved, our subjective life. But if I try that Work effort for the sake of that first, I will be in danger: it must be for the sake of something more inner. Without that we are nothing, nothing is worth one penny. If I am there a little then perhaps my whole life, inside and outside, will become something worth living.
 
This is fundamentally important, this is what matters, to be there in order to know myself through my life experience. Know how to be.
 
It depends on how much we wish to appear in our life, not to pass it in sleep. Do I wish to wake up? I try to be aware of the value of that wish. It will bring sparks of something different in my life. I don’t fear friction; in general we fear it, the idea that I may be attacked puts me in a state of fright; now I have to find ground from which not to be afraid. It is the best opportunity which could be given to me to be there, in order to deal with it in a different way.

                                                                                                       (Henriette Lannes; Inside a Question; p 108)
 
                                                                                               *******
Last week’s suggestion continued for this week.

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Posted May 20, 2020
SUGGESTION:
Three times per day, in quiet conditions, I commit to making an intentional effort.
I begin with the wish to simply experience myself as I am:

• in this body…  
• feeling the struggle between the wish and the resistance…

 
During the receiving of these impressions I discover a way to work.


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Posted May 13, 2020
What questions arise upon reading the selections below? Devise a way to work with these questions.

 
It Is Possible Precisely When I Cannot
Not to run away. To stay with the impression, to let the impression come in.
 
It is possible precisely when I cannot. I cannot…and I become so poor, so receptive… And so it is received.
The Attention can flow down, fill me, so there is nothing else but to be.
 
In life, always in another mode, trying to do things – but I could try to be.
 
The Attention is non-judgmental. Let it touch your state. When there is an inner attention, the mind clears, just goes to what is needed. A central attention. When joined with that, no more conditioning.
 
Just let it be as it is and observe. Know that the reaction of the moment is fleeting. This other – the associative part – it is not you. It is interesting how you go to that small part.
 
Sometimes I’m like a rat. Goes to one door – shut. To another door – shut. To another door – shut. So it accepts, sits there, and begins to be.                                                     
                                                     (Michel de Salzmann; Notes on The Next Attention by Fran Shaw; p 172)

                                                                                             *******

"I begin to face the world with this thought, that the world is a world of forces. I begin to depend not on myself but on the reality of these forces. I'm not so much interested now in the old idea that I could bring something to situations. I'm interested in knowing in advance that certain situations will include certain forces - and I need to be there. I am not struggling with nature any more. I'm trying to be conscious of myself within nature."
                                                                              ***
"In all probability, we don't really take in how nearly the forces are balanced, that one little effort by you or by me, may change everything. We don't look at it that way, that one little effort makes all the difference... Every moment counts, is symbolic, in the unseen war which is a very balanced thing. I am not sure you have seen that. You have impressions which lead you to that point of view."                                                      
                                                                                                 (John Pentland; Exchanges Within; p 55 and p 256)
 

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Posted May 5, 2020
Perhaps there is no inclination to turn inward. Let it be. Just watch. The power of attention more and more can fill the body. Everything we need is here in us. Everything for fuller being. There is a kind of sacred descent of attention that can bring this about. Seeing the obstacles, thoughts, feelings, yes, perhaps a pressure that keeps me from it. But if I can relax inside, just allow the pure attention to flow in, be in that. Very natural. It is what we are. Attention: a sacred energy coming into me. Be sensitive to it. Recognize again and again that it is there. When the attention is with this other energy permeating me, very concentrated yet very light, free, wishing nothing, needing nothing, everything opens to this: the head, the heart. The only discovery is this energy. When this energy is there and I am sure of it, aware of it moment by moment, I begin to be.
                                                                                                            (Michel de Salzmann; Notes on The Next Attention)
 
Question:
“Life keeps hitting us, producing only a dull sound. Yet, suddenly, there is a pure, crystalline sound. How does that come about?”                        (Michel Conge)


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Posted April 26, 2020
I hate the misguided effort that I’ve been attempting for years and, perhaps, I’m beginning to appreciate an altogether different effort, one that consists in letting myself be penetrated by truth, by currents of energy flowing down into the higher centers, or from “Above”, from the Kingdom of Heaven. Right now I would wish to be permeable to that. I’ve been wasting my energy fighting. I realize that that can never produce any results, quite simply because everything already exists and that all my strivings shut me off from the Truth and imposed the reign of my ego. What is required is an “unconditional surrender.” And that is what I was never prepared to offer because I would say to myself, “If I surrender unconditionally, then what about me?” This “me” must surrender. That is the price to be paid for its reintegration.
 
…In this recognition of the impossibility of attaining anything at all, there is immense joy. The idea of Paradise is diabolical and dangerous. There comes a time when I don’t need results. Heaven is not for me and I couldn’t care less. What I’m interested in is being open and relaxed, being permeable, transparent. I am sure of something there, that something exists. It is no longer of any importance that it’s not ‘mine,’ I’m so happy to feel that this Life is there…
 
…When that happens, for a very brief moment, there’s a sort of liberation; everything is in order, in harmony, and I can even communicate with the outside world. There are two ways of communicating, the former way and this totally new way which changes everything. How can I adopt the right inner frame of mind, how can I enable this harmony between my centers? What is this constant movement that makes me hurl myself into everything, and try to keep or grasp something?
 
We have to keep coming back to this experience of relaxing, of letting go, which could become richer and richer. If relaxation becomes clearer, there appears a sense of being open and available. But, usually, when this availability comes about, I say to myself, “Right, and now, what should I do?” There seems to be a sort of ceiling, I don’t understand. In fact, I’ve never felt life in me! 
 
                                                  (Michel Conge; Life: Real Life Behind Appearances; excerpted from pp 55-57)
 
                                                                     *   *   *   *   *   *
 
Suggestion:
Each day I set time aside to work in my own way with the wish “to keep coming back to this experience of relaxing, of letting go, which could become richer and richer.” I try to carry with me the taste of these efforts through the rest of my day.
What/where is the struggle?
 
A short, related reading, The Process of Struggle.
 
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Posted April 19, 2020
Without self-love a man can do nothing. There are two qualities of self-love. One is a dirty thing. The other, an impulse, love of the real "I". Without this, it is impossible to move. An ancient Hindu saying - "Happy is he who loves himself, for he can love me." I see from Mme. de Salzmann's report that no one has understood me. One needs fire. Without fire, there will never be anything. This fire is suffering, voluntary suffering, without which it is impossible to create anything. One must prepare, must know what will make one suffer and when it is there, make use of it. Only you can prepare, only you know what makes you suffer, makes the fire which cooks, cements, crystallizes, does. Suffer by your defects, in your pride, in your egoism. Remind yourself of the aim. Without prepared suffering there is nothing, for by as much as one is conscious, there is no more suffering. No further process, nothing. That is why with your conscience you must prepare what is necessary. You owe to Nature. The food you eat which nourishes your life. You must pay for these cosmic substances. You have a debt, an obligation, to repay by conscious work. Do not eat like an animal but render to Nature for what she has given you, nature, your mother. Work - a drop, a drop, a drop - accumulated during days, months, years, centuries, perhaps will give results.
                                         (G.I. Gurdjieff; Transcripts of Gurdjieff’s Meetings 1941-1946; Mtg 1, Dec 7, 1941; p4)

Suggested task:
What is my understanding of and how do I begin to work with what Mr. Gurdjieff said was necessary:
“You have a debt, an obligation, to repay by conscious work?”
 

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Posted April 12, 2020
In order to observe, I have to struggle. My ordinary nature refuses self-observation. I need to prepare, to organize a struggle against the obstacle, to withdraw a little from my identification – speaking, imagination, negative emotions. Conscious struggle requires choice and acceptance. It must not be my state that dictates the choice. I must choose the struggle to be present and accept that suffering will appear. There is no struggle without suffering. Struggle is unacceptable to our lower nature; struggle upsets it. This is why it is so important always to remember what we wish – the meaning of our work and our Presence. In going against a habit, for example, like eating or sitting in a certain way, we are not struggling to change the habit. Or in trying not to express negative emotions, we are not struggling against the emotions themselves or struggling to do away with their expressions. It is a struggle with our identification, to allow the energy otherwise wasted to serve the work. We struggle not against something; we struggle for something.
                                                                                                 (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p.18)
 
​
Suggested Task:
While in a quiet collected state I choose one thing (a habit, a particular interest or question, etc.) that I will work with for the entire week. 
As I struggle with my identification, I try to be aware of and stay with my wish towards a movement for something greater than my ordinary life and reactions. 

Related Reading:
Desires and Nondesires

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Posted April 5, 2020
Task Suggestion:
This week, take time for a walk, if possible near nature.
I try to become aware of my immediate surroundings in the present moment as it might come in a simple wordless way, as a child?

Reading:
Essence and Personality 
​
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Posted March 29, 2020
There is a necessary initial step, no matter what work exercise is being practiced: this is always to remind ourselves why we are undertaking this effort and to find again in ourselves that which feels a need for this work and the line of interest to which it is connected. An exercise of this kind has no meaning unless it is connected each time to our need to become a little more ourselves.
                                                                       (Jean Vaysse; Toward Awakening; p 154 hardback)
 
Task Suggestion:
When I notice myself touching my face, or having touched my face, I stop, and center my presence. I sense my body, noticing any pain, random energy, or fidgeting. I quiet my body and my mind, and resolve to keep my hands off my face unless I am touching it deliberately, with clean hands.


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Posted March 22, 2020
Two currents
What we are in our essence— our highest possibilities— we do not know. What we are in our person— the implacable conditioning that defines us— we also do not know. We identify with our person, ignorant of the relation that should exist between it and our essence. Yet inner development begins with the capacity to know myself, to understand my entire self.
 
I have to know that I have a double nature, that there are two forces in me: the descending force of manifestation and an ascending force returning to the source. I have to experience them here at the same time in order to know myself as a whole. There must be some reason why I am here, something that is needed for a relation between the two. This is the meaning of my Presence.
 
In each event in life— whether family, professional or inner life— there is a double movement of involution and evolution. The action is directed toward an aim, toward manifestation, but behind it is something that has no aim, that does not project itself but returns to the source. These two currents are indispensable to each other.
 
We know in theory that the two currents exist, but we are not really conscious of them. I do not know enough the ascending current. I do not have in myself, at the time I wish, the elements that would allow me to feel its life, to feel my life. The other current I do not know either, because I am blindly immersed in it. Yet without the vision of the two currents, the wish to be present at a given place and a given time has no sense. I need a constant vision of them in order to see the point of application of the attention and of the will, the will not to lose myself.
 
With my attention today I cannot be aware at the same time of two movements going in opposite directions. I am taken by one movement and ignore or oppose the other. Nevertheless, I have to accept
that the two currents determine my life, and that I have two natures in myself. I must learn to see the lower nature and at the same time remember the higher. The struggle is in living the two together. I need to have a conscious impression of these two aspects of myself, at first independently of each other, then simultaneously. One nature must serve the other. But what does it mean to serve? I must find my real place and accept it. It is I who is called to be here. I must see that if I am not present, I serve only my ordinary self and go toward the destruction of what I truly am. So between these two currents then there is nothing, there is nobody.
 
What is important is that the two currents be established in me, having a definite relation that is maintained. Until now the descending current alone has been the master of my Presence, without being confronted. The ascending current has its source in the will to be— not “will” in the usual sense but in the sense of the "wish to be.” It is necessary above all to disengage this will, to make room for it. I must accept being passive, really passive in order that an active vibration can be perceived by my feeling. The effort I can make with my ordinary means, the only effort that is incumbent on me, is one of voluntary passivity — a conscious effort.
                                                                                                   (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 44)

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Posted March 8, 2020
Task suggestion:
Revisit and select one or another of the four readings, task suggestions or questions that were posted on the website from February 8th thru March 1.
I decide on a way to work with my selection that is different from the habitual way I would approach it. 

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Posted March 1, 2020
"One needs to see that one is in pieces. Stay in front of that, and suffer for it. Then, a new feeling arises which can change something. The work is not turning the mind to the body. The ordinary mind must be absolutely quiet; only then can the higher mind be related with the body. This requires attention, active attention."
 
I wondered what would assist the cultivation of this active, direct attention. She said, "Seeing that I am in pieces and that I need unity."
 
                                                                        *******
She said, "Right now, the most necessary thing is to see, in fact, that your body and mind are not related, and to stay in front of that and to suffer for your inadequacy. Work often, but not for long, because it takes much energy; and sense the difference in levels between when you are related and when you are ordinary."  
                                                          (Jeanne de Salzmann in quotes, with Ravi Ravindra; Heart Without Measure; p 65 & 73)
 
SUGGESTION:
Each day I make a program (a plan, a preparation) that will support a wish to explore the relation between an ‘ordinary mind that must be absolutely quiet’ and an ‘active attention’ directed towards seeing simply what is.


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Posted February 18, 2020
CONTINUING: WHAT IS MY WISH? HOW DO I WORK?

I had been thinking of asking a question in the group meeting when Madame de Salzmann herself articulated it: "Is the work accepting what I am, or struggling with what I am?"
 
In what followed it became clear that these two are not different things. To accept what I am, to suffer myself, to stay in front of my inadequacy, is to struggle with myself. I do not like what I see and I wish to change it immediately so I will not have to suffer what I am in reality. And I see that I cannot in fact change myself, because I do not have enough depth of seeing. Furthermore, the way I am is the result of the whole of my previous life, much of which I do not see. Therefore I imagine myself already in a transformed state. I can see that imagination and fantasy result from not being able to stay with myself as I am. The energy from even the little seeing that I sometimes have goes into weaving a fantastic scenario rather than into a transformation that might result from the heat of suffering. Whatever else it is, the practice of intentional suffering must surely include suffering what I am.  

                                                       (Ravi Ravindra with Jeanne de Salzmann; Heart Without Measure; p 118)

                                                                                          *******

“There is in me something mysterious that nothing is able to grasp, something that no thought or feeling can help me know. It appears only when I am not caught in the web of my thoughts and emotions. It is the unknown, which cannot be grasped with what I know.
 
“In order to come to the total stillness in which I will be free to know, I must abandon both the pretension that I am able and my belief in what I know. I must see myself blindly believing, again and again, in what my thinking or my emotion tell me. I need to see myself always fooled until I see the uselessness of it all, until I feel how poor I really am. Then a calm appears and perhaps I learn something new. In any case, it is like a door opening. All I can do is leave it open. What will follow I cannot foresee.”
                                                                                     (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 48)
 
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Posted February 9, 2020
I wish to be present to what is taking place, to remain conscious of myself and not lose myself… Through maintaining the attention and not forgetting to look, perhaps one day I will be able to see. If I see one time, I can see a second time, and if this repeats I will no longer be able not to see.
 
Conscious struggle requires choice and acceptance. It must not be my state that dictates the choice… This is why it is so important always to remember what we wish – the meaning of our work and our Presence. In going against a habit, for example, like eating or sitting in a certain way, we are not struggling to change the habit. Or in trying not to express negative emotions, we are not struggling against the emotions themselves or struggling to do away with their expression. It is a struggle with our identification, to allow the energy otherwise wasted to serve the work. We struggle not against something, we struggle for something.
                                                                                                                 (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 17)
 
Suggestion:
I identify some type of habitual behavior that is part of my morning routine. Each day I decide on some of way of utilizing my awareness of this behavior in order to work with the wish to “be present to what is taking place, to remain conscious of myself and not lose myself.”
 
 
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Posted February 8, 2020  From Saturday Workday
Q: The one question, which I face a lot here, is understanding right action. I mean sometimes there is no problem. If we’re finishing and there is something that has to be cleaned up, there’s not too much of a question about what has to be done. But more frequently I see myself trying to understand in some way what it would mean to be responsible for myself… It seems to be something that I don’t understand yet.
 
John Pentland: There are three sorts of suggestions. So, when you find yourself do you try to see which of these three sorts of suggestions is drawing you back into some manifestation or do you intentionally move in some other direction? If you think back now to a particular example of what you were speaking about, do you see that perhaps you manifested in accordance with a suggestion from your head or moving center, or from your feeling? So all of these were habitual expressions of energy made without any evaluation of the possibility of that energy being used for some intentional efforts, some intentional efforts towards our aim, your aim?
 
Maybe you can look back at the particular example you were speaking about and maybe it is not too late to express how you were at that moment as either “There was nobody there,” so that the suggestion that came from your mind or your feeling or just a general sense of dreaming, dragged you into it. Or perhaps there was a need for a moment of stop, of hesitation, stop, and then you could make some intentional manifestation [related to] aim.
                                                                                                      (John Pentland; Working in Special Conditions; p 10)
                                                                               *   *   *   *   *   *   *
Something to Try:
I periodically make a stop and ask myself:
‘What do I wish right now; what do I really want?’
I try to come back to a silent space in myself in order to observe and receive an impression.

                                                                                 *   *   *   *   *   *   *
​

Posted February 3, 2020
“Faith of consciousness is freedom.”
What is my experience with a state that I would call 'being free'?
 
Two voices on freedom from the literature:
 
Liberation leads to liberation.
These are the first words of truth—not truth in quotation marks but truth in the real meaning of the word; truth which is not merely theoretical, not simply a word, but truth that can be realized in practice. The meaning behind these words may be explained as follows:
By liberation is meant the liberation which is the aim of all schools, all religions, at all times.
This liberation can indeed be very great. All men desire it and strive after it. But it cannot be attained without the first liberation, a lesser liberation. The great liberation is liberation from influences outside us. The lesser liberation is liberation from influences within us.
                                                                                   (G.I. Gurdjieff; Views from the Real World; p 275)
 
 
Our understanding is limited; and what limits it even more is our belief that we know. It is precisely this that prevents us from opening, seeing and feeling.  When we see everything with the mind – because it knows only certain things and not others – we do not permit ourselves to live the experience of not knowing, since we think that we do know. This mind of ours always processes the answers; it imposes them on us and this limits us and hinders our freedom. But when we have the good fortune to perceive that we are limited, we can begin to doubt our mind, to question ourselves more deeply. And in that moment we need to open our hearts to the situation, to feel – and this is very difficult – but we have to learn to do it. All ideas can be useful, but it is the heart that must enter into action, because the feeling is what is missing, and this would add another dimension to our mental knowledge. In order to do this, we have to come to a stop within ourselves [relax tensions], and then, open.
                                                                         (Nathalie de Etiavan; A Sense of Wonder When I Do Not Know; p 99)
 
                                                                                 *   *   *   *   *   *   *


Posted January 26, 2020
Continuing the exploration of our understanding of faith, consciousness and freedom...  
  
The question is not what to do but how to see. Seeing is the most important thing – the act of seeing. I need to realize that it is truly an act, an action that brings something entirely new, a new possibility of vision, certainty and knowledge. This possibility appears during the act itself and disappears as soon as the seeing stops. It is only in this act of seeing that I will find a certain freedom…
 
Seeing does not come from thinking. It comes from the shock at the moment when, feeling an urgency to know what is true, I suddenly realize that my thinking mind cannot perceive reality. To understand what I really am at this moment, I need sincerity and humility, and an unmasked exposure that I do not know. This would mean to refuse nothing, exclude nothing, and enter into the experience of discovering what I think, what I sense, what I wish, all at this very moment.
 
Our conditioned thought always wants an answer. What is important is to develop another thinking, a vision. For this we have to liberate a certain energy that is beyond our usual thought. I need to experience “I do not know” without seeking an answer, to abandon everything to enter the unknown. Then it is no longer the same mind. My mind engages in a new way. I see without any preconceived idea, without choice. In relaxing, for example, I no longer choose to relax before knowing why. I learn to purify my power of vision, not by turning away from the undesirable or toward what is agreeable. I learn to stay in front and see clearly. All things have the same importance, and I become fixed on nothing. Everything depends on this vision, on a look that comes not from any command of my thought but from a feeling of urgency to know.
                                                           (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; edited from pp 207-8)
 
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Posted January 20, 2020
For possible discussion on Thursday:
"Faith of consciousness is freedom."
How do these three words from Gurdjieff resonate in terms of an inner work?
 
“…you can know consciousness only in yourself. Observe that I say you canknow, for you can know it only when you have it. And when you have not got it, you can know that you have not got it, not at that very moment, but afterwards. I mean that when it comes again you can see that it has been absent a long time, and you can find or remember the moment when it disappeared and when it reappeared. You can also define the moments when you are nearer to consciousness and further away from consciousness. But by observing in yourself the appearance and the disappearance of consciousness you will inevitably see one fact which you neither see nor acknowledge now, and that is that moments of consciousness are very short and are separated by long intervals of completely unconscious, mechanical working of the machine. You will then see that you can think, feel, act, speak, work, without being conscious of it…
 
"Your principal mistake consists in thinking that you always have consciousness,and in general, either that consciousness is always present or that it is never present. In reality consciousness is a property which is continually changing. Now it is present, now it is not present. And there are different degrees and different levels of consciousness. Both consciousness and the different degrees of consciousness must be understood in oneself by sensation, by taste."
                                                             (G.I. Gurdjieff; In Search of the Miraculous; edited from p 116)

                                                                                        *   *   *   *   *   *   *

                               Saturday Workday
                                           January 11, 2020
   
“This institute exists to help people to work on themselves. You can work as little or as much as you wish. People come here for various reasons, and they get what they come for. If it is only curiosity, then we arrange things to astonish them. If they come to get knowledge, we have many scientific experiments that will instruct them. But if they come to get Being, then they must do the work themselves. No one else can do the work for them, but it is also true that they cannot create the conditions themselves. Therefore, we create conditions.” 
​                                                                      (G.I. Gurdjieff; from Witness by JG Bennett, p 106)
 
                                                                                        *   *   *   *   *   *   *
​

                                     2019
Posted December 15, 2019
Gurdjieff: “Put yourself [in the other person’s place.] Imagine that what happens to them happens to you, that it is like what you have felt at certain moments when you had compassion for yourself. This will permit you to have compassion for them, and prepare you later to be able to [work] with the great impulses of Faith, Hope and Charity. Today this is impossible for you.”
                                                                                                (G.I. Gurdjieff; Paris Meetings 1943; p3)
 
                                                                                             *******
Suggestion:
Each day I seek opportunities to have brief interactions with others. What is it to put myself in another’s place? What do I see of myself in this attempt?
 
                                                                   *******
“We must always start with ourselves and take ourselves as an example, for we cannot see another man through the mask he wears. Only if we know ourselves can we see others, for all people are alike inside and others are the same as we are. They have the same good intentions to be better, but they cannot be; it is just as hard for them; they are equally unhappy, equally full of regrets afterwards. You must forgive what there is in them now and remember the future. If you are sorry for yourself, then for the sake of the future you must be sorry in advance for others.”

                                         (G.I. Gurdjieff; Views from the Real World; p 125)


                                    *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Posted December 8, 2019
Q: I see that now I am separate from other beings, from those who do not work. I no longer have anything in common with them. I feel separate. I thought the work would have the opposite result.
 
Gurdjieff: Yes, but later, much later. When you really know others from a deep observation of yourself, then compassion and love can be born in you. Now, simply because you have a theoretical knowledge of the ideas, you imagine that you are a herring that comes from a different barrel than the others.
                                                                    (G.I. Gurdjieff; Paris Meetings 1943; p5)
                                                    
                                                                   *******
 
Suggestion:
Each day I seek opportunities that allow me to have a brief interaction with others, including with the type of person that I might typically try to avoid. During these encounters I explore advice given by Gurdjieff to “take as a task to observe the other person so that he/she becomes a mirror for me, like an instrument, so I can learn more about myself.”
 
I remain open to the possibility that in some form or another I may share many of the other person’s traits, even those I like the least. 


                                      *   *   *   *   *   *   *
Posted November 24, 2019
What is it to suffer? Is it to allow myself to be as I am, to stay with myself as I am? To suffer my neighbor to be as he or she is – to stay with them closely, not expecting them to be other than how they are? First I need to find the possibility of allowing, of accepting however I find myself to be, before I can extend that sympathy to another person. In such suffering may be born a moment of being more of who I really am, really experiencing who my neighbor is, and through that may come for a moment the joy of everything being more in place, a sense of order appearing.
                                                                                                (Rosemary Nott; Parabola: Spring 2011)
 
Each day I seek opportunities that allow me to have brief social interactions with others. During these encounters I interact as I normally would while trying to ‘keep an eye on myself’ in order to see the ways in which my body is reacting, what my attitude is, the thoughts turning in my head.
 
I sincerely face the possibility that what I see in these moments is who I am.

                                      *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Posted November 18, 2019
Suggestion:  Find a passage in the reading below that particularly resonates with you and work with it. Share your experiences at next Thursday’s meeting.
 
In my state of being today there is no stability, no “I.” I do not know myself. I begin to feel I must come to a moment of Presence that is more complete. What I need above all is to have an impression – as deep as possible – of myself. I never have a deep impression. My impressions are superficial. They just produce associations at the surface which have no memory and change nothing, transform nothing. Gurdjieff spoke of impressions as food, but we do not understand what it means to feed ourselves or its significance for our being.
 
I am poor in the material of impressions of myself. What I have is so little, it has no weight. If I really want to know something, to be sure of something, I first need to be “impressed” by the knowledge. I need this new knowledge. I must be “impressed” by it so strongly that I will at this moment know it with all of myself, my whole being, not merely think it with my head. If I do not have enough impressions, enough of this being- knowledge, I can have no conviction. Without this knowledge, without material, how will I value things? How will I work? There is nothing to provide an impulse in one direction or another. There is no possibility to act consciously. No, the very first thing I need for conscious action is impressions of myself, both in quiet conditions when I am more open to what I am, and in the midst of life when I try to see myself being lost. Until I have a certain quantity of impressions, I cannot see further, I cannot understand more.
 
We think of impressions as lifeless, fixed like a photograph. But with every impression we receive a certain amount of energy, something alive that acts on us, that animates us. I can feel this when I have a new impression of myself, an impression entirely different from the way I usually experience myself. I suddenly know something real in myself in quite a new way and I receive an energy by which I am animated. But then I lose it. I do not retain it. It goes as if taken by a thief. And when I need it most, when I wish to be present in front of my life, there is no support to help me and I lose myself. I begin to see that impressions of myself are food, that they bring an energy which must be received and must be retained.
 
We need to see what is in the way, and we need to understand why receiving an impression is so difficult. It is not because I do not wish to receive it. It is because I am not able. I am always closed, whatever the circumstances of life. At times, maybe for a flash I am open to an impression. But almost immediately I react. The impression is automatically associated with other things and the reaction comes. The button is pushed and this or that thought, emotion or gesture must follow. I cannot help it, first of all because I do not see it. My reaction cuts me off from the impression, as well as from the reality it represents. This is the barrier, the wall. In reacting, I close.
 
What I do not see is that I lose all contact with reality when my habitual functions take charge. Now, for example, I turn to my body and sense that my body is here. I sense my left arm – that is, I have an impression of my left arm. As soon as this impression reaches me, it provokes my thought, which says, “arm…left arm.” And at the moment I say this to myself, I lose the impression. In thinking of the arm, I believe I know it. I have more trust in the thought than in the fact, the real existence of the arm. But the thought of the arm is not the fact. And it is the same with my own reality. I have the impression of life in myself, but as soon as I think “it is me,” I lose it. I take my thought to be the fact itself and I believe I know it. With this credulity, this blind belief in my thought, I no longer have any question or any interest in receiving the impression.
 
I am unable to take in impressions consciously. Therefore, I do not know myself. At the same time I need this more than anything else. If I cannot receive an impression of myself, I will never be able to remember myself and know what I am. The moment of receiving an impression is the moment of becoming conscious. It is the act of seeing.
 
                                                                                   (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; pp 33-4)

                                        *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Posted November 10, 2019
Below are Saturday's readings from Mme de Salzmann and Lord Pentland along with the suggestion of something to try.

Mind is never in the now---it is in past or future.
Sensation is the key to now. Sensation does not lie.
Feeling joins sensation.
Mind can pay attention---only then is it in the now.
                                (Jeanne de Salzmann; Mendham, March 19, 1968)
 
Something to try:
I find my own way to work with the above from Mme de Salzmann.
What questions arise as I try?
 
                                                *  *  *  *  *  *  * 
Second reading from Saturday:
Lord Pentland: I’m sure almost everyone here has seen that something is missing. What is missing is that I don’t know myself. We don’t wish to study ourselves. We’d rather achieve, or dream about achieving something.
 
Questioner: How do we know we are on the right track?
 
LP: We have so little capacity to wish to study ourselves. Do you see in relation to what principle we study ourselves? …I have to study myself in relation to some principle. I have to study myself in relation to the idea of states of consciousness. We don’t study at random. We study ourselves in relation to sleep and waking.
 
Q: I would like to become more conscious. Is there any particular time to study?
 
LP: Now we have left our situation. You see? “I would like to become more conscious. I would like to be a painter.” What is the difference? Did you get any result that way? Of course not. Our task is to watch, observe what we see. We study ourselves in relation to states of consciousness. Each time we shall see something different. We study. We are not yet remembering ourselves. You see? We are trying to study ourselves…
 
Q: Suppose you observe one state of consciousness and recognize it is not good. How do you raise it to another? How do you get out of it?
 
LP: Yes, this is very important. But we haven’t reached this yet. You must be patient.
                                                                               (John Pentland; Exchanges Within; pp 6-7)
 
                                       *   *   *   *   *   *   *
Posted November 2, 2019
Halloween affected attendance this past Thursday, so we’re all invited to work with the reading below using an interesting approach that we tried at the meeting. The reading is divided into sections comprised of one or two sentences. Read and reflect on a section for a few minutes. What questions come up for me? How does what Mme de Salzmann say compare with my own experience? Then move onto the next section. A task suggestion follows the reading.
 
[The question is not what to do but how to see. Seeing is the most important thing – the act of seeing.]  [I need to realize that it is truly an act, an action that brings something entirely new, a new possibility of vision, certainty and knowledge. This possibility appears during the act itself and disappears as soon as the seeing stops.]  [It is only in this act of seeing that I will find a certain freedom…]
 
[Seeing does not come from thinking. It comes from the shock at the moment when, feeling an urgency to know what is true, I suddenly realize that my thinking mind cannot perceive reality.]  [To understand what I really am at this moment, I need sincerity and humility, and an unmasked exposure that I do not know. This would mean to refuse nothing, exclude nothing, and enter into the experience of discovering what I think, what I sense, what I wish, all at this very moment.]
                                                           (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; excerpted from p 207)
 
  
TASK SUGGESTION: 
In a moment of seeing I explore what it is to deepen my inquiry into myself as a three-centered being.
What needs to be active in order to experience myself in these moments?
 

                                       *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Posted October 27, 2019
The question is not what to do but how to see. Seeing is the most important thing – the act of seeing. I need to realize that it is truly an act, an action that brings something entirely new, a new possibility of vision, certainty and knowledge. This possibility appears during the act itself and disappears as soon as the seeing stops. It is only in this act of seeing that I will find a certain freedom…
 
Seeing does not come from thinking. It comes from the shock at the moment when, feeling an urgency to know what is true, I suddenly realize that my thinking mind cannot perceive reality. To understand what I really am at this moment, I need sincerity and humility, and an unmasked exposure that I do not know. This would mean to refuse nothing, exclude nothing, and enter into the experience of discovering what I think, what I sense, what I wish, all at this very moment.
                                                (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; excerpted from p 207)

 
TASK SUGGESTION: 
At designated moments of the day that I’ve decided on in advance during which I can be quiet and alone for a few minutes, I explore the receiving of impressions of myself not as something to ‘achieve’ but as a line of study that becomes informed by the questions that come up for me as I try.

If possible, I also try a few times during moments when I'm actively engaged in something.


                                       *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Posted October 20, 2019
Sometimes it takes many years before you suddenly understand that a word you have used for a very long time doesn’t mean exactly what you thought it meant. It is different.
 
For example, the notion of effort. This word at first means something you strive for. But you understand at a certain point that the kind of effort you need to comprehend is different; that what is meant by effort is letting go. It is an effort because I have to struggle against what is ingrained in me about the idea of effort. I want to get something, to do something. Finally, after years of trying, I begin to understand that the nature of effort is to allow something to appear. This new meaning of effort has to do with relaxation. And it is really an effort to understand relaxation when all my training was to strive, to battle against, to chastise some aspect of myself.
 
So over time the meaning of these outer words begins to change – not through an investigation of their etymology but through your experience; what they communicate to you is not the same as it was before…
 
It is the same with the word ‘attention.’ With my ordinary attention, which is very useful, I can focus on a mathematical problem, a practical problem. It’s needed. I begin that way also when I work on a spiritual path. There is no other way for me, I don’t know any other attention except this focusing attention. Until there is a moment where, because I relate to other parts of myself, such as the body, for example, when I begin to be able to welcome another sort of attention which is no longer focusing but embracing. Different.
 
Q: So when the mind encounters the idea of relaxation, it is just an idea.
 
PR: Just an idea, and it doesn’t know what to do.
 
Q: And it has to try something, so there is a doing.
 
PR: I cannot help but to begin by doing. It is what and how I have learned. I have been told I must succeed. I have been taught how to do, not how to let go. It is something you learn in the end not through words but when you try. You meditate, for example, and at the beginning I try to force: “I’m here, I’m here.” I’m here in my mind, my head, but I’m not here. And one day suddenly a different sensation comes, in my arm, in another part. I discover something new…
 
Q: It has been said that effort is really joining with something that is already offered, and this statement brings the wish to let go…
 
PR: That too needs to be questioned. To let go is not to collapse, to passively let go. I let go of a way of mind and body directing things but there is something that remains that is in relation with another energy. Otherwise there is nothing if you just let go. Another word is used often, stillness, “the mind is still.” Yet when there is stillness you will see that there is also a great deal of movement of which you were not previously aware. You become aware of coarse movements like breathing, even the beating of the heart, of which you were not aware the moment before. But there are other movements, the movement of the energy of sensation, for example. So I’m still, but my breathing continues, my blood circulates. But my mind is still – that means I am not busy with words, not explaining things in myself. And this itself can cause a reaction, a fear that I am being deprived of words; I am becoming stupid.
 
Q: So just as in Movements there is a demand on the attention so that dreaming doesn’t begin, also in meditation there is a demand to include more? To include sensation, relaxation, to include all the levels of movement and stillness?
 
PR: And for this to happen I cannot dream. Everything is there. Even the very finest energy is there. But I am not in touch with it.
 
                                                (Paul Reynard; “Another Axis Within;” The Inner Journey; edited from pp 104-109)
 
 
TASK SUGGESTION:
I direct my attention towards a part of my body that is in movement (the legs walking, for example, the hands preparing a meal, an arm hammering, the diaphragm breathing, etc) and I explore sensation and relaxation related to this part of the body in movement. If possible, I expand my awareness to include the rest of my body as well.
 
What in me needs to be active in order to experience myself in these moments?

                                       *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Posted October 14, 2019
Below is a task suggestion we’ve often worked with, but with an extra demand in light of Saturday afternoon’s exchange during which we shared observations of the value of a daily preparation and of clarity in my attitude and in what it is I wish for.
 
TASK SUGGESTION:
In the state of being that I find myself at the end of a sitting or some other form of quiet work, I visualize several activities I expect to find myself in during the early part of the day during which I can work with the following:
I direct my attention towards the part of my body that is in movement (the legs walking, for example, the hands preparing a meal, an arm hammering, the diaphragm breathing, etc), trying to become aware of the amount of force I’m using for the activity I’m engaged in, and then expanding to notice the tensions or relaxation in the rest of my body.
 
 
READINGS: The material in these readings may be helpful in offering differing ways of approaching the task as a study rather than as just something to succeed at…
The starting point is relaxation. Until you learn how to relax, you cannot save energy. At first, to relax needs energy. Now you cannot relax without attention. If you use your attention for some time, you will begin to relax by habit. Then you can use your attention for something else. Your machine can do many things for you if you let it. But you do not allow it to work for you. Your machine creates the energy needed for its own existence. It even creates a little more for you to use in your external life.
 
Now you cannot use this energy because it is wasted in your feelings. You do not even know what your feelings are. You do not understand that it is possible to create feelings through thought. At present, it is the other way round; your thoughts are the slaves of your feelings, but you do not know it.
                                                                                              (G.I. Gurdjieff; Gurdjieff’s Early Talks; p 127)
 
Then it’s a question of being more silent, simply receptive, as if my ability to listen had become so sensitive that I could hear the slightest movement of life.
 
Can I have real impression, a conscious impression of myself?
                                                                                    (Michel Conge; Life: Life Behind Appearances; p 57)

                                           *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Posted September 22, 2019
Part 1:
Lord Pentland: I’m sure almost everyone here has seen that something is missing. What is missing is that I don’t know myself. We don’t wish to study ourselves. We’d rather achieve, or dream about achieving something.
 
Questioner: Isn’t that just the point? I get very confused as to whether I’m dreaming or self-observing. Isn’t there a need for guidance? How does one know one is not going around in a whirlpool? Gurdjieff stresses how little we know about ourselves. I find that true, and I wonder if I’m on the right track. Guidance is necessary for beginners. How do we know we are on the right track?
 
LP: Do you see what is the right track?
 
Q: That’s what I want to know.
 
LP: We have so little capacity to wish to study ourselves. Do you see in relation to what principle we study ourselves?
 
Q: We must attempt understanding in relation to ourselves and in the universe. Our motive would be to increase our being.
 
LP: Yes, that would be the motive. But I have to study myself in relation to some principle. I have to study myself in relation to the idea of states of consciousness. We don’t study at random. We study ourselves in relation to sleep and waking.
 
Q: I would like to become more conscious. Is there any particular time to study?
 
LP: Now we have left our situation. You see? “I would like to become more conscious. I would like to be a painter.” What is the difference? Did you get any result that way? Of course not. Our task is to watch, observe what we see. We study ourselves in relation to states of consciousness. Each time we shall see something different. We study. We are not yet remembering ourselves. You see? We are trying to study ourselves…
 
Q: Suppose you observe one state of consciousness and recognize it is not good. How do you raise it to another? How do you get out of it?
 
LP: Yes, this is very important. But we haven’t reached this yet. You must be patient.
 
                                                                                                            (John Pentland; Exchanges Within; pp 6-7)

Part 2:
Questioner: If while talking mechanically one is aware of it, does that awareness mean anything?
 
Lord Pentland: It’s so difficult, isn’t it, to be aware of more than one thing. For instance, if anyone here has really made the effort to control talking, you can see that it is impossible unless you can remember why, unless you can see that this energy which goes into useless talking is all that we have for working on ourselves.
 
You see, we forget to look at our actual lives. As soon as we come to a particular means of understanding ourselves, we forget the real situation of our lives. We forget that there are two ways of looking – the automatic, where we justify what is happening and follow behind, always trying to catch up to ourselves, and the other way, quite different, which is the small idea that we can wish to change ourselves. Gurdjieff says, “If you wish, you can.”
 
Q: The terms ‘self-observation’ and ‘self-remembering,’ the distinction between them is not clear to me. What is the distinction? Or are they the same?
 
LP: Of course we speak of something we know very little about.  What is self-remembering? Something I cannot approach directly. I can only say it is a state of consciousness which is my right and within my possibility, but I cannot achieve it. But self-observation is an action. It is something one can do in that state.
 
Q: Don’t you need to go along with self-remembering? Not identify with something. Try to feel detached and sort of small and yet try to hold onto what is stable.
 
LP: But what is stable?
 
Q: I don’t feel it is myself.
 
LP: What can we hold onto then? We try not to identify, so what is stable?
 
Q: I try to feel it.
 
LP: It is your imagination. Your fear. Do you see what I mean? Do you see what we mean by the feeling of not remembering oneself, the feeling that there is nowhere to stay? This is the beginning. In order to come to this we must work against some very definite obstacles, otherwise we imagine everything, and our lives will become very narrow… I believe that we all feel that in Gurdjieff’s ideas there is something we can work on – reasonable and sound – and not take our feet off the ground. Let’s not get off into something fantastic. It becomes more difficult.
 
Q: How does one approach these things without words? I’m constantly involved in inner talking.
 
LP: Yes, you’ve read that talking is an obstacle?
 
Q: Yes, outer talking. But this inner talking…
 
LP: But you never saw it as an obstacle before?
 
Q: I do now.
 
LP: It’s very good that you see this. You will see a new reason to study. It’s how we are. You will see a need, a reason to study. Before it was theory, but now you have seen what stands in your way.
 
Q: Yes, if I could somehow get away from talking.
 
LP: It’s not the talking itself. It’s that we identify with it. We lose our energy in those words. And what is energy? We put all our attention in those words and we lose all our energy. Just as it has happened millions of times this way, so it will take millions and millions of little efforts to change it…
 
These words you speak take away the little energy you have. From long habit one’s attention is drawn outwards. Where is my attention? Scattered in many places. You must see it as a force that can be controlled a little. You have some possibility of seeing how it goes, by trying to turn it the other way.
 
Each morning, remember Gurdjieff saying that the only preparation we can make is trying to keep a little attention on ourselves. Instead of rushing at once into all I will do, there is a possibility just then of remembering about not allowing attention and energies to be drawn in all directions…
 
                                                                                                   (John Pentland; Exchanges Within; pp 9-11)
 

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Posted September 14, 2019 
SUGGESTION:
Since our current work together with the first obligolnian striving has moved us, interestingly, in the direction of facing questions related to ‘preparation,’ it might be interesting to spend a second week with last week’s task suggestion that begins while still in bed. To be clear, read the task word for word for specificity:
 
When I first wake up in the morning I continue to lie in bed for a minute or two and take in the impressions of my body…the sensations, the movement of air in and out, etc. Then when I get out of bed I again try to experience this awareness of the body and the breathing as I move to the very first thing I do. Then as I move to yet the very next thing I do, I again try to experience this awareness.*
 
ADDITIONAL SUGGESTION:
Following the early morning preparation I decide in advance on three more physical actions where I know from experience that I’m very mechanical (e.g., putting on clothing, walking to the car, standing in a line, etc.). On these occasions I again explore receiving impressions of my body through sensation and breathing.
 
*(These would be the most mundane beginnings of my day…e.g., getting out of the bed, walking to the bathroom, bathroom rituals, walking to the kitchen to prepare coffee/tea…or whatever the first things are that I do in the morning that I more than likely carry out in a most habitual way.)
 
                                                    *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Many observations about energy have been shared in recent Thursday meetings. The rather provocative reading below only become available to the English-speaking public with the 2014 publication of Early Talks, and includes a very interesting view on the work with relaxation:

READING:
[London, 1922]
At present all new impressions fail to enter. They merely start the rolls turning in the centers by a mechanical action which you cannot even observe. That is why you have no conscious control over your energy. There are methods for getting new energy, but you have to dig for it, like getting rocks out of a quarry. You must take your pickaxe and pound. Even when you have the rock, it must be broken to powder so that you can get the precious metal out of it. People are not willing to work like this, and so they live their lives with only the energy which comes to them mechanically. This is enough to keep you alive, but it is not enough for conscious “doing.” If you wish to do anything effective, you must acquire more energy. But you have not got enough decision in you to work this way. You cannot get more energy alone. Who is to apply the red pepper or stick the pitchfork you-know-where?
 
If you are not willing for this, everything will remain the same. You think you learn something new, but you only listen to your own thoughts and associations. As I am speaking to you now, you think you are learning something; but that would mean having new thoughts, and new thoughts are impossible for you until you have a new force. If you wish to change something, the old methods will not help you. New methods are necessary. You try to think about what I say but your thinking is hindered by your feeling and instinctive centers. If you want to get new thoughts, those can only come if you change the other two centers. For this, super force is necessary, and your machine will not stand this unless it is prepared. Nothing has been connected with you all your life. The connections are now rusty. They must be greased – but what will get the grease into the joints? You have to make the machine turn, but it has lost the habit.
 
You must understand that the connections exist, but it is you that have let them grow rusty.  Even the weakest has more force than is necessary for life. You could make the machine turn and grease the rusty parts if you did not waste all the energy. But more than three-quarters of your energy is wasted without even serving the purposes of life. With a quarter of the energy you could do everything that you need to do in life and have a surplus for work. But you waste it on imagination, unnecessary muscular tensions, emotional tensions, and so on. The first thing you have to learn is to save the energy you waste in this way and use it for conscious work.
 
The starting point is relaxation. Until you learn how to relax, you cannot save energy. At first, to relax needs energy. Now you cannot relax without attention. If you use your attention for some time, you will begin to relax by habit. Then you can use your attention for something else. Your machine can do many things for you if you let it. But you do not allow it to work for you. Your machine creates the energy needed for its own existence. It even creates a little more for you to use in your external life. Now you cannot use this energy because it is wasted in your feelings. You do not even know what your feelings are. You do not understand that it is possible to create feelings through thought. At present, it is the other way round; your thoughts are the slaves of your feelings, but you do not know it…
 
Today you have a thousand “I”s. Each weakness is an “I” that at any moment can make itself your master. To have your own “I” it is necessary for it to be born. It has been conceived because you have allowed the work to enter into you. It will not grow by itself; it must be fed so that it can accumulate substance and one happy day take form. Then it can develop and be born.
 
This substance of “I” comes only from intentional suffering. When, for instance, you wish strongly for a cigarette and deny yourself, you will suffer inwardly. Then say, “I wish to make this inward force my own force.” “I wish to receive this substance of my intentional suffering for my own ‘I.’” By this means you can become an individual and go on the path that leads to the perfected man.
 
A sign of the perfected man and his chief particularity in ordinary life is that, in regard to everything happening outside of him, he can, as a splendid actor, perform to perfection externally the part corresponding to the given situation and, at the same time, internally never be identified or agree with it…
 
I must warn you that you cannot attain such blessings if you insist on clinging to your present joys. Look back at your life and see what good has come to you from your past joys. They are as useless to you today as the snows of last year which have melted and left no trace by which one can remember what they were. Only the imprints of conscious labor and intentional suffering are real and can be used in the future for obtaining good.
 
                                                                                                         (G.I. Gurdjieff; Gurdjieff’s Early Talks; pp 125-127)
 
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Posted September 8, 2019 
Reading:
We have to keep coming back to this experience of relaxing, of letting go, which could become richer and richer. If relaxation becomes clearer, there appears a sense of being open and available. But usually, when this availability comes about, I say to myself, “Right, and now what should I do?” There seems to be a sort of ceiling, I don’t understand. In fact, I’ve never experienced life in me!
 
The moment you really feel something that you are totally incapable of explaining, you know that life is there, with its tangible materiality. You can receive it, recognize it; it is an impression of myself that is almost always lacking. I can see that I have to stand clear of everything that provokes me, of this “me” that fancies doing something, grasping, helping itself. Then it’s a question of being more silent, simply receptive, as if my ability to be receptive had become so sensitive that I could hear the slightest movement of this life.
 
Can I have a real impression, a conscious impression of myself?
                                                                                (Michel Conge; Life: Life Behind Appearances; p 5)
 
TASK SUGGESTION:
I begin each day with an effort to experience a different level of awareness during my first manifestations of the day:
 
When I first wake up in the morning I continue to lie in bed for a minute or two and take in the impressions of my body…the sensations, the movement of air in and out, etc. Then when I get out of bed I again try to experience this awareness of the body and the breathing as I move to the very first thing I do. Then as I move to yet the very next thing I do, I again try to experience this awareness. (These would be the most mundane beginnings of my day…e.g., getting out of the bed, walking to the bathroom, bathroom rituals, walking to the kitchen to prepare coffee/tea…or whatever the first things are that I do in the morning that I more than likely carry out in a most habitual way.
 
ADDITIONAL SUGGESTION:
Following the early morning preparation of relating to my body through sensation and breathing, I try later in the day on three more occasions of typically habitual physical actions (decided on in advance and/or when I remember ‘by chance’):
I sense the movement of air into and out of the body through my breathing and at the same time ‘visualize’ that I’m receiving an energy that animates the parts of the body that are active in these moments.
 
Does this act of ‘visualizing’ in some way relate to Beelzebub’s advice to Hassein to “convince the unconscious parts—as if they were conscious?”


                                           *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Posted September 2, 2019 
On a practical level, last Thursday’s exchange seemed to suggest the value of remaining open to the questions surrounding ‘a need for preparation,’ and the value of continuing to explore the types of intentional efforts that our own experiences suggest can be part of such a preparation. 
 
 
WHEN THE CAPTAIN had gone, Beelzebub glanced at his grandson and, noticing his unusual state, asked with concern and a shade of anxiety:
 
"What is the matter, my dear boy? What are you thinking about so deeply?"
 
Looking up at his grandfather with eyes full of sorrow, Hassein said thoughtfully:
 
"I don't know what is the matter with me, dear Grandfather, but your talk with the captain has brought me to some exceedingly melancholy thoughts. Things I never thought of before are now a-thinking in me.
 
"Thanks to your talk, it has gradually become clear to my consciousness that in the Universe of our Endlessness things have not always been as I now see and understand them.
 
"Formerly I should never have allowed myself to imagine, even if the thought had come to me by association, that this ship we are flying on, for instance, has not always been just as it is now.
 
"Only now have I come to understand clearly that everything we have and use today, all the contemporary amenities and everything necessary for our comfort and welfare, did not always exist, nor did they make their appearance so easily.
 
"It seems that in the past certain beings must have labored hard and suffered very much for all this, and endured a great deal that perhaps they could have spared themselves They labored and suffered solely that we might have these advantages today and use them for our welfare.
 
"And all this, consciously or unconsciously, they did for us—beings quite unknown and entirely indifferent to them.
 
"And now not only do we not thank them, but we do not even know anything about them, and take it all as a matter of course, and neither ponder this question nor trouble ourselves in the slightest about it.
 
"I, for instance, have already existed so many years in the Universe, yet the thought has never entered my head that perhaps there was a time when everything I see and have did not exist, and that everything was not born with me like my nose.
 
"And so, my dear and kind Grandfather, since your conversation with the captain has gradually made me aware of all this with the whole of my presence, the need has arisen in me to make clear to my Reason why I personally have these advantages, and what obligations I am under on their account.
 
"It is just because of this that there now arises in me a 'process of remorse.’
 
Having said this, Hassein bowed his head and became silent.
 
Looking at him affectionately, Beelzebub began to speak as follows:
 
"I advise you, my dear Hassein, not to put such questions to yourself yet. Be patient. Only when you reach the corresponding period of your existence for becoming aware of such essence-questions, and reflect actively upon them, will you understand what you must do in return.
 
"At your age, you are not yet obliged to pay for your existence.
 
"This present period of your life is not given you for paying for your existence, but for preparing yourself for the future—for the obligations becoming to a responsible three-brained being.
 
"So in the meantime, exist as you exist. Only do not forget one thing: at your age, it is indispensable that every day when the sun rises, while watching the reflection of its splendor, you bring about a contact between your consciousness and the various unconscious parts of your common presence. Trying to make this state last, think and convince the unconscious parts—as if they were conscious—that if they hinder your general functioning in the process of ordinary existence, then in the period of your responsible age they will not only be unable to enjoy the good that is proper to them, but also your whole presence, of which they are a part, will not be capable of becoming a good servant of our Common Endless Creator, and will thus be unable to pay honorably for your arising and existence.
 
                                                      (Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson; 1992 revised edition; Chapter 7)
 
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Posted August 25, 2019 
Another of Gurdjieff's first-generation pupils speaking about receiving direct impressions of our state of consciousness, as well as a reminder of the role of sensing the body...
 
If we are to listen to our inner lives, we can hardly avoid the need for inner preparation. This listening is essentially the experience of a new relationship with ourselves. It requires the mobilization of our attention. When the attention begins to awaken, we realize that it can become more stable, less like a cork forever bobbing back to the water’s surface. We need first to emphasize coming to the best possible inner relaxation, while keeping a vigilant eye on the one who starts talking inside us. In these inner conditions, we can discover where various tensions lodge in us. Our mental associations become less invasive. After this first cleansing, at certain moments we have the impression of a more real life in our bodies. Without changing anything, we become sensitive to the rhythm of our breathing. During this approach to quiet work, we draw nearer to the possibility of knowing a state of being in which there is no question of doing something but rather of silently experiencing impressions linked to our inner reality.
 
This state is one of non-doing. It is not a state of total immobility – that would be a sign of interference. At no moment whatever is there a question of eliminating this or introducing that. On the contrary, everything in us is attentive, supple and unknown.
 
For now, we see that we are not wholly capable of this but, despite our varied obstacles, we practice it daily.  
                                                                       (This Fundamental Quest; Henriette Lannes*; p. 15)

 *Henriette Lannes was Andre’s first teacher in the Work before she was sent by Mme de Salzmann to London to direct the work of the English groups. (Andre then became part of Henri Tracol’s Paris-based group.)


Suggestion:
Three times over the course of each day, each time making an effort to be aware of my inner state, I sit with the following questions related to the first obligolnian striving:
 
The first striving: To have in one’s ordinary being-existence everything satisfying and really necessary for the planetary  body.
 
Is there a word(s) or phrase in the striving that resonates in some way with me?
What are the questions that come up for me in pondering the striving?
Is there a way in which one might work with the striving if one was interested in doing so?
 
                                            *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Posted August 18, 2019 
In wishing to discover differing states of consciousness in myself, I work with Gurdjieff’s suggestion at the beginning of Beelzebub’s Tales with the brief reading below:
 
“Read each of my expositions thrice:
First—at least as you have already become mechanized to read all your contemporary books and newspapers,
Second—as if you were reading aloud to another person,
And only third—try to fathom the gist of my writings.”
 
I try this each day this week, preferably under varying conditions and with a plan in mind such as reading it for the first time early in the day, the second reading at mid-day, the third reading during early evening.
 
“I understand very well the state you speak about. You are in front of a new possibility, but it requires a strong work, a decision, a will which is not easy to maintain. It is a moment when the ideas are not enough. There is a force, a higher one; it is in us, but can have no action as long as our state does not allow it—as long as our centres are not related. At that stage the Ideas do not cooperate, one has to feel the inner inadequacy, be touched, suffer from it and give all one's attention to this inner relation which will open the door to the higher energy.
                                                                                                       (Jeanne de Salzmann; Heart Without Measure; p 115)
 

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Posted August 11, 2019 
The only moment we experience something true or authentic is the moment when we find ourself completely at a loss. Everything else is personality, ego. And my inner search always comes from my ego, from my person. In that sense, when I feel I have almost nothing, and that my understanding is almost insignificant – if I have the courage to stay there, if I have enough intelligence to remain there – suddenly I recognize the truth, or the first taste of the truth, which I have been seeking for so many years. This first taste of truth…it is I. Only there, only in that moment, can I say that I am directly in touch with myself.
 
Don’t put your trust in any logic that gives you the illusion that you understand. In fact, it leads you astray. When my intellect explains something to me, it’s a terrible lie because the intellect actually understands nothing. What can it know of God – or of anything truly great?
 
An organic state is a living state. Suddenly I experience this state. At such a moment I see all my functions gravitating around this state, and I do not feel any contempt for them. Only this direct perception has meaning. It gives me direction.
 
That is why the inner life is so very difficult. Everyone balks; we always expect to get in through another door. There is no other door. This is the door. Yet it’s the one I want nothing to do with. I want to go through with my baggage, with my knowledge, with all my tattered finery. But it can’t be done. “You can’t get to heaven with your boots on.”
 
…When all that falls away, when there is nothing left but the taste of being suddenly stripped of all encumbrances, only then does the glimmer of the possibility of understanding appear. It is in this non-understanding that the passage lies. It is the moment when the ego no longer dares to assert its claim. If I am freed from that for an instant, of course, I feel very poor. But that’s the way it is, and that’s the way I am. That is what everyone dislikes. That is why people shun the inner search.
 
You understand what the Christian scriptures have tried to convey to us; giving up the world does not mean giving up our activities; it means giving up a certain way of seeing. It is not forms that are prohibited, but attachment, belief in a kind of illusion. I may pass through, perhaps, but empty-handed. This doesn’t mean that I will be condemned forever to have no activity of any kind. I will find myself stripped and, at that point, the functions can begin to serve, but as long as they are mixed, there is no way of passing through.
 
I have a long undertaking before me to recognize that this passage cannot happen by itself, to recognize what would be possible…
 
I have no real task if I am lost in functioning; nor do I have a real task if I escape towards the higher while abandoning all relationship with the world. Not only do I need to discover the passage, the way through, but I must also be capable of commitment. The passage is not a means of escape; it requires acceptance of the human condition. Otherwise, it’s just an illusion.
 
                                                                                        (Michel Conge; Inner Octaves; excerpted from pp 83-85)
 
                                                              *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Task Suggestion:
Both last week’s reading and the reading above speak of the need for commitment and for ‘strong work, a decision, a will which is not easy to maintain’ in order that we might be capable of exploring the value of intentionally reaching a state in which we are more directly in touch with our wish.
 
What is my experience in relation to Gurdjieff’s declaration that ‘man has no will?’
Are there ways in which we can practice developing will?
Is the study of what it is to obey related to strengthening of will?
Can working with a task be related to developing will and/or the study of obeying?

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Posted August 5, 2019 
I wrote to Madame de Salzmann:
As the time I spent with you recedes further, I find myself in more and more confusion. What seemed clear then does not seem clear at all now. A kind of meaninglessness and futility of effort is trying to take hold of my psyche again. In particular, it seems difficult to make a demand on myself. And something in me begins to make excuses more and more successfully. I do not wish to live for a lower call and seem unable to respond to a higher one. Nothing other than the work really interests me, but I find myself not working. I know I must work, but soon I forget, as if I have not even heard of it. I find it a great help to work with others.
 
Madame de Salzmann's reply came in the fall:
I understand very well the state you speak about. You are in front of a new possibility, but it requires a strong work, a decision, a will which is not easy to maintain. It is a moment when the ideas are not enough. There is a force, a higher one; it is in us, but can have no action as long as our state does not allow it—as long as our centres are not related. At that stage the Ideas do not cooperate, one has to feel the inner inadequacy, be touched, suffer from it and give all one's attention to this inner relation which will open the door to the higher energy.
                                                                                                              (Ravi Ravindra; Heart Without Measure; p 115)

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​
 Posted July 24, 2019 
Reflecting on all this later, I realized how important it is to avoid moralism about the Work. 'I ought to do this' or 'I ought not to do that' always leads to a conflict of vice and virtue, or to an opposition between my freedom and an externally imposed discipline. One needs to see what one is, what one is lacking, what one needs. If one sees, then one proceeds from inside seeking the conditions which help—as a plant naturally bends to get more light. The problem is not of ethics; one needs a science of being. One needs to inquire in freedom. When one sees the need for right conditions, the need for help, for instruction, the need for other people, the need for payment, then one sees that discipline and obedience sustain freedom and are not opposed to it. Then one sees from the inside the need for discipline, or submission, the need for freedom not so much for oneself but from oneself. If I inquire in freedom, I am in question. What am I? I see that I cannot do it, but without me it cannot be done. I cannot do it but in any case it has to be done, and I have a part to play. I can let it be done through me. The first renunciation is of inaction; the next one is that of egotistic action. 
 
                                                                                                        (Ravi Ravindra; Heart Without Measure; p 30)

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Posted June 30, 2019 
An experience that was shared during our exchange last Thursday evening…someone’s observation that moments of coming back to presence don’t always have the same taste…reminded me of Gurdjieff’s statement that “in reality consciousness is a property that is continually changing, [and] there are different degrees and different levels of consciousness.”*
 
This raises the question as to how our experience of differing levels of consciousness might be of help to us in our wish to have a practice, and in particular, our work with tasks. Is it possible that sometimes we read the weekly ‘reading and task’ emails at moments of considerable distraction, while multi-tasking, etc., and in the process receive only a rather low level impression? And then we rely on our memory of this low level impression later on when we try to remember and work with the task? Might we receive varying impressions of these readings and tasks…some more useful, some more aligned with our wish for something sacred…if we were to read and reread them, making an attempt to revisit them in moments of quiet, in moments when we have a taste of something higher in our inner state?
 
The study of ‘what it is to have a practice’ may very well include trying in a different way the efforts that we already make.
 
Task Suggestion:
Each of visit our website’s Members tab (pw Octave) and choose a reading & task that interests us. We try the ‘read and reread’ suggestion given above and share at the next meeting our impressions of working in this way.
 
 
*(In Search of the Miraculous; p 116)

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Posted June 23, 2019
It was a recurrent theme, as if nothing could be accomplished until inner and outer had been distinguished, separated, then reintegrated in a new, more knowing way…
“One thing,” he said, “make you rich for life. Richer than your Mr. Rockefeller. There are two ‘struggles’ – inner world struggle and outer world struggle, but never can these two make contact to make data for third world. Not even God can give this possibility for contact between outer world struggle and inner world struggle, not even your heredity. Only one thing: must make intentional contact between outer world struggle and inner world struggle. Then can make data which crystallize for third world of man, sometimes called world of soul. Understand?”
                                                 (Gurdjieff speaking to Kathryn Hulme and others – 1930s; Gurdjieff Rediscovered; p 167)
 
 
Suggestion:
Continuing to ponder the question of ‘what is it to have a practice,’ I memorize and carry with me both in quiet moments and in times of engagement the question written below:

We emphasize the inner world struggle, but the outer world has no need for the inner world. How can we bring them in contact, to make this a part of our practice?

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 Posted June 21, 2019 a
WHAT IS IT TO HAVE A PRACTICE:
Altho it was said, and we all agreed, that to have some kind of formidable program of daily exercises well beyond what we try now would surely bring some kind of benefit…...in the spirit of starting from where we are, here are our contributions that I can remember from the two meetings last evening related to the question of ‘what is it to have a practice:
·       to have a routine; it seems to build a momentum
·       to have a practice would be to have some types of things that I do every day
·       to have on a daily basis a question that burns like a fire within
·      to have a clear aim, both a distant one and another for each day that is connected with the distant                 aim
·       on each day to know/decide what it is that I can try, and to actually try
·     to be willing to acknowledge that I have resistance, that I don’t always want to work, but that                        maybe there’s still something I can do; and the ‘something that I can do’ might in some way                 align the centers and bring me to a state of working
·       to see what my attitude is about having something I can try: joy? burden? faith or lack thereof?                    etc
·       to see my wish ‘to be’ as something higher in me that could be ‘obeyed’
 
 
And here’s the reading from Heart Without Measure that was mentioned:
One cannot help admiring those who search diligently for the meaning of special words—particularly in Beelzebub, which especially lends itself to such exertions. This must help them to stay close to the text. The mind needs to be occupied; otherwise it engages itself with the fluctuation of the price of cotton in Egypt, or some other thing. One cannot stay long inside the temple where the mysteries are played. One might as well stay in the general precincts and make measurements of the thickness of the walls of the temple, and engage in other such occupations which are necessary for the maintenance of the temple. There is always the risk that one may be excessively attracted by the merchandise sold around the temple, or be too taken by the interesting flora and fauna in the Port o' Monkeys as in Rene Daumal's Mount Analogue.
 
All traditions say that the mind has to be quieted so that something higher can be received. Perhaps informing the mind with the right ideas is a way of quieting it. Are not the ideas a part of the science of being which was brought by Gurdjieff? I remember Madame de Salzmann saying in New York many years ago, "Ideas, music and movements in Gurdjieff's teaching supplement each other. One is not complete or whole without the other two."
 
On the other hand, she also said to me recently, "Now you don't need ideas. You need facts. What you know directly is a fact."
                                                                                                          (Ravi Ravindra; Heart Without Measure; pp 48-49)
 

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Posted June 10, 2019
“…In working, I can try, as I usually do, to succeed by achieving more and doing better, or I can try in another
way, becoming effective through my being. When I undertake something unfamiliar, an object or aim to be achieved, there is tension. My ordinary “I” both wishes to succeed and feels incapable. I am separate, and I want at all costs for my identity to be recognized. My ego is in the way. The tension prevents me from rightly carrying out what I have to do. I need to see this. The level of tension determines whether I can be conscious of my being and of the object of the action.
 
In engaging in an action, what I am seeking is not to perfect my performance but to become effective through my being. The true relation between my being and the aim depends on carrying out the action without the participation of the ego. To discover this has great importance. Then I need to find a feeling of unity that is not destroyed by the agitation of my ego. I have to come to the point where there is no more tension, no separation between me and the aim, where my ego no longer wants to be recognized.” 
                                                                                                            (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 274)
  
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 Task Suggestion:
Throughout the day I try the ‘simple’ task of alternating which shoe I put on/take off first (i.e.; I must remember my last sequence in order to know which shoe will be first in the new moment).
 
In these moments of effort, how can I explore what Mme de Salzmann says in the reading below, that there is tension whenever I undertake an unfamiliar aim? What is the effort required of me that will allow me to see (to find) this tension?
 
Can I notice the role that ego takes during this effort (wishing to 'succeed'?; wanting to draw conclusions?)

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Posted June 3, 2019
TASK SUGGESTION:
At the beginning of my week, I set some time aside to sit quietly, relaxed, and try to identify a few attributes of myself… some ways that I know I am that I don’t like... the kinds of things that when I see them in a given moment I react, "this isn't the way I want to be."
With this data gathered, each morning I choose one of these attributes to watch for during my day, and each time I see it surface I welcome it as a reminder to look inward, noticing my body, its posture, where its tensions lie. If I can I also try to notice my attitude, and the thoughts turning in my mind.
 
I savor the taste of these impressions of myself that I am receiving.
                                                   
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"All the substances necessary for the maintenance of the life of the organism, for psychic work, for the higher functions of consciousness and the growth of the higher bodies, are produced by the organism from the food which enters it from outside.
 
"The human organism receives three kinds of food:
1. The ordinary food we eat
2. The air we breathe
3. Our impressions
 
"It is not difficult to agree that air is a kind of food for the organism. But in what way impressions can be food may appear at first difficult to understand. We must however remember that, with every external impression, whether it takes the form of sound, or vision, or smell, we receive from outside a certain amount of energy, a certain number of vibrations, this energy which enters the organism from outside is food. Moreover, as has been said before, energy cannot be transmitted without matter. If an external impression brings external energy with it into the organism it means that external matter also enters which feeds the organism in the full meaning of the term.
 
"For its normal existence the organism must receive all three kinds of food, that is, physical food, air, and impressions. The organism cannot exist on one or even on two kinds of food, all three are required. But the relation of these foods to one another and their significance for the organism is not the same. The organism can exist for a comparatively long time without a supply of fresh physical food. Cases of starvation are known lasting for over sixty days, when the organism lost none of its vitality and recovered very quickly as soon as it began to take food. Of course, starvation of this kind cannot be considered as complete, since in all cases of such artificial starvation people have taken water. Nevertheless, even without water a man can live without food for several days. Without air he can exist only for a few minutes, not more than two or three, as a rule a man dies after being four minutes without air. Without impressions a man cannot live a single moment. If the flow of impressions were to be stopped in some way or if the organism were deprived of its capacity for receiving impressions, it would immediately die. The flow of impressions coming to us from outside is like a driving belt communicating motion to us. The principal motor for us is nature, the surrounding world. Nature transmits to us through our impressions the energy by which we live and move and have our being. If the inflow of this energy is arrested, our machine will immediately stop working. Thus, of the three kinds of food the most important for us is impressions, although it stands to reason that a man cannot exist for long on impressions alone. Impressions and air enable a man to exist a little longer. Impressions, air, and physical food enable the organism to live to the end of its normal term of life and to produce the substances necessary not only for the maintenance of life, but also for the creation and growth of higher bodies.
                                                                                     (G.I. Gurdjieff; In Search of the Miraculous; 181)
 
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Posted May 27, 2019
Seeing “gives a state of freedom.” It is not about what is seen – but the emergence of “a Look upon oneself” that is like the sun coming out. “Stay just exactly as I am…
 
When one is under this Look, there is no instructing oneself to accept what is observed – no steeling oneself to something undesirable – because acceptance is in the very nature of the energy present. Not that “I” accept but that I am related to this energy that accepts all.” To change what is seen has no appeal for it is not where the treasure lies. Instead, it “doesn’t matter what is seen; you are more awake, in this finer energy.” One wishes only to stay with the flow of Attention because, like the sun, “it warms you no matter how you are, doesn’t care how you are.”
 
Never mind images of oneself, how one should be: “Just let it be as it is and observe.”
                                                                                                     (Fran Shaw with Michel de Salzmann in quotes; Notes On the Next Attention)



Task Suggestion:
Early each day I set ~5 minutes aside, either at the end of a sitting or when sitting quietly with coffee, tea, etc., to anticipate several moments in my day when I will be walking alone (e.g., walking down a hallway, going to and from my car, etc.). During these walks, and at any other time that I remember, I come back repeatedly to the exploration of a simple ‘look upon myself’ as a three-centered being.
 
From where do these impressions of myself become available?

Posted May 20, 2019
The Shock of an Impression
We do not understand the moment of receiving an impression and why it is so important. We need to be present because it is the shock of the impression that drives us. If there is nobody here at the moment an impression is received. I react automatically, blindly, passively, and I am lost in the reaction. I refuse the impression of myself as I am. In thinking, in reacting, in imposing my ordinary “I” in the reception of this impression, I close myself. I am imagining what “I” am. I do not know the reality. I am the prisoner of this imagination, the lie of my false “I.” Usually I try to awake by forcing, but it does not work. I can and must learn to awake by opening consciously to the impression of myself and seeing what I am at the very moment. This will be a shock that awakens me, a shock brought by an impression that I receive. It requires a freedom to be in movement, not to stop the movement.
                                                                                          (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 14)

Task Suggestion:
Can I notice what it is that calls me (shocks me) back to remembering myself?
Sensation from a particular part of the body?
A particular feeling?
A thought?

Twice during the day, once early on and then again later, I sit comfortably in a posture that I associate with ‘working,’ with eyes open, and I relax with a cup of coffee, tea or a cold drink: For the duration I repeatedly come back to exploring sensing the body as an act of listening, of opening to impressions. 

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Posted May 13, 2019
Task Suggestion:
When with others, at moments when the conversation turns to topics on which I have definite opinions, I listen but opt not to join in and instead look inward. Can I receive direct impressions of myself in these moments…my attitude, my thoughts, the state of my body?
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As was said earlier, self-observation brings a man to the realization of the fact that he does not remember himself. Man's inability to remember himself is one of the chief and most characteristic features of his being and the cause of everything else in him. The inability to remember oneself finds expression in many ways. A man does 'not remember his decisions, he does not remember the promises lie has made to himself, does not remember what he said or felt a month, a week, a day, or even an hour ago. He begins work of some kind and after a certain lapse of time he does not remember why he began it. It is especially in connection with work on oneself that this happens particularly often. A man can remember a promise given to another person only with the help of artificial associations, associations which have been educated into him, and they, in their turn, are connected with conceptions which are also artificially created of 'honor,' 'honesty,' 'duty,' and so on. But speaking in general one can say truthfully that if a man remembers one thing he forgets ten other things which are much more important for him to remember. And a man particularly easily forgets what relates to himself, those 'mental photographs' of himself which perhaps he has previously taken.
 
"And this deprives man's views and opinions of any stability and precision. A man does not remember what he has thought or what he has said; and he does not remember how he thought or how he spoke.
 
"This in its turn is connected with one of the fundamental characteristics of man's attitude towards himself and to all his surroundings. Namely, his constant 'identification' with what at a given moment has attracted his attention, his thoughts or his desires, and his imagination.
 
" 'Identification' is so common a quality that for purposes of observation it is difficult to separate it from everything else. Man is always in a state of identification, only the object of identification changes.
 
"A man identifies with a small problem which confronts him and he completely forgets the great aims with which he began his work. He identifies with one thought and forgets other thoughts; he is identified with one feeling, with one mood, and forgets his own wider thoughts, emotions, and moods. In work on themselves people are so much identified with separate aims that they fail to see the wood for the trees. Two or three trees nearest to them represent for them the whole wood.
 
"'Identifying' is one of our most terrible foes because it penetrates everywhere and deceives a man at the moment when it seems to him that he is struggling with it. It is especially difficult to free oneself from identifying because a man naturally becomes more easily identified with the things that interest him most, to which he gives his time, his work, and his attention. In order to free himself from identifying a man must be constantly on guard and be merciless with himself, that is, he must not be afraid of seeing all the subtle and hidden forms which identifying takes.
 
"It is necessary to see and to study identifying to its very roots in oneself. The difficulty of struggling with identifying is still further increased by the fact that when people observe it in themselves they consider it a very good trait and call it 'enthusiasm,' 'zeal,' 'passion,' 'spontaneity,' 'inspiration,' and names of that kind, and they consider that only in a state of identifying can a man really produce good work, no matter in what sphere. In reality of course this is illusion. Man cannot do anything sensible when he is in a state of identifying. If people could see what the state of identifying means they would alter their opinion. A man becomes a thing, a piece of flesh; he loses even the small semblance of a human being that he has. In the East where people smoke hashish and other drugs it often happens that a man becomes so identified with his pipe that he begins to consider he is a pipe himself. This is not a joke but a fact. He actually becomes a pipe. This is identifying. And for this, hashish or opium are entirely unnecessary. Look at people in shops, in theaters, in restaurants; or see how they identify with words when they argue about something or try to prove something, particularly something they do not know themselves. They become greediness, desires, or words; of themselves nothing remains.
 
"Identifying is the chief obstacle to self-remembering. A man who identifies with anything is unable to remember himself. In order to remember oneself it is necessary first of all not to identify. But in order to learn not to identify man must first of all not be identified with himself, must not call himself 'I' always and on all occasions. He must remember that there are two in him, that there is himself, that is 'I' in him, and there is another with whom he must struggle and whom he must conquer if he wishes at any time to attain anything. So long as a man identifies or can be identified, he is the slave of everything that can happen to him. Freedom is first of all freedom from identification.

                                                                                              (G.I. Gurdjieff; In Search of the Miraculous; pp 150-1)

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Task Suggestion:
When with others, at moments when the conversation turns to topics on which I have definite opinions, I listen but opt not to join in and instead look inward. Can I receive direct impressions of myself in these moments…my attitude, my thoughts, the state of my body?


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Posted May 5, 2019
Task Suggestion:
I wish to explore sensing the body as an act of listening, in a form that might be described as the mind paying attention to sensations/impressions that become accessible through this effort. I decidedly try to enlist the mind as an observer of parts or the whole of the body as opposed to an effort such as ‘I will sense my arm/foot/etc. The effort is to notice what is already there.

Over repeated attempts do I begin to ‘taste’ a difference between moments of freely paying attention and moments when the mind inevitably tries to take control?

At 3 times or situations decided upon in advance (that will occur early in my day) and then again later at any time I remember, I try working with the above wish. Consider varying the appointed times to include moments of movement and moments of sitting/standing/stillness. 
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Posted May 2, 2019
In my state of being today there is no stability, no “I.” I do not know myself. I begin to feel I must come to a moment of Presence that is more complete. What I need above all is to have an impression – as deep as possible – of myself. I never have a deep impression. My impressions are superficial. They just produce associations at the surface which have no memory and change nothing, transform nothing. Gurdjieff spoke of impressions as food, but we do not understand what it means to feed ourselves or its significance for our being.
                                                                                            (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; pp 33-4)  


The network of conditioned reactions between the suggestion and the resulting behavior are so complex that we imagine we are acting spontaneously. We do not feel that the impetus came from outside. This amounts to a description of hypnosis, and it was for this reason that Gurdjieff defined our so-called waking state as a hypnotic sleep…
 
We must awaken from our hypnotic sleep – not to some rare state, some Arabian Nights world of magic powers, but to the facts of our existence today. The illusions fall aside. We see the mechanicalness of our conditioned reactions and our powerlessness to choose or direct them. This is our nothingness. It is a hard truth to digest, but in the digestion the transformation of being begins… Before we can begin to climb toward a higher state, we must live out the anguish of seeing our present disunity and helplessness.
                                                                                            (Lawrence B. Morris; A Way In Life)

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Posted April 28, 2019
I  asked something I have asked earlier and still do not feel clear about: that in my case the problem seems to be less with the body and more with the associative thought. She said, in effect, that one's attention wanders in associative thought, and does not make a connection with the body because the body is full of tensions. The body needs to be perfectly alert and perfectly relaxed. As she says very often, "Any tension anywhere, and the connection is broken... The body needs to be available.”   (p 124)
 
Madame de Salzmann spoke again about the descent of the higher energy. "Higher energy is there but cannot come down unless the body is available and in equilibrium, without tension. When a connection among the centers is made, the energy comes down the spine." One practices the sensing of the limbs and torso in order to prepare these channels along which the higher energy may descend.   (p 106)

                                                                      (Ravi Ravindra with Jeanne de Salzmann in quotations; Heart Without Measure)

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The starting point is relaxation.
                                (G.I. Gurdjieff; Gurdjieff’s Early Talks; p 125)


Task Suggestion:
In advance I decide on three times or situations early in my day during which I will I try the task.
At the appointed times/situations, I bring my awareness back to how I’m sitting or standing.
Where are the tensions? What can be let go while still allowing support to the body?

 
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I try again in the late afternoon or early evening whenever I remember or by another set of three ‘appointments.’
Posted April 22, 2019
On one occasion at the beginning of a meeting G. put a question to which all those present had to answer in turn. The question was; "What is the most important thing that we notice during self-observation?"

"…Not one of you has noticed the most important thing that I have pointed out to you," he said. "That is to say, not one of you has noticed that you do not remember yourselves." (He gave particular emphasis to these words.) "You do not feel yourselves; you are not conscious of yourselves. With you, 'it observes' just as 'it speaks' 'it thinks,' 'it laughs.' You do not feel: I observe, I notice, I see. Everything still 'is noticed,' 'is seen.' ...

In order really to observe oneself one must first of all remember oneself" (He again emphasized these words.) "Try to remember yourselves when you observe yourselves and later on tell me the results. Only those results will have any value that are accompanied by self-remembering. Otherwise you yourselves do not exist in your observations. In which case what are all your observations worth?"

These words of G.'s made me think a great deal. It seemed to me at once that they were the key to what he had said before about consciousness. But I decided to draw no conclusions whatever, but to try to remember myself while observing myself.

The very first attempts showed me how difficult it was. Attempts at self-­remembering failed to give any results except to show me that in actual fact we never remember ourselves.

"What else do you want?" said G. "This is a very important realization. People who know this" (he emphasized these words) "already know a great deal. The whole trouble is that nobody knows it. If you ask a man whether he can remember himself, he will of course answer that he can. If you tell him that he cannot remember himself, he will either be angry with you, or he will think you an utter fool. The whole of life is based on this, the whole of human existence, the whole of human blindness. If a man really knows that he cannot remember himself, he is already near to the understanding of his being."
                                                                                (G.I. Gurdjieff in quotations; In Search of the Miraculous; p 117)

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"In order to understand what the difference between states of consciousness is, let us return to the first state of consciousness which is sleep. This is an entirely subjective state of consciousness. A man is immersed in dreams, whether he remembers them or not does not matter. Even if some real impressions reach him, such as sounds, voices, warmth, cold, the sensation of his own body, they arouse in him only fantastic subjective images. Then a man wakes up. At first glance this is a quite different state of consciousness. He can move, he can talk with other people, he can make calculations ahead, he can see danger and avoid it, and so on. It stands to reason that he is in a better position than when he was asleep. But if we go a little more deeply into things, if we take a look into his inner world, into his thoughts, into the causes of his actions, we shall see that he is in almost the same state as when he is asleep. And it is even worse, because in sleep he is passive, that is, he cannot do anything. In the waking state, however, he can do something all the time and the results of all his actions will be reflected upon him or upon those around him. And yet he does not remember himself. He is a machine, everything with him happens. He cannot stop the flow of his thoughts, he cannot control his imagination, his emotions, his attention. He lives in a subjective world of 'I love,' 'I do not love,' 'I like,' 'I do not like,' 'I want,' 'I do not want,' that is, of what he thinks he likes, of what he thinks he does not like, of what he thinks he wants, of what he thinks he does not want. He does not see the real world. The real world is hidden from him by the wall of imagination. He lives in sleep. He is asleep. What is called 'clear consciousness' is sleep and a far more dangerous sleep than sleep at night in bed…

"Both states of consciousness, sleep and the waking state, are equally subjective. Only by beginning to remember himself does a man really awaken. And then all surrounding life acquires for him a different aspect and a different meaning. He sees that it is the life of sleeping people, a life in sleep. All that men say, all that they do, they say and do in sleep. All this can have no value whatever. Only awakening and what leads to awakening has a value in reality…

"How can one awaken? How can one escape this sleep? These questions are the most important, the most vital that can ever confront a man. But before this it is necessary to be convinced of the very fact of sleep. But it is possible to be convinced of this only by trying to awaken. When a man understands that he does not remember himself and that to remember himself means to awaken to some extent, and when at the same time he sees by experience how difficult it is to remember himself, he will understand that he cannot awaken simply by having the desire to do so.

                                                                                                             (G.I. Gurdjieff; In Search of the Miraculous; pp. 142-3)

Task Suggestion:
Continuing and building on last week's task suggestion: I choose in advance a part of the body I will return to in my self-observation. Also, if you wish: I choose in advance three moments or anticipated situations in my day when I will remember to observe myself.

In these moments when I observe myself, I let it be and I just observe what’s there in front of me (my posture, for example, my facial expression, my attitude, etc.). I give up my suffering. I give up my reaction. I take in the impression. I just observe.
T
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Posted April 15, 2019
How it is possible for self-knowledge to lead to objective knowledge of the universe can be understood only through a deeper understanding of consciousness, which we experience as a force flowing through us. And we have only to think of the difference between sleep and waking to know that there are different levels on the spectrum of that force. Self-study, properly directed, begins with the functioning of the organism in different states of consciousness. Gurdjieff recognized four such states as possible for human beings:
 
-      physical sleep
-      what we call our waking state
-      self-consciousness, and
-      objective consciousness
 
With rare exceptions, however, we spend our lives in the two lowest – physical sleep and our ordinary waking state. It is as though we had a mansion at our disposal, but lived in a dreary cellar, while upstairs there were spacious, sunny rooms that stood empty.
 
Just as there are many gradations, with no sharp line, between being sound asleep and being, as we think, wide awake, so there is no sharp line between our ordinary waking condition and the next higher state, self-consciousness, in which for the first time we see ourselves as we are. Nor between this state and objective consciousness, in which for the first time we see the world as it is. If there is to be any further evolution for mankind, it can only be an evolution of consciousness. The phrase sounds perhaps, pompous, but it has a quite specific meaning, that is, the extension of our experience from the ordinary waking state into the state of self-consciousness and, eventually, into that of objective consciousness.
 
These higher states are not just words. Most of us, in fact, under the shock of deep grief, or faced with death, or aware for a split second of the presence of life in nature – a starry sky seen from a mountain top or a crocus pushing up through the snow – have known a quite different sense of self, free momentarily from all egoistic torment. And it is precisely this difference in the sense of self that distinguishes the state of self-consciousness from our ordinary waking state. Ordinarily, I’m concerned with the functioning of my organism. If I am hot or angry or am thinking about something, I cannot separate the “I” from the heat or the anger or the thought. In the state of self-consciousness, though the anger or the thought is still there, my awareness, now at a higher level in the spectrum of consciousness, sees it simply as one fact among others taking place in the organism. I am no longer lost in the anger or the thought. It is this inner freedom alone that makes a different outer life possible.  
                                                                                                                (Lawrence B. Morris; A Way In Life)

Task Suggestion:
In moments when I observe myself, I let it be and I just observe what’s there in front of me (my posture, for example, my facial expression, my attitude, etc.). I give up my suffering. I give up my reaction. I take in the impression. I just observe.
 
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Posted April 9, 2019
It is here that everything begins
Gurdjieff was fond of saying “A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die; and in order to die he must first awaken.” To awaken is to become conscious of one’s present situation. It is here that everything begins. To be born, that is to enter upon the full growth of oneness. To die, that is to become freed from all egoistic attachments and identifications.
 
If we study the functioning of our organism in its ordinary waking state, study it, that is, impartially, looking simply for the facts, we shall discover sooner or later that we have been living in a world of fantasy. We are blinded to the truth particularly by three illusions about ourselves. We assume – and ask yourself if this is not true – that somewhere within us there is a single, controlling element that we speak of as “I.” We say “I decided to go by plane,” or “I got over the habit of smoking,” or “I like this or I dislike that.” [In actuality,] there is a mob of little partial personalities, for the most part ignorant of each other’s existence, often contradictory, jostling each other for position.  We also assume, since we are faced at every moment with questions [we must answer] – that we make decisions. And if we make decisions, obviously we must exercise will. It is true that decisions are reached within us, but with self-study we begin to see how each one has flowed inexorably from all that we have thought and felt and been from birth up to that moment. Instead of choices, which imply freedom, we find conditioned reactions. And lastly, we take it for granted that we are conscious, which to some extent, of course, we are. If I took part last night in a meeting of a committee, I certainly knew that the meeting was going on. Indeed, I was aware of many things – except myself taking part in it. For we do not - in Gurdjieff’s phrase - remember ourselves. The most important part of our experience is left out.   
 
These three powers – to be conscious, to have will, to be a unified “I” – are indispensable if the control that we have to some extent over our environment is to be matched by any comparable control over our own lives. Yet we make no effort to gain these powers because we believe we already have them. But if we are not conscious of ourselves, and if our attention is passive to outer attractions, we are open at every moment to suggestion. The network of conditioned reactions between the suggestion and the resulting behavior are so complex that we imagine we are acting spontaneously. We do not feel that the impetus came from outside. This amounts to a description of hypnosis, and it was for this reason that Gurdjieff defined our so-called waking state as a hypnotic sleep.

We must awaken from our hypnotic sleep; the illusions must fall aside. We must see the mechanicalness of our conditioned reactions and our powerlessness to choose or direct them. This is our nothingness. It is hard to digest, but in the digestion, the transformation of being begins……before we can begin to climb toward [this] higher state, we must live out the anguish of seeing our present disunity and helplessness.  
                                                                                                                         (Is There a Way In Life?)

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Posted April 2, 2019
"Man's possibilities are very great. You cannot conceive even a shadow of what man is capable of attaining. But nothing can be attained in sleep. In the consciousness of a sleeping man his illusions, his 'dreams' are mixed with reality. He lives in a subjective world and he can never escape from it. And this is the reason why he can never make use of all the powers he possesses and why he always lives in only a small part of himself.
 
"It has been said before that self-study and self-observation, if rightly conducted, bring man to the realization of the fact that something is wrong with his machine and with his functions in their ordinary state. A man realizes that it is precisely because he is asleep that he lives and works in a small part of himself. It is precisely for this reason that the vast majority of his possibilities remain unrealized, the vast majority of his powers are left unused. A man feels that he does not get out of life all that it can give him, that he fails to do so owing to definite functional defects in his machine, in his receiving apparatus. The idea of self-study acquires in his eyes a new meaning. He feels that possibly it may not even be worth while studying himself as he is now. He sees every function as it is now and as it could be or ought to be. Self-observation brings man to the realization of the necessity for self-change. And in observing himself a man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in his inner processes. He begins to understand that self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening. By observing himself he throws, as it were, a ray of light onto his inner processes which have hitherto worked in complete darkness. And under the influence of this light the processes themselves begin to change. There are a great many chemical processes that can take place only in the absence of light. Exactly in the same way many psychic processes can take place only in the dark. Even a feeble light of consciousness is enough to change completely the character of a process, while it makes many of them altogether impossible. Our inner psychic processes (our inner alchemy) have much in common with those chemical processes in which light changes the character of the process and they are subject to analogous laws.”
 
                                                                                                   (G.I. Gurdjieff; In Search of the Miraculous; p. 145)
 
re: this past week's reading of “It must be man's aim to begin to study himself, to know himself, in the right way”...
Task suggestion on Self-observation:

Each day I review the list below and choose to observe one of these aspects of myself.
As a reminder to try, I associate looking at my cell phone with looking at myself.

·         Posture
·         Carriage
·         Tone of voice
·         Facial expression
·         Gesture
·         Weight
·         Temperature

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Posted March 25, 2019
For full reading, click Know Thyself - Aim

It must be man's aim to begin to study himself, to know himself, in the right way.
“The teaching by itself cannot pursue any definite aim. It can only show the best way for men to attain whatever aims they may have. The question of aim is a very important question. Until a man has defined his own aim for himself he will not be able even to begin 'to do' anything. How is it possible 'to do' anything without having an aim? Before anything else 'doing' presupposes an aim."
 
But the question of the aim of existence is one of the most difficult of philosophical questions," said one of those present. "You want us to begin by solving this question. But perhaps we have come here because we are seeking an answer to this question. You expect us to have known it beforehand. If a man knows this, he really knows everything.
 
"You misunderstood me," said G. "I was not speaking of the philosophical significance of the aim of existence. Man does not know it and he cannot know it so long as he remains what he is, first of all, because there is not one but many aims of existence. On the contrary, attempts to answer this question using ordinary methods are utterly hopeless and useless. I was asking about an entirely different thing. I was asking about your personal aim, about what you want to attain, and not about the reason for your existence. Everyone must have his own aim: one man wants riches, another health, a third wants the kingdom of heaven, the fourth wants to be a general, and so on. It is about aims of this sort that I am asking. If you tell me what your aim is, I shall be able to tell you whether we are going along the same road or not.
 
I formulated my own aim quite clearly several years ago, I said. I said to myself then that I want to know the future.
 
"Very well," said G., "to know the future is the first aim. Who else can formulate his aim?"
 
I should like to be convinced that I shall go on existing after the death of the physical body, or, if this depends upon me, I should like to work in order to exist after death, said one of the company.
 
I don't care whether I know the future or not, or whether I am certain or not certain of life after death, said another, if I remain what I am now. What I feel most strongly is that I am not master of myself, and if I were to formulate my aim, I should say that I want to be master of myself.
 
I should like to understand the teaching of Christ, and to be a Christian in the true sense of the term, said the next.
 
I should like to be able to help people, said another.
 
I should like to know how to stop wars, said another.
 
"Well, that's enough,' said G., "we have now sufficient material to go on with. The best formulation of those that have been put forward is the wish to be one's own master. Without this nothing else is possible and without this nothing else will have any value…
 
[G responds to each of the identified aims. These responses can be found in the full reading to be found on the hyperlink above or on pages 99-105 from In Search of the Miraculous), but here we skip down to the aim of being one’s own master.]
 
“One must begin with the causes [of slavery] that are in man himself. How can he be independent of the external influences of great cosmic forces when he is the slave of everything that surrounds him? He is controlled by everything around him. If he becomes free from things, he may then become free from planetary influences.
 
"Freedom, liberation, this must be the aim of man. To become free, to be liberated from slavery: this is what a man ought to strive for when he becomes even a little conscious of his position. There is nothing else for him, and nothing else is possible so long as he remains a slave both inwardly and outwardly. But he cannot cease to be a slave outwardly while he remains a slave inwardly. Therefore in order to become free, man must gain inner freedom.
 
"The first reason for man's inner slavery is his ignorance, and above all, his ignorance of himself. Without self-knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave, and the plaything of the forces acting upon him.
 
"This is why in all ancient teachings the first demand at the beginning of the way to liberation was: 'Know thyself.' "We shall speak of these words now."
 
                                                                             *******
The next lecture began precisely with the words: "Know thyself." "These words," said G., "which are generally ascribed to Socrates, actually lie at the basis of many systems and schools far more ancient than the Socratic. But although modem thought is aware of the existence of this principle it has only a very vague idea of its meaning and significance. The ordinary man of our times, even a man with philosophic or scientific interests, does not realize that the principle 'know thyself’ speaks of the necessity of knowing one's machine, the 'human machine.' Machines are made more or less the same way in all men; therefore, before anything else man must study the structure, the functions, and the laws of his organism. In the human machine everything is so inter-connected, one thing is so dependent upon another, that it is quite impossible to study any one function without studying all the others. In order to know one thing, one must know everything. To know everything in man is possible, but it requires much time and labor, and above all, the application of the right method and, what is equally necessary, right guidance.
 
"The principle 'know thyself' embraces a very rich content. It demands, in the first place, that a man who wants to know himself should understand what this means, with what it is connected, what it necessarily depends upon.
 
"Knowledge of oneself is a very big, but a very vague and distant, aim. Man in his present state is very far from self-knowledge. Therefore, strictly speaking, his aim cannot even be defined as self-knowledge. Self-study must be his big aim. It is quite enough if a man understands that he must study himself. It must be man's aim to begin to study himself, to know himself, in the right way.
 
"Self-study is the work or the way which leads to self-knowledge.
 
"But in order to study oneself one must first learn how to study, where to begin, what methods to use. A man must learn how to study himself, and he must study the methods of self-study.
 
"The chief method of self-study is self-observation.”
 
                                                                  (G.I. Gurdjieff in quotation marks; In Search of the Miraculous; pp 99-105)
 
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​Posted March 21, 2019
Today you have a thousand “I”s. Each weakness is an “I” that at any moment can make itself your master. To have your own “I” it is necessary for it to be born. It has been conceived because you have allowed the work to enter into you. It will not grow by itself; it must be fed so that it can accumulate substance and one happy day take form. Then it can develop and be born.

This substance of “I” comes only from intentional suffering.
                                                                                                 (G.I. Gurdjieff; Gurdjieff's Early Talks; p 126)

Question: From my own experience, what is my understanding of intentional suffering?

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​Posted February 15, 2019
My relation with my thinking mind must change. I have to see its conditioning and lose all illusion of its capacity to perceive directly what is beyond its functioning. Truth simply cannot be thought. It cannot be looked for by the thinking alone, or by the wish to acquire or to become. Truth does not become— it is. I need to see that my thought is held back by the stubbornness of an idea or the attachment to a form. In the very moment I see this, the mind is freed from the idea or form, and a new perception can take place. To have a direct perception would mean to discover something entirely new, something unknown that my mind can never bring.
                                                                                                         (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 57)


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​ Posted February 10, 2019
To Awaken To Die To Be Born
"There is a book of aphorisms which has never been published and probably never will be published. I have mentioned this book before in connection with the question of the meaning of knowledge and I quoted then one aphorism from this book.
 
" 'A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.'
 
"In another place it says:
 
" 'When a man awakes he can die; when he dies he can be born.'
 
"We must find out what this means.
 
" 'To awake,' 'to die,' 'to be born.' These are three successive stages. If you study the Gospels attentively you will see that references are often made to the possibility of being born, several references are made to the necessity of 'dying,' and there are very many references to the necessity of 'awakening' — 'watch, for ye know not the day and hour . . .' and. so on. But these three possibilities of man, to awake or not to sleep, to die, and to be born, are not set down in connection with one another. Nevertheless this is the whole point. If a man dies without having awakened he cannot be born. If a man is born without having died he may become an 'immortal thing.' Thus, the fact that he has not 'died' prevents a man from being 'born'; the fact of his not having awakened prevents him from 'dying'; and should he be born without having died he is prevented from 'being.'
 
"We have already spoken enough about the meaning of being 'born.' This relates to the beginning of a new growth of essence, the beginning of the formation of individuality, the beginning of the appearance of one indivisible I.
 
"But in order to be able to attain this or at least begin to attain it, a man must die, that is, he must free himself from a thousand petty attachments and identifications which hold him in the position in which he is. He is attached to everything in his life, attached to his imagination, attached to his stupidity, attached even to his sufferings, possibly to his sufferings more than to anything else. He must free himself from this attachment. Attachment to things, identification with things, keep alive a thousand useless I's in a man. These I's must die in order that the big I may be born. But how can they be made to die? They do not want to die. It is at this point that the possibility of awakening comes to the rescue. To awaken means to realize one's nothingness, that is to realize one's complete and absolute mechanicalness and one's complete and absolute helplessness. And it is not sufficient to realize it philosophically in words. It is necessary to realize it in clear, simple, and concrete facts, in one's own facts. When a man begins to know himself a little he will see in himself many things that are bound to horrify him. So long as a man is not horrified at himself he knows nothing about himself. A man has seen in himself something that horrifies him. He decides to throw it off, stop it, put an end to it. But however many efforts he makes, he feels that he cannot do this, that everything remains as it was. Here he will see his impotence, his helplessness, and his nothingness; or again, when he begins to know himself a man sees that he has nothing that is his own, that is, that all that he has regarded as his own, his views, thoughts, convictions, tastes, habits, even faults and vices, all these are not his own, but have been either formed through imitation or borrowed from somewhere ready-made. In feeling this, a man may feel his nothingness. And in feeling his nothingness a man should see himself as he really is, not for a second, not for a moment, but constantly, never forgetting it.
 
"This continual consciousness of his nothingness and of his helplessness will eventually give a man the courage to 'die,' that is, to die, not merely mentally or in his consciousness, but to die in fact and to renounce actually and forever those aspects of himself which are either unnecessary from the point of view of his inner growth or which hinder it. These aspects are first of all his 'false I,' and then all the fantastic ideas about his 'individuality,' 'will,' 'consciousness,' 'capacity to do,' his powers, initiative, determination, and so on.
 
"But in order to see a thing always, one must first of all see it even if only for a second. All new powers and capacities of realization come always in one and the same way. At first they appear in the form of flashes at rare and short moments; afterwards they appear more often and last longer until, finally, after very long work they become permanent. The same thing applies to awakening. It is impossible to awaken completely all at once. One must first begin to awaken for short moments. But one must die all at once and forever after having made a certain effort, having surmounted a certain obstacle, having taken a certain decision from which there is no going back. This would be difficult, even impossible, for a man, were it not for the slow and gradual awakening which precedes it.
 
                                                                                                   (G.I. Gurdjieff; In Search of the Miraculous; pp 217-219)


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Posted January 13, 2019
So, having placed ourselves in conditions where we are sure we will not be disturbed externally, we shall choose this seated position which at the beginning is certainly adequate for the work we intend to do and is the simplest one for us. First, we have to re-establish quiet conditions inside ourselves and free ourselves little by little from all the outer preoccupations of daily life, the tensions they create, the hold and the inner repercussions they have on us, and the agitation they cause. This requires more or less time depending upon each person’s state, how well he knows how to work and the pressure exerted by the outer circumstances.
 
Next, there is a necessary initial step, whatever work exercise is being practiced: this is always to remind ourselves  why we are undertaking this effort and to find again in ourselves that which feels a need for this work and the line of interest it is connected to. An exercise of this kind has no meaning unless it is connected each time to our need to become a little more ourselves. When we feel this we see that we are always divided-one part of us needs this effort and willingly accepts to make it; another part which may be more or less powerful (this can change with the weather or the circumstances) has no need for it at all and wants to have nothing to do with it. This other part has no interest in it whatever and would prefer something quite different-such as listening to music, going to the theater or to the cinema, studying, dancing, etc.
 
We must convince this other part for one moment to help us, or at least not to interfere with us, even if it has to be given what satisfaction it needs later. And it is most important to get this agreement in order to reduce the conflicts within us to a minimum. Work of this kind requires a harmonious “atmosphere.” It is better never to force anything.
 
                                                                                                    (Jean Vaysse; Toward Awakening; pp 165-166)


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2018 ARCHIVE

Posted November 26, 2018
Task Tweak?:
If anyone feels that they need a bit more direction with our current task, an example might be that perhaps I’m struck by Mme de Salzmann’s insistence that I must ‘remember what I open to when I come back to myself alone.’  
 
A possible task:
In the early part of my day, the first few times I see or hear something related to Christmas I use these reminders to explore the reality of how I am in these moments when I come back to the wish of seeing myself as I am. In these given moments I bring my attention first to the face, welcoming the glimpse I receive of how I am in that moment. I then expand this attention to include other parts of the body, in each moment trying the same.
Later in the day I try this again.
 
In these attempts, do I sometimes notice more of myself than just the body? For instance, an attitude such as some form of desire to ‘do’ something, or the mind commenting? Can I accept this as part of seeing ‘how I am in this moment?’

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Posted November 18, 2018
The practice of being present is self-remembering. Instead of being taken outward, the attention of the functions is turned toward the inside for a moment of consciousness. I need to recognize that I can understand nothing if I cannot remember myself. This means remembering my highest possibilities, that is, remembering what I open to when I come back to myself alone. To remember myself also means to be present to my situation— to the place, the conditions, the way I am taken by life. There is no room for dreaming.
 
Perhaps I will not come to a state that is satisfying. It does not matter. What is important is the effort to be present. We cannot always find a better state that brings a feeling of something new. We feel unable and conclude that there is nothing permanent in us on which we can rely. But it is not true. There is something. In a better state, we can see that we have in us all the elements necessary to come to it. The elements are already here. This means the possibilities are always here in us.
 
What is too often missing is knowing what I want. And it is this that undermines my will to work. Without knowing what I want, I will not make any effort. I will sleep. Without wishing for a different quality in myself, to turn toward my higher possibilities, I will have nothing to lean on, nothing to support work. I must always, again and again, come back to this question: What do I wish? It must become the most important question of my life. Yet this wish for a different quality has no force at all if it comes from my ordinary “I.” It must be related to something completely different from my ordinary “1” and free from the desire for a result. I must not forget why I wish. This must be for me really a question of life or death— I wish to be, to live in a certain way. 
                                                                        (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 20)
 
 
Task Suggestion:
Each day, early in my day, I re-read the above excerpt.
On each given morning I may find that my interest is touched by one or another element of the reading. Based on this interest, I formulate a task for myself that clarifies what I will try and when I will try it.
 

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Posted November 11, 2018
Conscious effort does not mean staying in one place without changing, but continuing the effort. We always dream of reaching a place in order to remain there permanently. Yet permanence can only be found in movement. We are not seeking something static, but the power of a mobile attention, a conscious attention that can follow the entire movement in manifestation, whatever the circumstance. We need to remember that the struggle is for and not against something, 
                                                                     (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 98)



Task Suggestion:
In advance I choose two times or situations in my upcoming day during which I will be quiet and alone, and additionally I choose two moments when I expect to be out in life. In these designated moments I try to sense a part or the whole of my body.
What/how do I try?
What do I see?
Each day I renew - refresh - revisit the decision of when and I how I will try.

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Posted November 4, 2018
You must have an aim, a serious aim         (G.I. Gurdjieff; December 23, 1943; Paris)
 
Task Suggestion:
I continue to explore the nature of effort…what is needed, what can be let go.
At moments or situations decided upon in advance, and again when I remember my wish by chance, I come to an awareness of my outer posture.
What do I find is needed in this moment that allows my inquiry to go deeper, to see more of myself…my attitudes, my habits, my physical tensions, my thoughts, etc.
 
Each day I renew - refresh - revisit the decision of when and I how I will try.

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Posted October 28, 2018
The attitude we take, our inner and outer posture, is at the same time our aim and our way.
 
At any moment we each have a particular posture, an attitude we cannot avoid. The postures assumed by the body are always the same and provoke corresponding postures or attitudes in the mind and the feeling that are also the same. I am enclosed in a subjective world of habitual attitudes. But I do not see this, I am not even aware of which parts are tense or relaxed. The body has its repertoire of postures that imprison me. I have to find a position, inner and outer, that will free me from my attitudes and allow me to emerge from sleep, to open to another dimension, another world… 
                                                                                        (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; excerpted p. 49-50)
 
Task Suggestion:
Each morning before getting out of bed I ask myself ‘what is my aim, what is my wish.’
Upon getting out of bed I try to see in myself my outer posture as I move through the first 3 or 4 activities of my early morning routine.
What is the effort needed that allows me to receive impressions of an inner posture…of my attitudes, my habits, my physical tensions, my thoughts, etc?
 
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Posted October 14, 2018
We have to keep coming back to this experience of relaxing, of letting go, which could become richer and richer. If relaxation becomes clearer, there appears a sense of being open and available. But, usually, when this availability comes about, I say to myself, “Right, and now, what should I do?” There seems to be a sort of ceiling, I don’t understand. In fact, I’ve never felt life in me! 
 
The moment you really feel something that you are totally incapable of explaining, you know that life is there, with its tangible materiality. You can receive it, recognize it: it is an impression of myself which is almost always lacking. I can see that I have to stand clear of everything that provokes me, of this “me” that fancies doing something, grasping, helping itself. Then it’s a question of being more silent, simply receptive, as if my ability to listen had become so sensitive that I could hear the slightest movement of this life.
 
Can I have a real impression, a conscious impression of myself? 
                                                                                      (Michel Conge; Life: Life Behind Appearances p 57)
 
 
Task Suggestion:
I wish to continue to explore my experiences with the nature of effort, particularly the effort required for relaxing the body and for opening to the receiving of impressions.
 
Either decided upon in advance, and/or at other moments when I remember this wish, I direct my attention towards a part of the body that is in movement (the legs walking, for example, hands preparing a meal, an arm hammering, etc.). In these moments I consider Michel Conge’s proposal that attention can be an ‘ability to listen [that] becomes so sensitive that I could hear the slightest movement of this life.’
Do I sense/feel forces at play?
Can the strength of my wish help me in this exploration?


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Posted October 8, 2018
"I turn to my body and sense that my body is here. I sense my left arm - that is, I have an impression of my left arm. As soon as this impression reaches me, it provokes my thought, which says "arm...left arm." And at the moment I say this to myself, I lose the impression. In thinking of the arm, I believe I know it. I have more trust in the thought than in the fact, the real existence of the arm. But the thought of the arm is not the fact.
                                                                                     (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 34)

Task Suggestion:
I begin with a wish to explore the nature of effort. As per last week's reading on daily Buddhist practice, this can be an aim for the week if I so wish...to be refreshed each morning when I awake, carried throughout my day, and reflected upon at the end of the day:

I choose a part of the body that I know from experience is an area where tension tends to accumulate. Either at moments decided upon in advance, and/or when I come back to my wish by chance, I bring my attention to this area and try to open to receiving the impressions available.
How do I approach the suggestion of 'opening to receiving impressions?'


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Posted October 1, 2018
"Practicing Buddhism in Daily Life"
Note that all of these very familiar suggestions in this article are driven by a clear aim, albeit from a Buddhism standpoint.

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We believe that to awake is to enter into an entirely different life, which will have nothing to do with the one we lead. But, in fact, awaking means, above all, to awake to ourselves as we are, to see and feel the sleep, the identification.
                                                                                                                       (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 80)


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Posted September 30, 2018
"Freedom, liberation, this must be the aim of man. To become free, to be liberated from slavery: this is what a man ought to strive for when he becomes even a little conscious of his position. There is nothing else for him, and nothing else is possible so long as he remains a slave both inwardly and outwardly. But he cannot cease to be a slave outwardly while he remains a slave inwardly. Therefore in order to become free, man must gain inner freedom.
 
"The first reason for man's inner slavery is his ignorance, and above all, his ignorance of himself. Without self-knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave, and the plaything of the forces acting upon him.
 
"This is why in all ancient teachings the first demand at the beginning of the way to liberation was: 'Know thyself.'
                                                                                        (G.I. Gurdjieff; Views From the Real World; p 274)
  
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Task Suggestion:
Throughout the day, either at moments decided upon in advance, and/or when I come back to my wish by chance:
I make an effort to have an awareness (a sensation?) of my hands as they engage in whatever I’m doing at the moment.
What effort is needed? Is it always the same?

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Posted September 24, 2018
We think of impressions as lifeless, fixed like a photograph. But with every impression we receive a certain amount of energy, something alive that acts on us, that animates us. I can feel this when I have a new impression of myself, an impression entirely different from the way I usually experience myself. I suddenly know something real in myself in quite a new way and I receive an energy by which I am animated. But then I lose it. I do not retain it. It goes as if taken by a thief. And when I need it most, when I wish to be present in front of my life, there is no support to help me and I lose myself. I begin to see that impressions of myself are food, that they bring an energy which must be received and must be retained.
                                                                                                    (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 33)
 
In my ordinary state of identification, I blindly adhere to the movement of manifestation. I am lost in one part of myself, taken in the activity of the moment, unconscious of the whole. This nourishes the feeling of my ordinary "I,” which I believe to be the affirmation of myself. Nevertheless, there is in me a finer energy that is quicker, more intense. If I could become conscious of it, I would be able to affirm another quality of myself.
                                                                                                           (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 90)


  
Task Suggestion:
I begin each day with an effort to experience a greater awareness of my very first manifestations of the day:
 
When I first wake up in the morning I try to put all my awareness on my breathing and the body as I lie there for a minute or two. When I then get out of bed I again try to hold onto this awareness as I move to the very first thing I do. Then as I move to yet the very next thing I do. I try again to hold onto this awareness. (These would be the most mundane beginnings of my day…e.g., getting out of bed, walking to the bathroom, bathroom rituals, walking to the kitchen to prepare coffee/tea…or whatever the very first things are that I do in the morning.)
 
During these very first manifestations/actions, I  try to maintain a relationship with the movement of air into the body through my breathing.
 
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Additional suggestion:
Following the early morning work of relating to my body through the breathing, I try on three more occasions when I’ll be doing something physically active (either decided on in advance or when I ‘awaken by chance’):
I sense the movement of air into the body through my breathing and visualize that I’m receiving an energy that animates the parts of the body that are active in these moments.

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Posted September 21, 2018
Readings:
"Internal & External Consideration"
"Economy of Energy Expenditure"

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Posted September 10, 2018
Readings from Saturday Workday (September 8th)
The life force is always present in us and is a continual source of manifestation. But we have no contact, no relation with it. We do not feel engaged. We do not know our life force. In order to know it, we have to be present to our identification. We must accept going toward manifestation, at the same time making an effort to see ourselves taken by the life force and to follow the changes that take place in our state. We must come to feel engaged voluntarily— a conscious engagement that we make by choice, by taking a decision.
 
We have to accept that a force in us will always be in activity, always wish to express itself, to manifest. My thought will always go on, my feeling will always go on, my body will always move. There is a hunger for activity, a kind of avidity, which will always be here. How do I participate in it? What is my relation to it? Here is the root of the problem— I do not see the ego behind all my manifestations, I do not know it. I do not see the impulse that provokes this avidity in myself— this thought “ I,” “I,” “ I,” which arises with all my emotions, all my movements . . . this constant thought “ I.” This impulse is a part of me, I cannot deny it. But I do not know my relation to it, what place it should have. I do not even know what in it is good or bad, or what attitude I should have in the face of it. There is nothing conscious. I cannot even stay in front of it to try to understand.
 
In order to see my identification, I have to accept as a fact my powerlessness to remain present. I have to experience it, and seek again and again to know it. In order to know a force, I have to resist it. So I resist being identified in order to know the force with which I am identified. But what does it mean to “resist”? What is the work of consciously separating two forces in order to become conscious of them both? In the movement to free my attention, I see that attitude is important. In order to stay present, I need to see when my attitude changes and not give in to the force that takes me.
 
In my ordinary state of identification, I blindly adhere to the movement of manifestation. I am lost in one part of myself, taken in the activity of the moment, unconscious of the whole. This nourishes the feeling of my ordinary "I,” which I believe to be the affirmation of myself. Nevertheless, there is in me a finer energy that is quicker, more intense. If I could become conscious of it, I would be able to affirm another quality of myself.
 
The moment of manifestation tests the feeling I have of myself. I know that the feeling of Presence is not strong. It quickly goes away. It is bound to go because I cannot sustain the effort. But I can repeat, and I can again find the same force, the same taste of something real. Then I struggle not to disappear so quickly in the activity, and I try to see what is required to be present. What do I sacrifice in a moment of work? What is needed for me to have “will”? Who wills, who wishes? If there is a feeling of self, of what self? Who is here? I have to see how I agree to disappear.
                                                                                                            (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; pp 89-90)

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We do not have a sensation of ourselves or a feeling of ourselves… Here is my lie — affirming myself without having the taste of truth, the taste of reality…
 
In order to come back to myself, I have to become free from words and images, and from emotions, so that I may turn toward the sensation of a more subtle, higher energy.
                                                                                                         (Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 91)
 
                                                     
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Posted August 19, 2018
“There is in man a wish that does not come from the ego. There is a wish that is not invented by the ego. It is an energy, a movement that exists outside of linear time. Only when you are ready to experience the complete breakdown of the ego without the slightest impulse to reestablish it again, only then will you experience the wish of the evolving self. It is a certain kind of suffering that is mixed with joy of quite a special taste…

“There is an action, an allowing, a surrender within, that has always been the birthright of every man or woman. The ego experiences it as a kind of stoppage. It is a special quality of silence. In that moment, you know why you are on earth and you know that as you are you cannot serve. You know you must change your life and that this can only happen by searching for companions and conditions that will support the appearance of this moment of opening. On the basis of that moment, a new intention enters into one’s life, a new morality. It is the morality of the search. Whatever supports that search is good; whatever hinders it is evil. One begins to understand that it is only through that opening that one can love as one wishes to love and as we have heard of love in the teachings of the masters. Then, truly, the world and life in this world, with all its pleasures and pains, with all its obligations and difficulties—just this world that you and I live in now—this world becomes my monastery.”
                                (An unknown businessman speaking with Jacob Needleman; Money and the Meaning of Life; Ch 22)

Task suggestion:
Early each day I set ~5 minutes aside, either at the end of a sitting or when sitting quietly with coffee, tea, etc., to anticipate moments in my day when I will be walking alone from point A to point B (e.g., walking down a hallway, going to and from my car, etc.). I make an agreement with myself that on each of these occasions I will explore what it is to take in impressions of my breathing and to visualize a movement of something finer moving in through the nostrils into the head, down the back and accumulating in the lower part of my body. When I arrive at point B I try to hold onto this visualization (or experience) of a center of gravity low in my body for as long as I can, regardless of what I’m now engaged in.
 
In moments during the day when I realize that I’ve missed a designated occasion, I use these moments of realization to work with this same suggestion. I persevere in my attempts until I have tried on at least five occasions in the day.
                                                    
ps   For anyone who wishes to work with the line of thought from Thursday evening that  “…to arrive at this point [of seeing results], a man must pass through the hard way of slavery and obedience,” it might be interesting to explore the proposition that it is 'the part of me that is clear in its wish' that I could obey. How can this be explored?

                                                   
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Posted August 6, 2018
Sometimes it takes many years before you suddenly understand that a word you have used for a very long time doesn't mean exactly what you thought it meant. It is different.
 
For example, this notion of effort. The word at first means something you strive for. But you understand at a certain point that the kind of effort you need to comprehend is different, that what is meant by effort is letting go. It is an effort because I have to struggle against what is ingrained in me about this idea of effort: I want to get something, to do something. Finally, after years of trying, I begin to understand that the nature of effort is to allow something to appear. This new meaning of effort has to do with relaxation. And it is really an effort to understand relaxation when all my training was to strive, to battle against, to chastise some aspect of myself…
 
It is the same for the word “attention.” With my ordinary attention, which is very useful, I can focus on a mathematical problem, a practical problem. It’s needed. I begin that way also when I work on a spiritual path. There is no other way for me; I don't know any other attention except this focusing attention. Until there is a moment when, because I relate to other parts of myself, such as the body, for example, I begin to welcome another sort of attention which is no longer focusing, but embracing. Different… 
(Paul Reynard)
 
Task Suggestion:
I choose a daily moment in life where I'm typically in a hurry and moving faster than normal (e.g., showering or dressing in the morning before work). If this moment doesn't exist naturally, I create an activity for roughly 5 minutes where I will move much faster than I normally would. During this fast-tempo activity I come back to the breath to try to observe and get a taste for these two different tempos existing simultaneously.
 
If possible, I try again whenever I 'catch' myself moving at a faster tempo.
 
*******
ps   For anyone who wishes to work with the line of thought from Thursday evening that  “…to arrive at this point [of seeing results], a man must pass through the hard way of slavery and obedience,” it might be interesting to explore the proposition that it is 'the part of me that is clear in its wish' that I could obey. How can this be explored?

                         What is it to suffer? Is it to allow myself to be as I am, to stay with myself as I am? To suffer my neighbor to be as he or she is – to stay with them closely, not expecting them to be other than how they are? First I need to find the possibility of allowing, of accepting however I find myself to be, before I can extend that sympathy to another person. In such suffering may be born a moment of being more of who I really am, really experiencing who my neighbor is, and through that may come for a moment the joy of everything being more in place, a sense of order appearing.
(Rosemary Nott; Parabola: Spring 2011)
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Each day I seek opportunities that allow me to have brief social interactions with others. During these encounters I interact as I normally would while trying to ‘keep an eye on myself’ in order to see the ways in which my body is reacting, what my attitude is, the thoughts turning in my head.
 
I sincerely face the possibility that what I see in these moments is who I am.

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