Gravity

EXERCISE “To action and observe the experience of deliberate slowness, defined further as to do something every day at half the usual speed.”

Moving on from the counting lamposts exercise RM had spoken about before, he was very aware of the importance of not just counting lamposts, but being totally aware of being present so he could see how far he got before he lost himself, and added doing something more slowly, trying to get out of the habit of walking as fast as he normally does. If he found he was walking at a fast pace he would slow down to the next lampost.

N had found it a very interesting exercise. The slowing down of things enables you to see things better. He had used it in a number of areas. One was driving. He had a tendency to go fast and in his area they had made a 20 mph speed limit in quite a few places which was quite slow when he was used to going at 30 mph. He observed resistance, an internal struggle within himself to trying to keep within the 20 mph limit. There was a tendency with him to try and do things fast at work or wherever he is doing things, so working against that tendency is good. The other place he tried it was in learning to play his guitar and playing scales. He slowed down, which was good, but he had to use a metronome at times because of the tendency to speed up. He didn't know objectively how much he had slowed his action down, whether it was half the rate, but he found that the more he concentrated on it, the more he became aware of other things, and there was more time to be present in the experience.

L had found this exercise to be a lot harder than some of the others, partly because of the definition. It was to do something at half speed but it didn't specify what. But he did notice that, like others, he tended to rush things. He thought it was maybe a manifestation of tension. Generally, thinking about some of the Gurdjieff exercises, from other perspectives, they can be seen as disorders. For example, counting lamposts could be a symptom of OCD, and similarly always opening doors with a particular hand. But the exercises were being done for a purpose. He had also continued to do the alternating exercise of eating and not eating for a minute, and the will-power exercise of doing three things a day, which could get a little obsessive at times and had led to some late nights, but he was achieving it consistently, and was able to look back on about a thousand things done over the year, some of which were very trite, but others of which were significant and of benefit for ever after.

H had been unable to fit the exercise in to the things he did in practice, but did realise that mechanicalness would be interfering with it somehow. He had been reading around this subject from Ouspensky's point of view, and recalled a passage in the Gita which said that dwelling on the objects of sense creates an attachment for them. Dr Roles had been interested in it, among others, and they described this process of attachment which exists all the time. In the Indian teaching it's called attachment, and in the Gurdjieff teaching identification. It's very, very hard to get out of it, except by trying to be present, and the exercise can bring you into the present by slowing down.

T had tried the exercise with walking, and what surprised her, after she had been all set to walk slowly, was that she found herself speeding up again, and there was a process of forgetting and remembering, forgetting and remembering. She would be walking in the rain, counting lamposts, and would realise she had missed three, and would then slow down. Working with these two exercises simultaneously reminded her of "pat your head and rub your tummy". It was really hard to do both and keep both in mind. She would increase her pace without realising and then forget to count lamposts. She found it disturbing that she did things fast mechanically, and in a way to forget because she found them boring. Activities like washing up were very helpful for slowing down.

The focus for "R" in the last month had been family and social occasions, and just working at really listening and taking in the presence of not her agenda, but somebody else's agenda which was really valuable material because at one stage she was in a room full of people of the social climbing variety, and the one person she found she could really listen to was somebody who was quite disturbed and who spoke in a genuine way about the things that were upsetting him, and how different that was from the people who wanted to tell everybody how important they were, and that brought her back to who is here listening, can they listen without judging, and can they even share something which might be supportive - she felt not in the library in her head, gesturing to her head as she spoke, but in here pointing to her torso.

Following the contributions, K requested an explanation of what was meant by being present, or self-remembering. RM said he knew what self-remembering meant now because he knows what it is like not to. GC asked K what he thought presence was. K said that he thought it was something which is aware of you, your physical existence, some part of your brain or being that is able to experience you existing and that can also include the surrounding reality. His experience is not coloured by associations, or if they exist they somehow go into the background temporarily, there is an expectation of himself that is more pure, so if he is having that experience of himself, then the logical thing is that something is taking it in. So in his experience that is what being present is, or that is an aspect of it.

Responding to the issue of identification raised by H, N asked if an experience of being present was an experience of non-identification. K said that all these associations are parts of feelings we are having all the time. They are directed to some object. There is an attached, identified relationship. If his attention is on himself in an impartial way, not attached with judgement of feeling or criticism, that is in the direction of being non-identified. GC asked K if he was talking about awareness without definition. K agreed, as a definition is something which uses words, and if words are a product of associations then it was so. L said he liked the way K put it, as it included the idea that you couldn't be totally present because there are always some things at the back of the mind which are in the process of undermining it, and it takes some kind of conscious effort to be as present as possible, but in our general experience the state cannot be sustained indefinitely. K said that in his experience it was for a brief moment, and then everything came back in again.

N thought the discussion was about moving from personality to impersonality. GC thought the term self-remembering gave the wrong impression because it seemed to indicate there was something remembering something. For him there was no me. It's the personality - you observe nothing through the personality, the mask. The problem comes when you try to understand the infinite with the finite.

K said that we were somehow trying to either develop something or find something to get beneath   these layers of the personality. The idea is that there is something behind the personality that could be uncovered. GC asked what it was. Was it the the carrot on the stick that people are always grasping for? K said that the observer, the little I, was something that's not so attached to the personality, not so attached to this construct of who we are that gets built up. GC asked if K thought there was another construct behind that construct. K said it was possible, but you had to start somewhere. Maybe it was all a nonsense, but from his own experience, he has moments where there is something of greater depth that appears. In the fullest experience for him, there was an emotional element too, and an experience of greater depth of being alive. Maybe that was just another carrot or another construct, but it did seem that there was more value in that than all the superficiality that we were constantly engaged with, so from that point of view it seemed that there was a quality of difference. L said we do know that inspiration is a tangible and real force in the world, so we could surmise that that comes from or through the deeper self. That is something which is there, it is a phenomenon, people get inspired to do phenomenal things and sometimes do them.

T talked of the concept of the VIP inside you. It is very hard to feel you can relate to a 'very important person'. As a way of describing what is inside you it is difficult to know how to relate to the VIP. As in external life how unfamiliar and anxiety making to address a Queen or Prime Minister.

Following the responses, the Meeting continued with the reading from Beelzebub's Tales, Chapter 20.

... both the climate of this country and everything else so delighted the hunters and their families that none of them, as I have already said, had any desire to return to the continent Atlantis, and from that time on they remained there ...

Just before the second great catastrophe those genuine learned beings then existing on the continent Atlantis ... began to observe very carefully all the natural phenomena of their continent; but however hard they tried, they could in no way find out what precisely had to happen.

A little later on and with the same aim, they sent some of their members to other continents and islands, in order, by means of these common observations, perhaps to be able to find out what was impending.

... One of these members, namely, the mentioned important being, had chosen the continent Iranan for his observations and, having migrated there with his servants, had settled on the shores of the said water-space later called the Sea of Beneficence.

It was just this same learned member of the society Akhaldan who once chanced to meet certain of the mentioned hunters on the shores of the said Sea of Beneficence, and having learned that they had also come from the continent Atlantis, was naturally very glad, and began to establish relations with them.

And when, shortly afterwards, the continent Atlantis entered within the planet and this learned Akhaldan member had no longer any place to return to, he remained to exist with these hunters in that future Maralpleicie.

www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/Atlantis_legend

N said it was interesting that Gurdjieff gave the example of Atlantis, because it was a continent which was destroyed. And sometimes one thinks about this world being destroyed. N wondered if by giving the example of Atlantis and saying that some inhabitants survived may be suggesting a link with schools that Gurdjieff searched for and wrote of discovering. "R" said it was also a description of the fact that our real consciousness is now submerged. L said that maybe Atlantis has a symbolic meaning.

Plato's description was of a city based on a design of concentric circles, which may have had a symbolic design. L was struggling to find meaning  in it but it might be to do with what Atlantis means to us, and maybe to do with the geometry of the city according to Plato's description, which Gurdjieff would have known of. RM saw this chapter as an allegory. T heard Maralpleicie as "moral place". GC queried where the places actually were, and whether they were in Asia. L said that after the last time there were queries about the locations, he searched online for a map and could not find one, and suggested it might be worth making one if there was not one available.

...Multiplying, these beings gradually spread over this country more and more widely, although always preferring the shores of the Sea of Beneficence and the valleys of those two large rivers which flowed into it.

GC said that Gurdjieff seemed to be very fond of the word beneficence, what did it mean? Did it mean doing well, or making good things? N said that we were talking about an area which was blessed by nature, the Sea of Beneficence. People in those early days of society moved by the sea for the supply of food, much better life and security than up in the remote mountains.

After long observations he finally cleared up for himself that the cause of the phenomenon was a new habit of the beings of his community, namely, their habit of chewing the seed of a plant then called 'Gulgulian.' This surplanetary formation also arises on the planet Earth at the present time, and those of your favorites who consider themselves 'educated' call it 'Papaveroon,' but the ordinary beings simply call it the 'poppy.'

...In the course of his further close observations and impartial investigations King Konuzion clearly understood that these seeds contained a 'something' that could completely change, for the time being, all the established habits of the psyche of those beings who introduced this something into themselves, with the result that they saw, understood, felt, sensed, and acted quite otherwise than they were previously accustomed to see, sense, act, and so on.

...When King Konuzion became clearly convinced of all this, he immediately dispatched everywhere trusted and faithful subjects of his strictly to command in his name all beings of his community to cease chewing the seeds of the mentioned plant; he also arranged for the punishment and fine of those beings who should disobey this order.

Thanks to these measures of his, the chewing of the said seeds seemed to diminish in the country of Maralpleicie; but after a very short time it was discovered that the number of those who chewed had only seemingly diminished; in reality, they were even more than before.

GC said that Beelzebub is talking about people out of their heads, tripping. RM said that the experience was absolute nonsense, but GC asked how he knew that? "R" said the distinction was that people under narcotic influence stopped making an effort. H said that if both experiences were equally valid, did the concept of waking sleep mean anything? K said that the perception itself was the waking sleep. H said he thought that there were people, like Ouspensky, who had woken, and you could tell that was the case from the way they wrote. L said he did not get that impression. He got the impression of a writer who had got sidetracked and was producing more acceptable fodder for people to read. Eventually enneagram study was turned into a form of astrology and there was the huge appeal of the enneagram personality types which is very much more interesting to talk about at parties, and is also a much easier read.

The proposed Mars One settlement

L was not sure Gurdjieff said you could wake up but he provided a means of trying. He thought it was interesting that the human race was acting out this whole drama in trying to escape from the pull of gravity - we were at the stage now where there were half a dozen people in orbit doing self-observation of the planet. But that was not enough for people, they had not yet escaped from gravity, and they wanted to go to Mars.

...Finally the wise king decided to deal with this evil indirectly, namely, by playing on the weaknesses in the psyche of the beings of his community. With this aim he invented a very original 'religious doctrine' corresponding to the psyche of the beings of that time; and this invention of his he spread broadcast among all his subjects by every means at his disposal.

GC said this paragraph summed up Gurdjieff perfectly.

Following the reading, an exercise was decided upon. A suggestion from L was adopted, to do something twice every day. The first time might be habitual, and the second time with more awareness, working to be awake. Adam Sandler demonstrates an example of this exercise (opening a door twice) in Punch-Drunk Love (2002).