L said he had found the exercise useful. He had also been following the list system. It may not be possible to have a single "I", but a list may be a catalyst for coalescence towards something closer to a single "I".
D had brought a copy of The Way of the Sufi, by Idries Shah, from which he quoted: "You must prepare yourself for the transition in which there will be none of the things to which you have accustomed yourself". He had also been reading Arianna Huffington in the Huffington Post, who had written about mindfulness in the context of business.
He thought that now may be a time that these practices are becoming more widely used in day to day life including in business and the work place. He wanted to ask M and "R" if they are helpful when getting older. He is using them more now, and is getting through the day.
T had been trying the exercise of standing on one leg.
Her body had really enjoyed trying to balance; it had been interesting. She had also tried the exercise from GC. She remembered it as being the back of the head, that was to be the place of awareness. She had done it a few times. It had given her a sense of her own skeleton, which she usually gets from looking at a drawing of a skull. To actually experience it was different and terrifying, on the cusp.M spoke on being older. He said that time goes faster, that "you haven't got as much time as you think you have". He gets stuck in a train off thought, and wonders where the thoughts come from. It is interesting to notice this.
RM recalled that when he was in a Gurdjieff Group he was given a question, "What is this self?" He has been rewriting the Tao Te Ching in his own words, which constantly refers to the true self and false self. The golden mean is the true self, which happens completely naturally. Even attaining wisdom is a false self activity.
B had done the exercise a few times. Maybe he had felt a tingling, a change in awareness. Sometimes his deeper feelings felt a fiction. Last time he was told to enjoy being in love, to smell the roses, but part of him didn't want to, while the better, higher part wants to commit. He had become angry a few times. His mother had asked what was the point of the writing he was working on, and he had felt that his writing was deserving of respect.
"R" had set for herself the practical task for the summer to look at the appetites, and in order to do that decided on alternate days to desist from eating either cheese, or anything containing sugar. This showing her how cunning "it" is. She is going to go on retreat for two weeks with her group, which will be very interesting as there will be nice things on offer to eat. At home she has moved tempting items out of sight in the fridge. Appetite, so-called, is a habit.
As there were no further contributions, the Meeting moved on to the section where responses are given and discussed.
D commented, in response to T, that standing on one foot is quite effective for getting back into the body. Habitual behaviour causes the mind to switch off - the question is, how to function without habitual behaviour. Turning to RM, D said everyone disagrees what a Sufi is, and there might be a similar issue in his rewriting of the Tao Te Ching about what the true self is. RM said the everything D had thus far described is not it.
"R", in response to D, quoted advice Gurdjieff received from his father in Meetings With Remarkable Men:
...the fundamental striving of every man should be to create for himself an inner freedom towards life...
and to prepare for himself a happy old age. ... But a man could attain this aim only if, from childhood up to the age of eighteen, he had acquired data for the unwavering fulfilment of the following four commandments:
| First | To love one's parents. |
| Second | To remain chaste. |
| Third | To be outwardly courteous to all without distinction, whether they be rich or poor, friends or enemies, powerpossessors or slaves, and to whatever religion they may belong, but inwardly to remain free and never to put much trust in anyone or anything. |
| Fourth | To love work for work's sake and not for its gain. |
RM said that as we get older we find jt easier and easier to go to sleep. Time didn't go faster for him, but he finds more ways to go to sleep or do useless activities
Z said it seems that so much she did is habit, which is sleep- forming. RM said that some exercises like the Movements and tapping the head while rubbing the tummy are impossible to fall asleep to.
The Muppets demonstrate an exercise for staying awake
Responding to B, L stated that there will always be resistance from family members to another family member doing art. The main thing is what the artist thinks of what he or she is creating. As the artist does not create anything of material value, other members of the family may take a different view of the activity. L suggested that there is a link between practicing creative art and the Work, and that it may play a part in the development of a core identity. Historically, many of the people attending Gurdjieff’s meetings were artists. D asked if Gurdjieff chose them. “R” said no, but they came. D asked “R” if it was only artists who came. “R” said no, ordinary people came too.
Noel Coward’s “Don’t Put Your Daughter On The Stage”
T said it was interesting to know about self calming, that Gurdjieff referred to it as the evil inner-god. “R” said that self-calming can justify staying sleep. D said that being irritable can help him be more himself. “R” could see how this might sometimes be the case. D was unsure if the Meetings are so helpful nowadays as the world has changed completely; respect for elders is not as important as it once was.
At 9:45 the reading from Beelzebub’s Tales continued.
"And so, my boy:"The contemporary writer of whom I began to speak was just a 'writer' like all the rest there, and nothing particular in himself.
"Once when he had finished some book or other, he began to think what he should write about next, and with this in view, he decided to look for some new 'idea' in the books contained in his what is called 'library,' such as every writer there is bound to have.
B commented that rearranging the same stuff and not creating anything new is a concept he is not sure he understands. RM thought it is like the concept of habit. Z said it is a key issue how to separate self from habit.
L mentioned Euterpe, the Muse of music and poetry, whom the ancient Greeks thought brought ideas to the artist. Maybe there is nothing new. He said that we are composed of atoms from interstellar space. When he writes music, the fragment comes from such and such a place. RM recalled L’s work in the field of fractal music, where the repeated application of the same rules produces more and more musical motifs, all related but but at the same time each one unique. L asked where does a tune come from, and in the larger context of the human story, where do the folk melodies come from? As other species produce songs and melody, it could be that some tunes are encoded in our DNA, and in that sense are part of physical reality. Citing an example of the tension between new and old, RM said that the DOS operating system remains essentially the same, at the heart of Microsoft Windows. Apple created their own base system. There is a struggle creating something completely new. This is why we have wars. It is related to Gurdjieff’s concept of the “conscious shock”. RM felt that he has to go to places he has never been before. He had been attending the School of Economic Science for many years, and it has a turnover of 300 attendees every year. Those who stay all have a sense of enquiry. From time to time he starts again at year one, in order to be with fresh minds, as otherwise it gets cultish. “Nothing fresh stays in one place,” he said. L commented that in painting, there is really no such thing as a still life. Everything changes.The reading continued:
" … they therefore decided almost immediately to 'get rid of' both the writer himself and his 'Gospels' …"Some proposed that they should simply shut him up where many 'rats' and 'lice' breed; others proposed to send him to 'Timbuktu'; and so on and so forth; but in the end they decided to anathematize this writer together with his 'Gospel,' publicly and punctiliously according to all the rules...”
L asked is there were any theories as to who Gurdjieff is referring to. “R” though he was referring to himself. L said he had thought it might be Freud, Jung or Joseph Smith. B said he really wants to see Beelzebub’s Tales as a gospel, he wants to be led.
"…Anything he writes now, they all seize upon and regard as full of indisputable truth … But if you were then to ask what he wrote, it would turn out that most of them, if of course they confessed the truth, has never read a single one of his books.
Z remarked that groups take over the public imagination. “R” commented that people speak in this way of Machiavelli, but who has read his books? L recalled Gurdjieff’s advice from his grandmother, which “R” read out to the Meeting:
Eldest of my grandsons! Listen and always remember my strict injunction to you: In life never do as others do … Either do nothing—just go to school—or do something nobody else does.
Following the Reading, it was decided that the exercise for the month would be to try to remember to open doors with the less usual hand.
No comments:
Post a Comment