READINGS and SUGGESTED TASKS
Fall 2022 thru Current Date
Note: Titles in this color are hyperlinks
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November 15, 2022
We are in a group because we need help to find a quality in ourselves, a state in which we can experience something real. We need higher influences that are inaccessible when we work alone with our ordinary means. Without the group we cannot come to the necessary intensity. The group is thus a special condition for exchange and a kind of conduit for higher influences, ideas from a higher level of life. But we must be wholly present. We receive these ideas in the exact measure that we are present.
What then is our responsibility? We have an obligation to exchange, and to accept and help each one to play his role in the group so that consciousness, the measure of our actual awareness, determines everything we do. In becoming conscious of ourselves as a group, we experience the truth of our work. It is not right if I only do what I wish in my own way, independent, unwilling to be tested. This shows I am incapable of confronting myself and of relating to the work of another. It means my work has stopped. If the group does not become conscious of itself as a group, it cannot know its place and obligations in the Work. It cannot serve, cannot play its role in the Work.
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.
I am not alone in my work. When I decide something for myself, I have to feel my belonging to the group. Its life is greater than my own, and it represents something more on the scale of higher Being...
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The life of a group depends on our state and on our questions. We ask whatever we wish about our own work. What are my difficulties now? What do I need to understand, what do I wish to know? What seems important to speak about in my work? When we come together, I must be prepared to speak. I must constantly reflect on my work and not come in a passive state. If I come without being prepared, it has not much sense. If I have no definite aim, we have nothing to speak about. How can we have an exchange? It is impossible.
One of our greatest obstacles is our concept of question and answer, that is, of the transmission of knowledge sought and passed from one person to another. We think that the questioner is less knowledgeable and is in effect asking for an answer to dispel his ignorance. And in life, where everyone relies on what is known, it is like this. But in a group the direction is toward the unknown. The questioner is opening the door to the unknown, and the listener is called to an exchange that flows between them, a movement in two directions. Real change of understanding would mean that, with the listener also questioning and the questioner really listening, the level of both participants would change.
(Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; excerpts from pp 113-119)
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November 1, 2022
In us there is a force that descends from above and a force that ascends from below. These energies are not related. This relation is something that Nature did not provide for in human beings, even though we are here to play a cosmic role. Man has to relate himself to the higher force that is in him. For this, he must see his incapacity and his refusal, and at the same time feel the wish to be related in the depths of himself.
When the energy of attention has a different movement in each of the centers, there is no force capable of its own will. So I need another attention, a purer attention less burdened with the material of my thoughts and capable of having an action on the centers. This kind of attention does not come because it is made captive, nor by forcing— I cannot make it appear, just as I cannot force love to appear.
Attention comes when it is needed, when it is called by a feeling of necessity. If I really see that I do not understand, that I have lost the direction and the meaning of my life, then at that very moment my attention is called to be here. Without it, I will never be able to be what I am. I do not have the necessary energy. But when I feel this absolute necessity, the attention appears. So I have to come to the feeling of lack, of not understanding, not knowing, a feeling of being insufficient.
I can daydream as I walk along a road. But when I have to walk on ice, on a slippery frozen path, I cannot dream. I need all my attention not to fall down. It is the same inside myself. If I have no real interest in myself—if I keep thinking I can answer everything, and pretend that I am able — I will continue dreaming and the attention will never appear.
I have to experience my nothingness in this moment and my incapacity to be present. I have also to feel my lack of interest, my lack of wish. It is an important moment, an interval where the intensity weakens and there is insufficient force to go further. I see my slavery to my functions. Perhaps I also see that a force from another level is here. But if this force is not engaged, if I am not related to it, my functions will take the energy, and I will be even more enslaved than before. There must be voluntary submission, a voluntary obedience. I wish to stay in front of this insufficiency. I do not see it enough, I do not feel it enough, I do not suffer from it enough. To feel this lack calls a more active attention. It is as if a door opens to a much finer energy. This energy passes through the head and descends in me, provided the space is free. My whole work consists in allowing this passage so that the energy can circulate. Everything depends on my attention. If it weakens, the functions reassert their power and reclaim the energy.
This circulation requires a voluntary attention, which I never needed before. I see that a certain will is necessary. I say, "I wish to be.”
With “I,” I open to this force that passes through my head, through my thought; with “wish," I experience a strong feeling that allows the energy to pass in the body; with "to be," I sense myself as a whole. And I feel that there is a Presence in me.
More and more I realize I need will, a wish to be that comes from deeper in myself, a force that gives me a sense of existing. This shows me my true place and awakens me to an order, to a relation, that will otherwise not appear.
(Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being: The feeling of lack; p 216)
SUGGESTION:
Work daily with the "I wish to be" exercise at the end of the reading.
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October 25, 2022
Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long possessed that he is set free, he has set himself free for higher dreams, for greater privileges. (James Baldwin)
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October 18, 2022
I have to see that the thought “I” is the greatest obstacle to consciousness of myself. Everything I know through my senses has a name. I am encumbered by names, which become more important than the things themselves. I name myself “I,” and in doing it as if I knew myself, I am accepting a thought that keeps me in ignorance. If I learn to separate myself from names, from thoughts, little by little I will come to know the nature of the mind and lift the veil it casts over me.
(Jeanne de Salzmann; The Reality of Being; p 58)
Task:
To think of/visualize each other during our Work, possibly also trying this when taking a walk.
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October 4, 2022
Once you have a taste of the relation with this energy, you begin to see what is unnecessary and let it go. Not to let the mind go here and there, now, out of respect for this energy, for attending to it. It is your fundamental activity.
If the mind starts to think about this or that—not necessary now—let it go. Out of respect for this energy, you come back. You are attracted there.
In this work, first it is necessary to become balanced in all parts. Sensing the body... and the feelings join... and the mind. Balanced for a moment, the force equally in all parts. This is normal man.
And then, one can become conscious of one’s functions. It is a training. Our functions are our companions. They need to be educated. The mind is like a dog—always chewing on a bone—very short thoughts, one after the other. But it can be trained, so that you can come back to this axis in you, this centeredness, so you can be.
And the feelings, too. So there is a reaction. I allow it to be but at the same time come back to this centeredness. What is this reaction? Is it important? And perhaps I see that it is nothing—fear of this or wishing for that.
But the primary thing is this relation with an energy, to become a channel for it.
There are two men in you. There is the one who when he is centered, when he is in relation to something, is totally different, can do anything, is intense, alive, generous. And then, at another moment, back in my usual state, with my resistance, thoughts, reactions. The one who thinks he is in charge, controlling everything—fears this, wishes that, all my problems. Can let him go for a moment. Relax him, too. Leave him at the door.
We cannot change ourselves. But when we are related to this energy inside us, it is a miracle. The goodness of it pours through me and changes everything.
You have a wish in you, but you are not aware of it. You have an energy in you, and when you are in relation with it, this axis of attention can stay longer, stay by itself even, because it is fed by every impression.
When this centeredness is there, you can receive the whole world. There is a calm, a quietness. A Look upon me, not from my ordinary self, but from That which sees objectively as it is. We are never fooled; something always knows what we do.
When listening to others speak, maybe this one sounds pretentious, can unbalance you, but you listen as if you are in front of the unknown.
The more free the attention, the more you receive.
You can find that place in you that can let it be.
Let it be. This axis of energy accepts—acceptance is “energetical”—and does not wish anything to be different, accepts to be where I am.
Who am I? We work to know who we are.
Without this axis, this centeredness, this relation— our birthright—there is incompleteness.
This incompleteness calls me.
(Michel de Salzmann; Notes on the Next Attention; p 351)
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September 27, 2022
Reading by Frank Sinclair from Opening to the Real, page 52
Suggestion: working with this passage:
“I can also then echo another of Mr. Gurdjieffs’s special and extraordinary indications of how to work in this all-
brained -balanced-being way of perceiving . Mr. Gurdjieff gave that indication here, at Christmas, 1948.
That when I breathe in I quietly say “I”, when I breathe out I quietly say “Am.”
And he added yet another aspect, which was that when I breathe in it is as if something stands up. When I breathe out ,
it is as if something sits down.”
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A couple people asked about the I Am suggestion that Mr. Gurdjieff would bring
in working with others. Frank Sinclair shares Mr. Gurdjieff’s words in his book , Opening to the Real, page 52
“I can also then echo another of Mr. Gurdjieffs’s special and extraordinary
indications of how to work in this all-
brained -balanced-being way of perceiving . Mr. Gurdjieff gave that indication here, at Christmas, 1948.
That when I breathe in I quietly say “I”, when I breathe out I quietly say “Am.”
And he added yet another aspect, which
was that when I breathe in it is as if something stands up. When I breathe out ,
it is as if something sits down.”
