L had done the
CHALLENGE
many times during the month,
and it had changed his consciousness and empathy.
Sometimes homeless people by the station had said hello to him,
and he would do the challenge then as well.
He thought it had been an aid to wakefulness.
He had also thought more about the Reading from last time.
and realised that we may have missed a point,
because Gurdjieff had been talking about legominisms,
and then had made a reference to Scheherazade.
He had been talking earlier on in the Reading
about how hard it was to preserve information and pass it on,
and how often there was very little of that information left.
L had realised that Scheherazade may have been mentioned as an
example of legominism.
It was first written down in the ninth century AD,
and it had been passed orally before then,
so its age was unknown.
He thought the story of Scheherazade should be borne in mind moving on in the book because Gurdjieff
probably put that reference in there for a purpose.
N had been on holiday, and would bump into forty or fifty people every day. People were grouped together in small numbers of half a dozen or so and every morning would talk about their feelings. Lots of stuff came up for people and each person was listened to without any judgement or comment. There was an emphasis on genuine emotional honesty which was very refreshing. In contrast to this experience he was aware that a lot of the time he did not check in with his feelings and did things by rote.
T had experienced two periods in the month: holiday and work. Away from London, she had been caught by surprise going for walks along the coast when people had passed by and greeted her with great warmth. She had surprisingly experienced anxious feeling at these moments, and then of course made a hurried reply. Though superficial, it had given a different quality of experience to the walks. There was a contrast when she came back to London, when she realised that there was no way anyone was going to say Hello when walking along the street. On one occasion in the morning, she had been open to making eye contact with passers by in relation to the challenge. She noticed most people were in their own world of anxiety or worry, or were very purposefully walking along and out of half a dozen people she received one furtive, warm smile in response. Then being back at work, in retrospect she did remember saying Hello, how are you? to colleagues, but at the time she had not recalled the challenge.
RM said it made him feel good when he got a metaphorical hug from people, and he either gave a smile, or his heart felt warmth towards anybody who was willing to smile or say Hello, how are you?
Responding to N, L thought it was magical that where N had gone on holiday, there was the opportunity, every morning, to do this challenge, and it was focusing on the feelings. M asked if we were responsible for others' feelings, whether or not we were silent, or were saying hello. L supposed we were responsible in both senses. Our presence, whether we communicated or not, did have an effect on people, as a force has a reaction to it, so we might decide it was our responsibility to communicate. M thought there was a subtlety between feeling you had to do something, and letting things happen. From his experience, when you felt you had to do something, it took away the spontaneous intelligence of what needed to happen.
Following the responses to the contributions, the reading continued from Chapter 26 of Beelzebub's Tales.
It is perfectly easy to convince beings of this planet of anything you like, provided only during their perceptions of these "fictions", there is evoked in them and there proceeds, either consciously from without, or automatically by itself, the functioning of one or another corresponding consequence of the properties of the organ Kundabuffer crystallized in them from among those that form what is called the "subjectivity" of the given being, as for instance: "self-love", "vanity", "pride", "swagger", "imagination", "bragging", "arrogance", and so on.
N found it interesting that it said it was easy to convince beings on this planet of anything you liked. It came back to the suggestibility of all of us, and how people can manipulate us in any way using vanity, self-conceit, or any of those things. In a sense we lived now in a narcissistic society, where people spent a large part of their days doing selfies, and goodness knows what else, so he thought people were particularly vulnerable.
...In an equally abnormal form were data moulded in them for evoking the sacred impulse of love.
In the presences of the beings of contemporary times, there also arises and is present in them as much as you please of that strange impulse which they call love; but this love of theirs is firstly also the result of certain crystallized consequences of the properties of the same Kundabuffer; and secondly this impulse of theirs arises and manifests itself in the process of every one of them entirely subjectively; so subjectively and so differently that if ten of them were asked to explain how they sensed this inner impulse of theirs, then ... all ten would reply differently and describe ten different sensations.
One would explain this sensation in the sexual sense; another in the sense of pity; a third in the sense of desire for submission; a fourth, in a common craze for outer things, and so on and so forth; but not one of the ten could describe even remotely, the sensation of genuine Love.
M said it seemed that there was something deeper than just what arises in him (most of the time he was navigated by sensations that were picking up on what was actually happening outside and inside, without the freedom for them to move without interference), that allowed some sort of rest which was not determined by the movement. T thought M was touching on something beyond the superficial, a deeper sense which was more objective than subjective, but which we were not in touch with. O said this was about genuine love, so what was it? Beyond self-love, beyond all the seduction, there was genuine love, a natural thing. T said the word love was over-used in so many different ways, so that the word love had lost its meaning. D asked about a woman's love for her child, and wasn't that because the child came from her? O said that could be a form of narcissism. L thought Beelzebub was talking about a concept of an elemental force, something like electricity, but which was the love that powered the universe. He glimpsed it in his own way, partly through personal relationships. J said although the ten might reply differently, there was a kernel that was shared in terms of our public and individual perception of love.
|
Once a day, when you ask or receive the question "How are you?",
consider how present you are emotionally
to the reality of that question,
and cross your fingers.
|
 |
| Scheherazade by Sophie Anderson |
N had been on holiday, and would bump into forty or fifty people every day. People were grouped together in small numbers of half a dozen or so and every morning would talk about their feelings. Lots of stuff came up for people and each person was listened to without any judgement or comment. There was an emphasis on genuine emotional honesty which was very refreshing. In contrast to this experience he was aware that a lot of the time he did not check in with his feelings and did things by rote.
T had experienced two periods in the month: holiday and work. Away from London, she had been caught by surprise going for walks along the coast when people had passed by and greeted her with great warmth. She had surprisingly experienced anxious feeling at these moments, and then of course made a hurried reply. Though superficial, it had given a different quality of experience to the walks. There was a contrast when she came back to London, when she realised that there was no way anyone was going to say Hello when walking along the street. On one occasion in the morning, she had been open to making eye contact with passers by in relation to the challenge. She noticed most people were in their own world of anxiety or worry, or were very purposefully walking along and out of half a dozen people she received one furtive, warm smile in response. Then being back at work, in retrospect she did remember saying Hello, how are you? to colleagues, but at the time she had not recalled the challenge.
Responding to N, L thought it was magical that where N had gone on holiday, there was the opportunity, every morning, to do this challenge, and it was focusing on the feelings. M asked if we were responsible for others' feelings, whether or not we were silent, or were saying hello. L supposed we were responsible in both senses. Our presence, whether we communicated or not, did have an effect on people, as a force has a reaction to it, so we might decide it was our responsibility to communicate. M thought there was a subtlety between feeling you had to do something, and letting things happen. From his experience, when you felt you had to do something, it took away the spontaneous intelligence of what needed to happen.
Following the responses to the contributions, the reading continued from Chapter 26 of Beelzebub's Tales.
It is perfectly easy to convince beings of this planet of anything you like, provided only during their perceptions of these "fictions", there is evoked in them and there proceeds, either consciously from without, or automatically by itself, the functioning of one or another corresponding consequence of the properties of the organ Kundabuffer crystallized in them from among those that form what is called the "subjectivity" of the given being, as for instance: "self-love", "vanity", "pride", "swagger", "imagination", "bragging", "arrogance", and so on.
N found it interesting that it said it was easy to convince beings on this planet of anything you liked. It came back to the suggestibility of all of us, and how people can manipulate us in any way using vanity, self-conceit, or any of those things. In a sense we lived now in a narcissistic society, where people spent a large part of their days doing selfies, and goodness knows what else, so he thought people were particularly vulnerable.
...In an equally abnormal form were data moulded in them for evoking the sacred impulse of love.
In the presences of the beings of contemporary times, there also arises and is present in them as much as you please of that strange impulse which they call love; but this love of theirs is firstly also the result of certain crystallized consequences of the properties of the same Kundabuffer; and secondly this impulse of theirs arises and manifests itself in the process of every one of them entirely subjectively; so subjectively and so differently that if ten of them were asked to explain how they sensed this inner impulse of theirs, then ... all ten would reply differently and describe ten different sensations.
One would explain this sensation in the sexual sense; another in the sense of pity; a third in the sense of desire for submission; a fourth, in a common craze for outer things, and so on and so forth; but not one of the ten could describe even remotely, the sensation of genuine Love.
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