Newspeak

Reflections on the Challenge

When you notice you are about to do something that isn’t good for you, pinch yourself. How do you feel about the intended action? Try to understand what is behind the impulse.

• Experiences

  N had questioned what truly counted as “not good” for him. He focused on his tendency to indulge in things like croissants, especially around 4pm. Sometimes he pinched himself and resisted; other times he gave in. He had thought about what was behind the impulse. He sensed it was not just about sugar, but connected to a deeper longing, perhaps for love.

  T had noticed how much she relied on external pressures to act, especially in creative work. On one occasion, she had followed a familiar routine instead of her plan, then remembered the challenge and pinched herself. In reflection, she saw the action was less an impulse than a return to something habitual which, although a self-development practice, may not have been timely.

  L had realised his morning habit of reading the news was both depressing and uninformative. One day, about to open the paper online, he pinched himself and became aware of a deep unwillingness to read it, and that his motivation was partly nostalgia for a time when news felt more meaningful. Instead of reading the paper, he began moving away from mainstream sources and sought out alternative ways to stay informed.

• Responses

  C said that until hearing L speak, she hadn’t thought of herself as intentionally doing things that were bad for her. However, she realised that she did. She was addicted to consuming the news because she wanted to be informed, but after doing so she would feel depressesed.

  Responding to N, T said that routine could be reassuring, but might obscure the original impulse behind an action. She suggested consciously questioning whether a routine still served its purpose, or whether it was simply familiar.

Beelzebub’s Tales, Chapter 33

• Passage

  This definite sacred something would have remained for untold centuries in its pristine state among these three-brained beings who long ago ceased to have any reverence in their essence; but ... they committed that blasphemous deed whose result is now the cause of my becoming aware with all my being of my mistake—of just that mistake I made when I so confidently assured you that nothing whatever had reached the beings of the contemporary civilization from the beings of epochs long past ...

• Discussion

  L suggested the passage pointed to a form of historical betrayal, a loss of reverence for what earlier generations had preserved. N observed that Beelzebub spoke with strong moral judgement about the desecration of the tomb, describing it as a blasphemous act that caused him to realise his earlier mistake.

• Passage

  ... the common presence of the planetary body of every being and in general of any other ‘relatively independent’ great or small cosmic unit must consist of all the three localized sacred substance-forces of the holy Triamazikamno, namely, of the substance-forces of the Holy-Affirming, Holy-Denying, and Holy-Reconciling, and that it must be sustained by them all the time in a corresponding and balanced state; and if for some reason or other, there enters into any presence a superfluity of the vibrations of any one of these three sacred forces, then infallibly and unconditionally, the sacred Rascooarno must occur to it, that is the total destruction of its ordinary existence as such.

• Discussion

  L gave examples of how the Holy-Reconciling (Gurdjieff's "Third Force") might apply in daily life: one force acts, another resists, and the reconciling force mediates between them — not simply cancelling out the others, but introducing some give and take, doubt, or elements of reasoning.

  L said that this part of the reading had shifted from historical narrative to something with a more abstract meanng — the idea that without balance of the three forces described, destruction (Rascooarno) must follow.