L had not noticed the connection of people with animals very much, especially at first. When he had his first vaccine, he had a reaction which led to a frozen shoulder, and he had been having physiotherapy for it. He thought the physiotherapist might be bear-like, and contemplated how to likewise become more physically attuned. More recently, L met someone whom he realised was sparrow-like, fast-speaking with brown hair and freckles, and thought that maybe he, L, could be a little faster-thinking. At a later time, he was looking at photos of people on a TV screen shown in succession, and he did find he was starting to recognise possible animal likenesses in them. He thought about the terms we used in English. We had bird-like, leonine, bovine, ursine. It was in the language. He had forgotten about stroking the chin.
| Each day, If you see somebody with an apparently animal characteristic, become aware of how that emotionally affects you, and consider how you can apply that characteristic to develop yourself. Stroke your chin. |
N had been looking a lot for animal characteristics in people, and there were occasional flashes, but there wasn't a lot to go on. He met someone whom he thought was fox-like in his demeanour and in the way he went about things. There was someone else who was dog-like, so he saw that in another individual. He found it hard - there were not so many obvious situations or people he came across, but he thought his significant contacts with people has been fairly limited because of COVID, so he had not met as many new people. He thought that once you knew someone, it was hard to see their animal characteristics as much.
During the period allocated to responses, there was much discussion, but nothing was said about specific instances of doing the challenge.
The reading then continued from Chapter 30 of Beelzebub's Tales.
So, whenever the Babylonian learned painters wove or embroidered with colored threads or colored their productions, they inserted the distinctions of the tonalities of the colors in the crosslines as well as in the horizontal lines and even in the intersecting lines of color, not in the lawful sequence in which this process really proceeds, in accordance with the Law of Sevenfoldness, but otherwise; and in these also lawful ‘otherwises,’ they placed the contents of some or other information or knowledge.
T said that the practical weaving of a carpet or a rug was very physical and manifested physically. It was very exact, because otherwise it would fall apart. Gurdjieff was speaking from experience in making carperts. She said there was a relationship between inexactitude and exactness. It was not one or the other, but both. RM took otherwise to mean they started adding their own overlay on it, their own opinions.
...Among these productions were also various what are called ‘allegorical beings’ which were represented with the head of one form of a being there, with the body of another, and with the limbs of a third, and so on.
L said this was interesting, because the Meeting had been talking about animals being associated with people. The sculptures combined different animals, which was a different way of looking at people. It was about us having different aspects of personality or make-up and associating each of those with an animal. So we had the Sphinx, and centaurs, which he thought represented human beings changing from a natural form.
