In Presence

Culture is trash, said a group member. True if you think of some of our current music and entertainment…lighting up genitalia, twerking and the like. But culture also encompasses our greatest achievements as humans, reflecting the highest use of sensitive energy to create the beautiful.

Consider reading Doris Lessing’s Marriage of Zones Three Four and Five. Zone Four is a culture based on rules and thinking. It is known for its rigidity and lack of imagination. Its inhabitants do not look up to the mountains. They follow dictates. Their highest form of organization is the military.

Zone Three is the creative use of sensation. Zone Three does not ultimately lead to the fully conscious experience of the mysterious Zone Two but its life is elevated by subtlety and communication.

The difference between Zones Three and Four is visible in something as simple as serving a cup of tea. In Zone Four, the cup is plunked down while the mind goes on to the next thought, the next task. In Zone Three, The gesture is completed by taking into account the server, the served and the tea and the placement is an exchange between their gestures and postures.

One artist can be interested in learning technique while another wants to explore the sense experience of the materials, the light in the studio, the placement of the easel.

Fourth way work tends to be too much Zone Four. Most of the questions I get are literally senseless.

Voluntary sensing is Gurdjieff’s World 24. Still impermanent, but it touches on World 12 where feeling enters from the miraculous realm of the infinite. Better to cultivate sensing than thinking. Use attention. Let mentation follow along the rails of sight and sound. This way lies consciousness and World 12.