The Hunt for Red Copper

T spoke of the exercise for the previous month, which was to think about achievements and to write them down as they were done. She had felt there were a few things she had achieved, but hadn't written anything down, so she had failed in that respect. She intended to try it again in the coming month and would try to be present enough to write them down. She had really liked the exercise.

L had also found it a good exercise. He said that people tend to think about the negative, but do achieve quite a lot too. He did not record very much - he did notice his little triumphs every day. He said that becoming aware of our achievements also makes us more positive in our attitude and more likely to try and accomplish them.

GC had tried the exercise and it lasted about three days. What became apparent to him was that his mind didn't want to be reminded of the successes. It identified with the negative too easily, and there was some kind of war going on in the mind, so anything which emphasised the positive was helpful and endorsed the exercise.

For D it was an achievement to come as he had been experiencing dizziness, which was induced whenever he used his iPad. He had been researching all the possible causes. He had changed his glasses and been walking slower. It was a huge contrast to how he had been feeling the previous month. He was pleased to be present and glad he had made it to the Meeting.

RM said that by now he had done over a hundred consecutive days with one-minute meditations, and the effect on him had been dramatic. He was present generally to what he was doing. If he put something down, he sensed the entire body, and remembered where he had put it. He had been thinking about the next steps for him, and had been considering Gurdjieff and the many I's, and his reading had suggested that each of the the I's was associated with different senses. Accordingly he had been trying a longer meditation to build more of an awareness of the different senses, so instead of just touch and sight, he was now using the order touch, taste, breathing, sight, sound and smell, and as he repeated each one he was sensing the depth of that sense. His sessions had increased to about fifteen minutes, and so far it seemed to give him a more rounded, whole sense; there were not as many things pulling him in different directions.

During the course of the month N had become aware that various things going on in the world were playing on his mind, and had also become aware of how he felt affected by that. The Charlie Hebdo massacre, and all the things around that, had created a lot of friction within him, which he had had to come to terms with, and consider his attitudes and the influence of the media on him. Observations could, in themselves, be achievements, he said, and it was part of the Work that we do things.
In terms of setting goals and actually achieving things, he had an app on his phone which counted his steps, with a daily target of ten thousand, and each day he reached it he felt a sense of achievement. On days when he was falling short, he would sometimes go out for a late walk to increase the total. He was considering using a lot more technology to set and achieve goals, major and minor. When there was a device to record as well as measure, it was very supportive, and luckily we lived in an age of technology where such things were possible.

Messages from BS in India were read out, and then the Meeting continued with responses to the initial contributions.

T followed on N's comments about the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and how it now seemed a long time ago. The bombardment of news from the media had shifted to other stories, while at the time it had felt pervasive, in both the broadcast and social media. N said it was as if something in the brain shuts these things off and life continues. GC asked if people allow themselves to become puppets of the media. As an example of media influence, L pointed out that at about the same time two thousand people had been killed in Nigeria, but the media gave this much less attention. T remembered the dictum Eat or be eaten, and though she felt only compassion at the time, wondered now if she had been consuming something. She remembered the huge demonstration in Paris, attended by millions, yet it already seemed a remote event now.

D said that he had been considering the notion that the world might be heading for a nervous breakdown, unable to cope with the unstoppable flood of information. GC suggested that D was expressing negative thoughts because he was disappointed to be feeling less well. T thought it might be an example of GC's idea that people find it easier to recognise their failures than their achievements, and recalled that D was extremely positive the previous month.

Responding to RM, D asked RM what he hoped to achieve with his determination to be present on every issue. RM said that in the spiritual journey achievement and goals were not a feature at all. A goal was simply a pointer, like the North Pole, it pointed you in the right direction. This was more important than the speed you were going at. It was also helpful to ask the question in the mind whether what you were doing or reading was helping you to stay in that direction, or was it a distraction. Success was to do with peace of mind. This relieved a lot of the pressure of growing older or infirm, because it was the direction that matters, not the speed, in the evolution of conscious awareness. The problem with goals was that if we are so intensely involved in a goal, everything that was between where you were and the goal was literally in the way, like a necessary evil - it could be the staff in a company helping you achieve that goal - and that caused a huge amount of stress in organisations. This related to D's reference to stress in society.

T returned to the aftermath of the shootings in France, and asked whether the crowds coming out in support of free speech were awake or asleep? Were they mechanical or had they been awakened? GC asked what she thought and she replied she thought they were probably mechanical.

At 10:30, the Meeting resumed the reading of Beelzebub's Tales.

I wish to aid artificially the evolution and involution of its elements towards a greater density, or, on the contrary, towards their transformation back to a primal state.

N thought this suggested intervention in the process of change, with the terms evolution and involution referring to either raising or lowering consciousness.

Red copper

And from that moment, the given parts of the Omnipresent-Okidanokh begin, together with the said elements of the said medium, to represent the corresponding densities required in planets, that is to say, various kinds of metalloids or even metals, as for instance, the metal I have placed in this sphere, and in which there will proceed artificially at this moment, at my wish, the action of striving-to-reblend-into-a-whole of the parts of the Okidanokh, and which metal, as I have already said, exists under the name of red-copper.

The only thing that sang out for T was the reference to red copper, and everything else was a mush. The difficulty of extracting a unique metal from mined ore symbolised for her the difficulty of extracting meaning from Gurdjieff's writing in this part of the narrative.

And further, having arisen in the planets in this way, the said various metalloids and metals then begin according to the common-universal-law called "Reciprocal-feeding-of-everything-existing"—as it is generally proper to arisings of every kind in which Okidanokh or any of its active parts participates—to radiate from their presences the results of their inner "Interchange-of-substances." And as is proper to radiations of every kind issuing from sur- and intraplanetary formations that have acquired in their vibrations the property of Okidanokh or of its active parts, and which are in what is called the "center-of-gravity" of every such said formation, the radiations of these metalloids and metals possess properties almost similar to the properties of Okidanokh itself or of one or another of its active parts.

D thought there was some friction involved, and in his mind there was an image of the creation or crystallisation of a diamond at the centre of a cyclone. The text was about the creation of some element in the body. It was as if this process had occurred within Gurdjieff himself, who seemed not to be rocked by inner emotional turmoil or surrounding events.

L said that scientifically we think life evolved by chance on this planet. But in the text Gurdjieff suggests an external intervention, twice using the word "artificially". He is talking about the evolution of life and consciousness from raw materials. GC asked how consciousness could evolve. L thought that was a key question.

RM considered the distinction between consciousness and awareness. He described awareness as universal, and consciousness as sitting in a field of awareness. When consciousness blends with awareness, things start to change. His own understanding had come from the book I Am That by Nisargadatta, he makes the clear distinction throughout the book about the distinction between consiousness and awareness. For RM the sequence was ego, body, mind, consciousness, awareness, these can be stripped away in that order. GC asked for the definition of the word. L checked online the etymology of the word, and its origin was in Middle English and pertained to a sense a danger, as in wariness. N said that it was a semantic issue. T said that she was aware that the Meeting might be straying from the Reading. GC said that the Reading so far this time had not been understood by anyone. T said that the discussion had also been confusing.

Following the Reading, there was discussion on an exercise for the coming month. It was decided to continue with the exercise from the previous month, noting down achievements. GC remarked that it was very interesting that the mind did not like to do this, whereas it was content to dwell on failings.