Cursing and Rehearsing

The meeting began at 9am with a silence of one minute, followed by a presentation by some of those present, for up to two minutes, of relevant experiences over the previous month.

BS, in his message from India, related [Removed at the request of BS.] Paraphrasing Rabindranath Tagore, his experience reflected the opening of one of that artist's verses:

I slept, I dreamt, that life was beauties.
I woke, I found that life was duties.

[Removed at the request of BS.]

BW related that this could be his last meeting for a few months. He is moving out of London. He is conscious of his behaviour and habitual movements, which he can stop at will. He has written the fourth draft of his latest play. He is aware of not wanting to sit down and write and having to force himself so to do.

"R" had read the notes of the previous meeting, which seemed to her to be related to fear, yet in contrast there was celebration going on in the world around us, a courageous joyful energy which is quite extraordinary, nothing to do with the political situation, opposite to the pessimism of Ouspensky. Strangers talking to each other, not just at the carnival, something spontaneous coming forth which is longed for inside herself and is generally not noticeable. Is it totally a product of sleep? Is there something afoot, some undercurrent in us here?

RM had set up a major project for him to re-interpret the Bhagavad Gita and the Tao Te Ching. He has been working on it for a couple of hours a day. He said we are always in the middle. Whenever you go one way, you have to go the other way. A chess player has to play with the pieces. The key is to keep himself safe. How important it is, not to run away to the sandals and candles brigade.

L had been unable to do two way self remembering, partly because he was not sure what it was. But he had found the chess metaphor interesting, in that as a chess-player might already be in a self-observant state, if he were self-remembering it might be an additional degree of remembering.

D chose to read from a sheet he had found at a church in Brighton, and been very impressed by. It included an account of looking at a flower in a state of extreme mindfulness. He concluded by asking whether this example of the Buddhist practice of mindfulness was over the top?

In contrast, T recounted that when looking at a flower and trying to paint it, she has had feelings of hating the flower, because she has found it so difficult to see it at all, and to translate what is difficult to see into paint.

There being no further contributions from those attending, the Meeting then moved to responses to what had been said.

Z said that when she comes into a state of mindfulness, her eyesight becomes clearer, she is not just focusing on one thing. RM said that the reason for her improved eyesight is that the body adjusts to loving illusion; the eyes adjust, the eyes settle to one reality.

M related mindfulness to beingness (a term from Scientology). D's reading had pointed out the difference in depths of perception, we should know just what the terms mean. In meditation you usually have to make an improvement in an event you would like to see happen. How do you know that you are doing the right thing? A meditative period is useful if it helps you make a decision, and should have a purpose, for example whether or not your depth of perception has been increased. Afterwards ask, has anything happened in the meditation or not? Has there been communication from a higher plane? Meditation has to be linked to an action, otherwise it remains a thought. What is the purpose of meditation? There is a comparison between how things are and how one would like things to be.

Z said that she had never heard that idea about meditation.

L's understanding of meditation was that it was not about having a purpose, but rather letting all thoughts go.

GC is meditation one thing for every body? People at the Meeting had differing ideas as to what it was. His idea for meditation is that a person is who they are by viewing their own behaviour. When do you begin to observe yourself? You recognise an action, its very hard not to judge. Principles, honesty and values are requisite.

"R" said that mindfulness is a feeling of emptiness, a feeling of utter boredom. There may be a fear of one's nothingness. Empty isn't bad, it's truth. There are less riches stored up in the inner bank account than we would like.

D spoke of the fear of not coming out of the emptiness. Essence is emptiness, and doesn't have a a lot of luggage. Mind is not different from essence. They are connected. It's easier in the ashram. Being mindful that a thought comes in.

L related this idea to a theme in Scarlett Thomas's latest novel, Our Tragic Universe, in which the heroine, told in childhood by a fortune teller that she would come to nothing, comes to understand in adulthood that is a worthy goal, a zen-like renunciation of identity.

M asked what entity was using the mind subject to will.

It being 9:45am, the Meeting then continued with the Reading from Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson.

In this final part of the introductory chapter, Gurdjieff is explaining that his attempt to awaken the reader might elicit resistance, and to explain this introduces the character Karapet of Tiflis, whose job it was to awaken the railway workers every morning with a piercing whistle which unwittingly disturbed the whole town. In turn, Karapet intoduces his own character, a dog-catcher.

Just when my friend the barber-surgeon beckoned me to stop, he was aiming to throw his net, at the opportune moment, at his next victim, which at that moment was standing wagging his tail and looking at a bitch. My friend was just about to throw his net, when suddenly the bells of a neighboring church rang out, calling the people to early morning prayers. At such an unexpected ringing in the morning quiet, the dog took fright and springing aside flew off like a shot down the empty street at his full canine velocity.

Then the barber-surgeon so infuriated by this that his hair, even beneath his armpits, stood on end, flung his net on the pavement and spitting over his left shoulder, loudly exclaimed:

'Oh, Hell! What a time to ring!'

G asked for an explanation of this passage, and L said it was structured as a story within a story within a story, in each case about the discomfort of being abruptly awoken from sleep or reverie.

Continuing with the reading, Karapet realises that he himself must be cursed every morning by the townsfolk.

I, continuing to ponder, came to the conclusion that if I should curse beforehand all those to whom my service for the benefit of certain among them might seem disturbing, then ... however much all those ... might curse me, it would have ... no effect on me at all.

And in fact, since I began to do so, I no longer feel the said instinctive uneasiness.

T said she had been greatly affected by the reading but couldn't recall why exactly at the start of the Meeting. She had been exceptionally busy and was consequently quite exhausted and had not got anything to report about the Work over the month. But this part of the reading reminded her what point she had been affected by, about cursing others before they curse her. She was troubled by this as it felt against her nature to curse others. G made the point that this pre-emptive cursing acts as a protection for her to do her work.

As the Meeting ended, it was decided again to try the two-way self-remembering exercise. In response to a query from L, RM explained that this was the two-headed arrow. (This exercise does not come from Gurdjieff, and the idea was first mentioned, with reservations, by Ouspensky in his book In Search Of The Miraculous.)