L had received shocks during the month, but did not always remember until afterwards, so the immediate trigger did not seem to be working very well for him, but he did subsequently snap the fingers. On one occasion, after experiencing a shock, he picked out something to do, which could be significant. This was to write back to somebody who was interested in selling one of his pieces of music. He had told the person, "Sure, go ahead." It was difficult to pick out significant things to do, as opposed to routine things to do.
| Each day, observe any shocks that happen. If a particular one throws you off your stride and takes you away from where you thought you were going, snap your fingers, and decide on something to do later in the day that will move your life or goals forward. At the end of the day, observe whether you have done it, or tried to do it, and consider how you feel emotionally about that. |
N had experienced a shock which was in relation to a professional event, which he had wished to go a particular way, and of course, it had not gone that way at all. Great disappointment and frustration came as a result. He had remembered the Challenge, and then accepted it. At first, the acceptance was not a very positive acceptance, but he found that if he did the snapping of the fingers, and then said to himself, Okay, well, what can we positively make out of the situation? What are the positives and the plusses? he could turn his feelings in a different direction. He could turn the shock, which he had felt emotionally, from a negative experience into a more positive direction, by interrupting the flow of negativity that might have otherwise followed from the situation.
Responding to N, L thought it was an interesting twist, after the shock happened, to try to reframe things in a positive light. This was different from what L had done, which was to find something to do which was completely unconnected with the shock.
The reading then continued from Chapter 30 of Beelzebub's Tales.
This law, which has utterly failed to reach the contemporary three-brained beings of that planet, was then quite familiar to the beings there, that is to say, they were already quite aware that the size and form of enclosed spaces and also the volume of air enclosed in them influence beings in particular ways.
... Then utilizing the law of Daivibrizkar they combined the interiors of this proposed building in such a way that the required sensations were evoked in the beings who entered them, not in the anticipated familiar lawful sequence but in some other order.
N said that this was about the objective law behind the objective art. Gurdjieff talks about evoking the same sensations in every being who enters the the interior of the building. Gurdjieff had certainly gone around France looking at Gothic cathedrals, because he believed they had been constructed in that way, to evoke that similar type of experience in each person.
... But if the three-brained beings complete the perfecting of their highest part, their perceiving organ of visibility thereby acquires the sensibility of what is called ‘Olooestesnokhnian sight,’ then they can already distinguish two-thirds of the total number of tonalities existing in the Universe, which number, according to terrestrial calculation, amounts to three million, eight hundred and forty-three thousand and two hundred differences of tonality of color.
And only those three-brained beings who perfect their highest being-part to the state of what is called ‘Ischmetch’ become able to perceive and distinguish all the mentioned number of blendings and tonalities, with the exception of that one tonality which, as I have already told you, is accessible to the perception only of our ALL-MAINTAINING CREATOR.
N said we knew that our sense perception mechanism was very limited. We knew from science, that there were other colours which we did not perceive. Gurdjieff was saying that if you worked on your selves, at some level, you could increase that ability to perceive things. We knew that some animals could see some colours or hear sounds which we could not. T said that the enhanced perception of animals was a matter of nature, but if you worked with colour or sounds, like painters or musicians, you could expand your perceptions a little bit, but not much. N said that if you were a taster of wine, and started practising and trying to distinguish between the various wines that people presented to you, you were going to take a long time, because your perceptive faculties had not yet been developed to be able to appreciate the differences in textures and the taste of the different wines, but over a period of time, that faculty would increase. The more you practiced, the more you would be able to distinguish. What this Work was trying to do was to elevate our sensitivity to the higher senses. Instead of living in the gutters of our body, we could try to raise that level. Gurdjieff was saying that those perceptive centres were there, available to us, but that we were not often in them because of negative emotion. So he was trying to raise our consciousness to that level to experience life through those higher senses, not through the way we tended to register life.
