L had done the CHALLENGE a number of times. In addition, he thought he had sometimes been pompous, and while that might be too short-lived to count as wiseacring, he sometimes stood on one leg anyway. A few times, he also responded in the same way after becoming aware of his thoughts wandering.
N said he found himself speaking in a context, like work, and then realised that perhaps he was overextending himself.
T said she had experienced through the month many instances of wiseacring and needing to stand on one leg. This was shocking for her, because it was her usual pattern to forget the challenge, then try to remember it during the last two weeks and have to go back to find out what it was, but this time it was there very frequently. The thing that got her was manufacturing a sense of elation. It was so far removed from anything she had done before, or tried to do for herself - to make up a feeling - so that was really difficult. She realised there were great swathes of time when she was at work when she had been unaware of the challenge, but she retrospectively knew that she wiseacred there a lot. This was getting involved in long, drawn out conversations about things she knew nothing about, particularly the politics of the workplace which were toxic. She was not privy to why people in management made decisions, but she had all sorts of speculations.
LR was aware that she had not had much wiseacring this month, and the reason was because in the last few months she had become more internally quiet, but she had spent many years wiseacring, and trying to come up with intellectual claptrap - things she knew nothing about. So now she was letting that go and being much more natural and not trying to look for the right answers either, and admitting if she did not know something, or if she did not like something, she would say it. She used to try and draw on anything to give an answer. So that was insightful for her to see that she did not have any this month - she had been aware of it.
During the period allocated to responses, there was much wiseacring about wiseacring, but nothing was said about particular instances of doing the challenge.
The reading continued from Chapter 28 of Beelzebub's Tales.
| Once a day, when you become aware that you have been wiseacring, stand on one leg, and purposefully manufacture a feeling of elation. |
T said she had experienced through the month many instances of wiseacring and needing to stand on one leg. This was shocking for her, because it was her usual pattern to forget the challenge, then try to remember it during the last two weeks and have to go back to find out what it was, but this time it was there very frequently. The thing that got her was manufacturing a sense of elation. It was so far removed from anything she had done before, or tried to do for herself - to make up a feeling - so that was really difficult. She realised there were great swathes of time when she was at work when she had been unaware of the challenge, but she retrospectively knew that she wiseacred there a lot. This was getting involved in long, drawn out conversations about things she knew nothing about, particularly the politics of the workplace which were toxic. She was not privy to why people in management made decisions, but she had all sorts of speculations.
LR was aware that she had not had much wiseacring this month, and the reason was because in the last few months she had become more internally quiet, but she had spent many years wiseacring, and trying to come up with intellectual claptrap - things she knew nothing about. So now she was letting that go and being much more natural and not trying to look for the right answers either, and admitting if she did not know something, or if she did not like something, she would say it. She used to try and draw on anything to give an answer. So that was insightful for her to see that she did not have any this month - she had been aware of it.
During the period allocated to responses, there was much wiseacring about wiseacring, but nothing was said about particular instances of doing the challenge.
The reading continued from Chapter 28 of Beelzebub's Tales.
But meanwhile, as this is not so, we ourselves must struggle and we ourselves must strive hard for our real happiness and for our real freedom and also to free ourselves from the need of having to sweat.
It is true that for eight months of the year we now have no trouble in obtaining our daily bread; but then, how we must labour those four summer months and exhaust ourselves getting the barley we need!
Only he who sows and mows that barley knows the hard labour required.
True, for eight months we are free, but only from physical labours, and for this, our consciousness, namely, our dearest and highest part, must remain day and night in slavery to these illusory ideas which are always being dinned into us by our chiefs and counsellors.
It is true that for eight months of the year we now have no trouble in obtaining our daily bread; but then, how we must labour those four summer months and exhaust ourselves getting the barley we need!
Only he who sows and mows that barley knows the hard labour required.
True, for eight months we are free, but only from physical labours, and for this, our consciousness, namely, our dearest and highest part, must remain day and night in slavery to these illusory ideas which are always being dinned into us by our chiefs and counsellors.
L said he thought the description of physical labours was a metaphor for the Gurdjieff Work. RM said he had a sense that what Gurdjieff was saying here, was that for so many months of the year when we were working, were grafting, that was real, but the time when we were sitting around talking about it was not real. The only time it was real was when we were actively doing stuff. But then we speculate and then you get all the bosses telling people how to be, and so on, and that was the problem. T said that getting the barley was hard work, but thinking there was going to be any free time or liberation from work was untrue.
...And we can only obtain real freedom and real happiness if we all act as one, that is to say, all for one and one for all. But for this, we must first destroy all that is old.
And we must do so to make room for the new life we shall ourselves create that will give us real freedom and real happiness.
...And we can only obtain real freedom and real happiness if we all act as one, that is to say, all for one and one for all. But for this, we must first destroy all that is old.
And we must do so to make room for the new life we shall ourselves create that will give us real freedom and real happiness.
Down with dependence on others!
O said we were all dependent on each other. She had to take public transport, she was dependent on someone running it. She thought dependency was everywhere. The only freedom we had was to make decisions in a given circumstance, so she did not know what he was talking about. D said this was exactly what the problem was. The only way to be really free was to become a sadhu, and they have to rely on external things. LR said it was taking responsibility for your own thoughts and actions and feelings, and that was a hard thing as we all knew. She gave the example of the film Playing for Time with Vanessa Redgrave. It was set in the war and she was a prisoner. While she was being raped, in her mind she was playing music. LR thought this was incredible, because she wasn't filled with fear and loathing, she was connected to something higher - she went beyond the body into the mind and higher feelings. J quoted Dale Carnegie: "Two men looked out from prison bars, one saw the mud, the other saw stars."
We ourselves will be masters of our own circumstances and no longer they, who rule our lives and do so without our knowledge and without our consent.
D said it was saying, give up your family script. Give up all the things that you know, and change your mind and do the work to be free. That's what we were here for. GC asked if this did not sound like a cult? J asked, why give up everything? Why not just give up what was wrong?
Our lives must be governed and guided by those whom we ourselves shall elect from our midst, that is by men only from amongst those who themselves struggle for our daily barley.
And we must elect these governors and counsellors on the basis of equal rights, without distinction of sex or age, by universal, direct, equal, and open ballot.’
O said he was saying that the people who ruled were people who had to be themselves awoken, and struggle, not just people who were elected by other people. RM said it was describing to him what true democracy could be. L said it sounded to him very similar to the genesis of the Russian revolution. J agreed, saying that he was describing a system which apparently made sense, but was inherently and internally contradictory, and then when you thought this was absolute nonsense - Down with dependence on others - we must all be one together! - then he says, somehow, this was actually the placard for a particular philosophy about which he was sceptical. So what seemed to be ridiculous turned out to be as ridiculous as the people he is describing. O said that the system in India started like that, with the governments being the wisest people to rule, and it became very oppressive.
Listen, and all of you be aware that we, the representatives of terrestrial beings assembled here who have thanks to our great learning already attained independent individuality, have the happiness to be the first to behold with our own eyes the creation of a Messiah of Divine consciousness sent from Above to reveal World-truths to us.
RM said that the problem is that people change their allegiances to whichever has the greatest power.
Thereupon began that usual maleficent what is called ‘mutual inflation,’ which had already long been practised among the learned beings of new formation and chiefly on account of which no true knowledge which has chanced to reach them ever evolves there as it does everywhere else in the Universe, even merely from the passage of time itself; but, on the contrary, even the knowledge once already attained there is destroyed, and its possessors always become shallower and shallower.
D said that was the dilemma we had.
And the rest of the learned beings then began shouting and pushing each other in order to get near Lentrohamsanin; and addressing him as their ‘long-awaited-Messiah’ they conveyed to him by their admiring glances what is called their ‘high-titillation.’
... if anybody becomes a follower of an already well-known and important being, he thereby seems to be to all other beings almost as well known and important himself.
J said this described basking in reflected glory. If you followed someone, and other people believed in the teachings of the person you were following, then they looked to you as an exponent. Is it so wrong? is the question, but it happens as a normal way of the order of life. It reminded O of Eichmann. When he was brought to trial in Israel, what he really said in his defence was, I followed, I followed. People gave their authority to other people that got a halo around them. That is something that Hannah Arendt talked a lot about in her book on the Holocaust, These were ordinary people that gave their authority to other people in order for the sun to reflect on them.
Thereupon began that usual maleficent what is called ‘mutual inflation,’ which had already long been practised among the learned beings of new formation and chiefly on account of which no true knowledge which has chanced to reach them ever evolves there as it does everywhere else in the Universe, even merely from the passage of time itself; but, on the contrary, even the knowledge once already attained there is destroyed, and its possessors always become shallower and shallower.
D said that was the dilemma we had.
And the rest of the learned beings then began shouting and pushing each other in order to get near Lentrohamsanin; and addressing him as their ‘long-awaited-Messiah’ they conveyed to him by their admiring glances what is called their ‘high-titillation.’
... if anybody becomes a follower of an already well-known and important being, he thereby seems to be to all other beings almost as well known and important himself.
J said this described basking in reflected glory. If you followed someone, and other people believed in the teachings of the person you were following, then they looked to you as an exponent. Is it so wrong? is the question, but it happens as a normal way of the order of life. It reminded O of Eichmann. When he was brought to trial in Israel, what he really said in his defence was, I followed, I followed. People gave their authority to other people that got a halo around them. That is something that Hannah Arendt talked a lot about in her book on the Holocaust, These were ordinary people that gave their authority to other people in order for the sun to reflect on them.
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