The Poor Law

EXERCISE “To notice oneself lying, and make a note each time.”

This exercise had prompted L to recall a joke M used to tell. Question: Why do tall people get up late? Answer: Because they lie longer in bed. L had noticed that he was lying nearly all the time. Exceptions were while working on art, because that had an essential quality, and likewise while working on the blog. Whenever he planned to do something and did not, that was lying to himself. The to-do list system which had many to-do's listed was a stark reminder of numerous intentions and fewer follow- throughs. He was still doing the three things a day exercise, so that was a small area where that lying did not happen. When he made an appointment to be somewhere and was late, that was also a form of lying.

D said he wished M was there because he wanted to ask him about his experience of aging and age. He had been living in illusion most of his life and still was most of the time. His 75th birthday was coming up later in the month. He was thinking of the past a lot, of times in childhood. He had been in a lot of institutions, and rebelled. He was not in the future. He was either in the present or the past. He said this was typical of people as they got older.

N joked that his work as a lawyer meant that you could say he was a professional liar. He did what he could to reduce conflict. His clients had decided to be litigious in the belief that they had been wronged and had a case to be fought. He defended his clients in court to help them win their litigious battle. The judge heard both sides and then made a decision. When N considered there had been a miscarriage of justice he could take the case to a judicial appeal for the case to be heard again. N had one client who was undoubtedly an honest, hard working man who had been made bankrupt by several others who had ganged up against him to achieve this. He had taken this case to judicial appeal to try to reverse the judgement in favour of his client.

T had thought that she wouldn't have anything to talk about as she considered herself an honest person. However she experienced a shock at three weeks into the month when she experienced a case of herself lying at work. It had been agreed that she regularly worked late and she was careful to keep to the correct hours. There was a system of signing out because of fire regulations and one evening she hadn't felt well and left early but signed out at the usual time, so that the boss would not have to know. She realised that this was a lie. What she observed was that she immediately thought of having to say this at the next meeting and that she felt utterly ashamed of what she'd done and the shame triggered her to consider not describing this event in the meeting after all which she then realised was a second lie compounding further the first lie, and her identity as an honest person began to develop cracks. This realisation about herself was uncomfortable and shocking and distasteful. She experienced an emotional struggle going on inside, on the one hand wanting to deny this unsavoury aspect of herself and cover up, and on the other hand wanting to be honest about her dishonesty and accept the uncomfortable truth that she was not so honest after all. She was aware that it also brought back feelings from childhood of having to be honest and if you weren't honest then you were bad. If you were honest you were good. She wanted to be seen to be good and this triggered lying to keep up this illusion. For her the exercise had been an effective self observation tool.

"R" had been spending time with one of her grandchildren who was on the autistic spectrum. He was now 11, and was reading a lot, an enormous amount of which stayed in his mind. He would repeat back everything he read at great speed. This highlighted for her how much we acquired by reading, and then repeated this acquired information as our own experience of the subject and fact, whereas it was not fact and only acquired knowledge, not knowledge through experience. So she realised how much of what she said was, by virtue of this fact, a lie. This was difficult.

RM had not done the exercise because he continued with the one that works for him, to wake him up. He uses a one minute timer on waking and then 15 minutes with 4 minute chimes to wake him up to being present. He developed this further during the day using the timer chime in various daily situations, such as driving in the car, to wake him up to be aware of the present that he was in. This was transforming his experience of his day and it was extraordinary.

JE said her work consisted in helping people, but she felt she was helping others in areas that she was unable to help herself in. In this sense her work was a lie. It would be better if she didn't help others and they had to do it for themselves, and then they would learn something real.

GC said that when he listened to the radio in his car, he normally did not listen to the news, because he considered it manipulation of the facts. He habitually turned it off and then turned it on again after several minutes in order to purposefully miss the news and then to continue listening to music. But he was aware that one time he didn't turn it off in time, and something in the news caught his attention. He continued to listen before realising that the newsreader had gone onto two or three other subjects and becoming aware that what he was listening to was not what he wanted to listen to and was no longer something of interest to him. He commented on how quick it could be to stop being awake.

After the contributions, L responded to D's comments about his experience of being more focused on the past as he got older. He recalled that there was a Chinese parable of two tigers which described maudlin perspectives and appropriate action, and T elaborated on it.



This parable reminded L of the old Jewish saying: Life is a narrow bridge and the main thing is not to be afraid.

JE responded to L's comments about the connotation of essence with creating art. She had come across Gurdjieff's concept of objective art which had a visceral power which seemed independent of the artist. She had been invited to a Persian New Year event and had the opportunity to hear some old Persian music which seemed to communicate directly to her. L said that artistic ideas and inspiration were real, but in themselves unfashioned, like diamonds brought up from the mines. Later the artist will work on that gem to provide many different perspectives and structure. Perhaps the power of Gurdjieff's objective art lay in the unearthed gem, without which the finished product would be impossible, but it did require human work to make the art. L saw in this an interpretation of the concept of transforming coarse materials into finer ones., which "R" had quoted Gurdjieff as saying was one of the purposes of humans on the planet.

GC said that when he first visited Israel he had felt nothing, though he was supposed, as a Jew, to have felt something. On the other hand, he had visited the Arab countries and did feel something. But when he first stepped off the plane into India it felt to him as if he had come home! He asked about the nature of that experience. L described Israel as a politicisation of Jewish culture, and it was no longer real feeling that drove it. It had become nationalistic. T commented on how India had centuries of meditation practice as its traditional custom for all, which might have affected the subtle energies of the whole continent, which maybe was what GC was experiencing when he went there.

RM said he had listened to N and T talking when they were giving their contributions, and had noticed that N used the word "you" rather than "I" which gave him the experience of being told what he and others had experienced but not what N had. When he heard T speak she said "I" and this had communicated her experience more directly and felt more authentic.

Frank Auerbach, painter.
Photo by Nicholas Sinclair

GC said that he was a professional gambler. All his life his career had been in gambling, and the experiences of winning or losing were no different. He had earned a living from it, and he had won a lot and lost a lot. But he kept on doing it. This reminded T of visiting the Auerbach exhibition at the Tate Britain. At the end of each day, the painting had been worked on; adding layers, taking layers away, adding layers, trying to achieve, to a hair's breadth accuracy, a visual response to his experience of his surroundings. This approach often left him with a scraped off canvas at the end of the working day, with apparently nothing left to show for all his work, except the chance the next day to try again. Each painting was worked on for years, not months. This process seemed to be one of winning and losing, gaining ground and then losing it, to gain it again, echoing the gambling, winning and losing. The gambler, the painter, immersed in a process that was based on trying one's luck, taking chances, using all one's knowledge of the field to play the field. T described Auerbach's approach to painting as above all an honest approach. Auerbach tried to be as truthful and honest to his experience of the "fact" that was in front of him, the human figure, face, landscape, or mix of all.


The Meeting then continued with the reading from Beelzebub's Tales, Chapter 20.

With acknowledgments to Harold Good

Beelzebub continued to speak as follows: Sitting in a Chaihana in this small town of Arguenia, I once overheard a conversation among several beings seated not far from me. They were talking and deciding when and how they should go by caravan to Pearl-land.

Having listened to their conversation, I gathered that they intended to go there for the purpose of exchanging their 'turquoises' for what are called 'pearls.'

I must here, by the way, draw your attention also to the fact that your favorites of former as well as of contemporary epochs liked and still like to wear pearls and also the said turquoise, as well as many other what are called 'precious-trinkets' for the purpose, as they say, of 'adorning' their exteriors. But if you would like to know my opinion, they do so, of course instinctively, in order to offset, so to say, the 'value-of-their-inner-insignificance.'

... As a result of it all, we also were then included in the company of their caravan, and two days later we set off together with them.

... After every kind of difficulty we at last, one rainy morning, on ascending a height, suddenly saw on the horizon the outline of a large water-space bordering the edges of the continent Ashhark, which was then called Pearl-land.

...It cannot be helped, my dear Hassein. Now that I have told you the history of the arising of the second group of the three-brained beings of the continent Ashhark, I must tell you also about the history of the arising of the third group.

"You must indeed tell me, my dear and beloved Grandfather," eagerly exclaimed Hassein; and, this time with great reverence, extending his hands upwards, he sincerely said:

"May my dear and kind Grandfather become worthy to be perfected to the degree of the sacred Anklad'!" Without saying anything to this, Beelzebub merely smiled and continued to relate as follows:

L queried what the term Anklad denoted. "R" said that this was revealed near the end of the book.

Following the reading, there was a discussion on what exercise to adopt for the coming month. As there had been much talk of authenticity and isolation, a suggestion from L was adopted, to notice each day when one behaves, experiences or does something authentic in nature, and to observe if there is any association with isolation or fear of isolation.