Footloose

Reflections on the Challenge

When you feel the need for entertainment, intentionally seek out a movie, with the intention of examining your experience and what you take away from it. While watching try to be aware of your feet, and observe how this awareness alternates with forgetfulness.

• Experiences

  N had gone to the cinema several times during the past month, and observed the fluctuation of his consciousness while watching films. He had found it hard to remain conscious and bring his awareness back to his feet, and to to maintain an independent and non-reactive state, as he often got pulled into the experiences of the films. Despite this, he also discovered moments of heightened awareness, during which he gained deeper insights into the films, and his level of non-identification sometimes allowed him to see things he would not otherwise have noticed.

  

  Theatre of Dionysus

  T had attempted the Challenge while watching a serious movie about an artist. Despite her best efforts, she was only able to focus on her feet for brief intervals and found herself getting emotionally invested in the film and its characters. The film was about the awkward relationships between family members and the tensions between siblings. She found herself empathizing with the characters and the effects of a self-centered family member, who was driven by his interest in his art instead of family relationships.

  L had found he would drift in and out of awareness, sometimes focusing on his feet and sometimes getting emotionally affected by the films. However, he also noticed that his appreciation for the films was more acute, and he was able to think about them from a more detached perspective. He found that the challenge was relevant to his life, helped him become more aware of his surroundings in real life. Sometimes he would drift into a "dream state" while walking or during other activities, and becoming aware of his feet would help him become more truly awake for a while.

• Responses

  Responding to T, N acknowledged the emotional impact of the films and how they challenged the individual's ability to split their attention. He also related this challenge to Gurdjieff's teachings on consciousness and how one could maintain focus while being emotionally affected. He shared a personal experience of how he responded to a recent shock in his life and how it related to the challenge of dividing one's attention during the films which he believed had benefits in other life situations, and was a good way to increase consciousness.

Beelzebub’s Tales, Chapter 30 cont.

With acknowledgements to  Harold Good
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• Passage

  Namely, when they receive a large number of accidentally corresponding shocks for stimulating the shocks already fixed, and previously perceived and automatized in a series of impressions, and when they reflex these with the functioning of what are called ‘organs-of-digestion-and-sex,’ then, in consequence, obstacles arise in their presences for the proceeding even of those pitiable conscious being-associations which have already somehow become automatized to produce in them a more or less correct tempo for the transformation of the substances required for that passive existence of theirs, during which there must be transformed substances required for their active existence.

  In other words, when they happen to be in these theaters, they are not entirely in that passive state in which the proceeding of the transformation of substances required for their usual waking state has somehow become automatized in them also, with the result that these contemporary theaters of theirs have come to be for them only an additional maleficent factor for the destruction, as I said, of the ‘need-for-real-perceptions.’

  Among many other aspects of the maleficence of this contemporary art of theirs, ... is the radiations of the representatives of contemporary art themselves.

  ... they are always most maleficent in those mentioned contemporary artists or actors who mime in these contemporary theaters of theirs. …

• Discussion

  J took Gurdjieff to be largely referring to the fact that the mere accumulation of experiences tended to blunt the vividness of them, so that we became automatized in our general reactions to life. Whereas if you went to the theatre, you would suddenly be pushed into a different world altogether, and the shock value might be more effective. However, J did not understand why Gurdjieff went on to say that this was maleficent, and would have thought it actually helped your understanding of real life experience and coming out of your normally automatized reactions.

  L said that if somebody had lots of sweet foods, they would lose their appetite for real food. He thought Gurdjieff was saying likewise, that theatre, and movies might be used as a substitute for real experience, and diminish and atrophy the appetite for real experience.

• Passage

  Namely, in former centuries such artists or actors were everywhere relegated by other beings to the lowest caste and were regarded with contempt. And even at the present time there, in many communities, for instance on the continent Asia, it is not proper to shake hands with them, as one almost always does when meeting beings similar to oneself.

  ... But the contemporary beings of that continent, which at the present time is the chief place of what is called their ‘cultured existence,’ not only put these contemporary actors on a level with themselves in their inner relations, but even largely imitate their appearance, and at the present time do so pretty thoroughly. ...

• Discussion

  N said this was stating that actors had been elevated into positions of great public importance, which they did not have during ancient Greek or earlier times.

• Passage

  I recall a very sensible what is called ‘measure-of-justice’ of the three-brained beings of the epoch of the ‘Tikliamishian civilization’ connected also with the shaving of the hair, but in this case with the hair growing on the heads of the beings there.

  A law was then established and strictly enforced that those petty criminals among them who, after trial and sentence by seven elderly beings of the given district, had been assigned to one of the four already previously established categories of ‘immorality’ and ‘crime’—with which beings all of what are called their ‘prisons’ are now usually crowded—should for a definite term go about always and everywhere with one of the four corresponding sides of their heads shaved; and, furthermore, any such convicted being was obliged to uncover his head whenever he met or spoke with others.

• Discussion

  J thought Gurdjieff was talking about the cruelty of naming and shaming people, but wondered how he made this the parallel towards the shaving of the heads.

  L thought Gurdjieff was developing a new line of analysis by talking about four different areas of the head with just one of them being shaved, and then when the person met somebody, they would have to remove their hat, and display and be aware of which part of them was deficient.