A Twist in the Tale

N had come back from hospital with a whole host of pills that he had to take. He tried to think and reflect on the pills and the benefits they were giving to him, being grateful for the fact that such technologies now existed, and such pills existed, which would help him get better. He took it in a more emotional way, as he swallowed the pills, and reflected on the goodness and the benefit it would do for him. So he was trying to be more present to those pills, making it a more intentional process, not just simply gobbling them down as one had a tendency to do hoping that the instinctive body would react to them. After having had the pills, he finished up the experience with standing on one leg. He thought it was a good way of doing it, warming it up at some level for the reception of the benefits that the pills might give him.

Once a day, when you are about to do a habitual action that you normally do instinctively, slow down, and imbue it with a lot of emotion and appreciation, presence and import. Observe the different way in which you experience it. When you have finished, stand on one leg for a few moments.

For L it had been very mundane actions, and he had found that doing things slowly often improved the way they got done. On one occasion he had been washing up a dish too quickly, and some water splashed over the lip of the sink. Then he proceeded to wash up much more slowly, giving it attention and meaning, and that made for a much better experience. Also, he had found sweeping slowly to be quite therapeutic, and more effective if done slowly, too, because the dust flies less. There was the old Latin saying: Festina Lente (hasten slowly). If you did things slowly, sometimes you got more done and did it better. He had done the standing on one leg too. The Challenge had made him feel more awake, and things felt more meaningful and true. He thought that our society was quite a mercenary one where, if people thought time was money, they gave incentives to do things quickly, but sometimes that could have a sub-optimal result.

When T had slowed down her actions, it reminded her of slow motion in films, and she noticed detail that surprised her. When she was at the kitchen sink and reaching over to turn on the tap, there was a clear and perfect reflection in the surface of the water of the bowl. She would not have noticed that if she had been on her usual, rapid automatic. She was surprised at her usual speed in comparison, and it highlighted that the mechanistic style usually prevents the range of senses from registering; the usual speed gets the action done at the expense of experiencing life on on many levels. The slow motion became balletic, and the standing on one leg part of the slow dance. The slowing down - taking a tea towel from the hook or the kettle from the stove - enabled her imagination to come into play. So she was able to imagine that if her arm wasn't visible, then the tea towel or the kettle would look as if they were magically moving through the air by their own volition. It made her realise that if an observer was unable to see her physical manifestation, then it would be as as though the material objects had the capacity to move themselves through the air like birds, and it would seem balletic, like a cartoon or animation of a children's fairy story. She could see that the movement she brought to the otherwise stationary object was in itself a magical skill, and how she took for granted not only how she moved things and objects about, but also how she moved her own body about, like standing on one leg. The other thing that had happened was when she was doing the invidious computer work, and she had slowed that down too, and it was much more pleasurable.

Responding to T, J said that the moment you put a schedule into something, you had a deadline that would abstract some of the pleasure from doing whatever it was. If he was playing chess, and then suddenly played by a chess clock, he found that some leisure enjoyment from the whole experience was slightly cut short. This was a problem in the purpose, the set of mind. The atmosphere of wherever you were was undermined by a purpose in being in that place. For example, if you were a municipal inspector, you would not look at Hyde Park from the standpoint of the beauties of Rotten Row, you would look at it from the standpoint of how many trees you needed to plant. These things sat slightly at odds, you could not really do both at the same time fully. T replied that when she slowed down, she became all herself, and then somehow whatever she was involved with, became a relationship with the outside rather than something that she was doing to something else. N said that T's description of balletic movements and the slowing down process reminded him of Tai Chi, where the movements look very poetic, but there was more of an inner connection with the movements. So you were moving from a different place within yourself and within your body. 

The reading then continued from Chapter 30 of Beelzebub's Tales.

        

With acknowledgements to Harold Good
Watch this on YouTube

So, my boy, from the time when these favorites of yours completely ceased consciously to actualize in their common presences the ‘being-Partkdolg-duty,’ thanks only to the results of which what is called sane ‘comparative mentation’ as well as the possibility of conscious active manifestation can arise in beings from various associations, and from the time when their separate ‘brains,’ associating now quite independently, begin engendering in one and the same common presence three differently sourced being-impulses, they then, thanks to this, gradually, as it were, acquire in themselves three personalities, having nothing in common with each other, in respect of needs and interests.

J thought it was a large claim to say the manifestations had got nothing in common with each other. Was it not like, in a long winded way, Dr Johnson's refutation of the idea that a table was not solid by kicking it. On the level of kicking the table, he was perfectly right, it was solid, but at the level of quantum physics, there was fluid and nanomatter inside, so it was both things at the same time. He understood Gurdjieff him to be saying that there was this tripartite splitting up of everything you were doing for its purpose, and its inspiration and its manifestation. Everything was this. So these arguments that people had - is the table solid or not - were quite irrelevant. In one sense, it was solid, and in another sense, it was not. N thought Gurdjieff was also trying to represent the confusion that arises from us being three-brained beings, and the different manifestations that come from our nature, which trigger off different manifestations or associations, making it extremely difficult to see things as they are.