Bolshevism and Other Stories

Reflections on the Challenge

When you realise you are walking, bring to mind a creative project you are engaged in, and briefly alter your gait with a swagger or tacking motion. Notice how close it is to your heart, then relax your walk into what feels natural.

• Experiences

  L had become aware that he was walking along a road, and deliberately altered his gait from side to side. He brought to mind a creative musical project he was working on and sensed it lay very close to his heart. He then turned his attention to a second creative project – developing a web-based application – and noticed that, although it also felt close to his heart, it drew him away from the act of composing itself. Having observed this distinction, he allowed his walking to return to what felt natural.

  T described two occasions during the month when, while walking, she had remembered the challenge. On the first, she was walking towards the studio in order to work alone and without distraction. She had brought to mind her creative project of regular daily work there. While remembering this, she swayed her hips as she walked, before resuming a normal forward walk. On another occasion, she was walking to get somewhere on time and had remembered the challenge while aware of a list of tasks that needed to be completed beforehand. She recalled that her daily Pomodoro of composing was the third item on that list. She tacked back and forth across the pavement several times, and it started to feel like a dance. As she did so, the stress of the to-do list eased, and she sensed her composing practice as a kind of lighthouse beacon she was steadily moving towards, despite the other demands along the way.

  J described one occasion during the month when he had deliberately altered his walk while thinking about his creative projects. He had noticed that adopting a swagger-like movement brought with it a heightened sense of personal ownership of the work – a feeling of “this is my project” – he disliked this feeling of 'self importance' which stood out clearly to him as different from his usual engagement with the creative process.

• Responses

  L observed that J seemed to relate to his creative work with sincerity rather than self-identification, and suggested that this might have made the swagger element of the challenge feel unnecessary or ill-fitting for him. J agreed with this characterisation, adding that altering his gait had introduced a sense of self-consciousness and grandiosity. He felt that concentrating on changing his walk had reduced his ability to concentrate on his creative project, fragmenting rather than strengthening his focus. L replied that such interruption could itself be valuable, suggesting that breaking habitual movement might also interrupt habitual patterns of thought. He added that even creative work, while not habitual in content, could become absorbing in a way that risked a comfortable loss of awareness.

  T emphasised that the challenge was not intended to assess the creative project itself, but to bring thinking, feeling, and moving together in the present moment. She noted that the moving centre is often neglected, and that deliberately altering movement could counter its tendency to operate unconsciously.

Beelzebub’s Tales, Chapter 33

• Passage

  ... the majority of them carried in themselves the germ of that ‘particular-functioning-of-their-common-presences’ which had already long before been habitually arising in your favorites owing to a certain combination of two independent causes coming from outside.

  The first of these causes is a common cosmic law which exists under the name of ‘Solioonensius,’ and the second is a sharp deterioration of the conditions of the usual being-existence of the beings on some part or other of the surface of this planet of yours.

• Discussion

  L pointed out that this second cause was readily recognisable, referring to the way social and organisational conditions often degrade over time. He suggested that deterioration was treated here not as accidental, but as something with its own momentum.

  T added that such deterioration could make escapism more understandable, as people seek relief from constricting or dehumanising conditions.

• Passage

  ... the totality of these manifestations among the beings of the large community was this time called there ‘Bolshevism.’

  ... I touched upon this question in this place only to give you a representation of the already particularly abnormal conditions of being-existence among which my activities among the beings of this large community flowed at this period

• Discussion

  T drew attention to the wording of the passage, noting that Gurdjieff first referred to a “large community” and then stated that it was “this time called there ‘Bolshevism’.” She observed that the emphasis lay on how a name was applied to the community as a whole, rather than on any detailed explanation at this point.