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.
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December 3, 2022
Tags: culture, sensing, sensitive energy, work, work zones
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August 6, 2022
When I invoke presence, I pivot, I turn towards the real world.
What is the real world? It is easier to describe what it is not. It is not the world of my personality, the world of the things I want, my anxieties or ambitions, my worries and fears, my roles in life. Being present, other things can enter, the possibility of feeling, of open perception, an objective view. My state is a prayer. I stand at the doorway.
Being present does not last long. The reverberations of the machine…the body and mind…continue and pull me back into habitual living. The life of the world beckons. How to remain in the real world? We are advised to waken the machine. What does this mean? In the waking state, body and mind have no negative emotion…no emotion that drains my energy down and out. (Negative in the electrical sense, as much true of euphoria as anger.) I am translucent. I have energy. I am an energy transformation device converting sensation to consciousness and consciousness to love. I enter the real world.
You may think you can ‘do’ this…become present, waken the machine, join the work. Perhaps you can release your personality for a moment and call your presence to be. To waken, much more is required. Your attention must be able to hold, note every flutter of habitual sensation, thought and emotion and release them as they arise. With no discharge, you fill with energy and higher functioning is possible. This is exaltation.
Some teachers of the work state the rules of procedure for waking the machine. You cannot rely on them. The rules come after the experience. They become clear when you have travelled the path. You cannot begin with a view of the end point. You struggle to observe self. You see that all higher states are gifts. You slowly fall in love with the simple, with nature, with smiles and small gestures.
Trying to awaken is like trying to put hay through the wrong end of the elephant. One day, your experiences will begin to waken you, when you have stopped your pathetic need to react to everything habitually and your ambitions fall away. Then you can work.Tags: awaken, invoke, pivot, presence, present, Real World, work
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September 17, 2021
It is easy to think and talk about work on self but very difficult to do it consistently. The secret is to use the difficulties of doing work to work more often.
Do you know how to observe yourself? At first you will observe yourself with judgment or justification. This is good, this is bad, this is why. These reactions block further observation of self.
Perhaps you try to stop judgment or justification. Does this help you to observe more? No? So, alternatively, observe the judgment and justification. Do not allow the judge/justifier to become the observer; make them the observed. They are primarily body sensations, are they not?, followed by strings or loops of thought which trigger more sensations.
Sensations do not need commentary. They exist in the nervous system and can be sensed there. Accept the sensations and track them. As the thought loops arise, taking you towards discursive thinking, take refuge in the sensations. Don’t leave sensing for thinking. This is something you can learn to do. It’s simply a re-placement of attention.Tags: attention, observation, practical work on self, work
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November 22, 2020
We are so conditioned to make efforts. We think we can make efforts to change ourselves. We want to affirm and we do so with the pushing force. And what does that do? Look into it. You can see that it defeats itself. Can you jump over your own knees?
Let us go by way of the negative, shall we? A somersault rather than a jump.
Let’s consider fixation. What could be more ‘me’ than fixation? I’m always compulsively thinking about something so I miss much of what’s going on. My attention is forever being attracted to something or other, either because I like it (and therefore cling to it), or dislike it (and therefore avert it, push it away). My attention may skip from one thing to another but is it not always fixated one something, somewhere?
What would it be like to be unfixated? Well, that would mean seeing/hearing/sensing everything around me. Immediately my affirming self jumps to the fore. “I can do that,’ says me. Wrong step. Let’s start again. If I am not clinging or averting, what is going on? What is the gesture that is neither? A gesture that is neutral, unattached.
I have such a gesture, one that does not arise automatically, a conscious gesture therefore seldom arising. This gesture is releasing, allowing everything to be exactly as it is without my engagement.
My eyes are open. I see. I notice that I am looking at something and my field of vision is narrowed. Can I release this something and temporarily see everything?
There are two steps…noticing the fixation and releasing it. Affirming that I can see everything is not a step, it is a fixation.
Can I learn to notice and release fixation? Find out. There are many fixations, of thought, of sensation. Can I notice and release them all as they arise? What happens if I do?
Here’s the real secret. Skillful releasing offers up a direct perception of emptiness, not the emptiness of depression but rather the emptiness of pure consciousness, consciousness unattached and able to sense/glimpse itself. In Buddhist terms, you have experienced Sunyata and the spontaneous response is very joyous, a momentary freedom known as the first Bhumi. Bet you didn’t see that coming. No one does.
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May 15, 2020
The fourth secret of the work: there is nothing I can affirm that is worth a plugged nickel because my ordinary efforts come from my personality. This is not to say that I do not experience exalted states from time to time. But they are not from me or by my effort. They are gifts.
Let us say I notice that I have a tendency to exaggerate and that I often claim to know things that I do not know. I wish to break this habit and be more honest and sincere. Can I decide to be honest; can I affirm the quality of honesty without self-flattery, in a sincere way?
I am willing to bet I can’t affirm a positive quality. Any quality. Perhaps I can fake the behavior or posture…the outward appearance of sincerity…in a convincing manner but my habitual tendency to lie will reassert itself. Over years, I have accumulated a persona built on reacting to stimulus using a range of behaviours learned from mimicking those around me. This persona is the counterfeit, preventing the unfolding of real being. Anything flowing from the persona is a substitute.
There is another way: to become sincere, can I observe my lying objectively…perceive its every nuance in real time, the fluttering sensations that lead the mind down false alleys into the momentary pleasure of deceiving and exaggerating. When I know it well, in real time, I no longer experience the attractions of lying. Then l can call upon the quality of sincerity.
Every good and bad thing can be called to us, voluntarily or not. By observation of self, without justification or judgment, we are able to discard the unreal and open a space for the real to be invoked. The undesirable must be relinquished before the desirable can be attained. Note the word ‘relinquished’. When we know something very well, we can let it go… the habitual substitute is no longer needed.
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May 5, 2020
I wish to have a deeper experience of my life. Do I know where to begin? Knowing where to begin anything is critical. Every good thing must be approached correctly. Before love, humility. Before humility, remorse. Before remorse, confession. Before prayer, an apology. Know the steps. The inner world is not commanded, it is seduced by delicacy of manner.
