Reflections on the Challenge
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Experiences
N described dealing with a difficult business associate who repeatedly obstructed an administrative process before making a dismissive remark about him. Remembering the month’s challenge, he paused to observe his immediate reaction rather than responding automatically. This created a gap between the provocation and his response, allowing him to remain inwardly aware instead of reacting mechanically.
L described eating in a quiet café when a nearby group began talking loudly and conducting a call on speakerphone. He recognised this as an instance of rudeness, shrugged, and asked himself what might be lacking in him. Rather than feeling annoyed, he realised he had no desire to challenge their behaviour, choosing instead to let the incident pass.
T described arriving late at a market and meeting a stallholder who appeared reluctant to serve her. She questioned her assumptions, considering that his apparent brusqueness might have reflected the practicalities of packing away at the end of the day rather than personal rudeness. She realised how her assumptions had coloured her initial perception of the encounter.
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Responses
L suggested that the stallholder in T’s account may simply have been preparing to close for the day when an unexpected customer arrived, creating a conflict between wanting to serve her and wanting to finish work.
N agreed, adding that the stallholder may have been tired after a hot morning and simply eager to complete the day’s work. T recognised that she had expected the same enthusiasm she had encountered at another stall, and that this expectation had coloured her perception.
N observed that none of the three experiences resulted in an automatic reaction. Instead, each person paused and allowed the situation to unfold without responding mechanically.
L wondered whether the challenge lay not only in avoiding automatic reactions but also in finding a considered, conscious response. T agreed that there was a difference between conscious action and simply remaining passive.
Beelzebub’s Tales, Chapter 34
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Passage
he himself began—of course quite without the participation of, as it is called, his ‘personal-subjective-initiative,’ but guided only by automatic habit acquired by him, thanks to the doing of always one and the same thing—to subjugate all my separate spiritualized parts and all the self-manifestations of my common presence, taking it as it were under the directive of his own ‘I.’
From this moment, I had, in the sense of my ‘outer manifestations,’ as our esteemed Mullah Nassr Eddin would say, to ‘dance in everything to his tune.’
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Discussion
N noted Gurdjieff’s distinction between outer manifestations and inner manifestations, suggesting that although outwardly one may have to “dance to another’s tune”, one’s inner life can remain free and aware.
T connected this with the previous month’s challenge, observing that the outward response to rudeness could differ from what was taking place inwardly.
L agreed, relating the passage to the earlier discussion about automatic behaviour. He suggested that, like a puppet whose movements are directed by strings, a person may outwardly conform to the expectations of others while remaining inwardly free.
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Passage
...In the hall every movement, every step I made, even to the blinking of my eyelids, were seen in advance, and prompted to me by this important general.
However, in spite of all the absurdity of this procedure, if one takes into account that the perfection of a being depends on the quality and quantity of his inner experiencings, then objective justice demands that due must be given for this to your favorites, that on that day they compelled me, of course, unconsciously, to undergo and to feel perhaps more than I had undergone and felt during all the centuries of my personal sojourn there among them.
However that may be, I must yet say that having agreed to this ‘famous presentation’ for the purpose of observation and investigation of the peculiar and such a ‘contorted’ psyche of your favorites, and after all the ‘great agitation’ which I had lived through on that day, I finally breathed freely only in the carriage of the train after my tormentors, particularly that important general, had left me alone by myself.
In the course of the whole of that day, I was so occupied with the fulfillment of all the innumerable foolish manipulations required from me and which fatigued me in view of my declining years, that I did not even notice what the unfortunate Emperor there looked like or how he manifested himself in this comedy.
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Discussion
N noted that, although the experience caused Beelzebub considerable agitation, it also enriched his inner experiencings. He suggested that difficult situations need not be wasted but can become opportunities for self-observation and learning.
T contrasted becoming caught up in the “stormy waters” of events with remaining aware of something deeper. She also observed that Beelzebub became so absorbed in fulfilling the expected role that he scarcely noticed the Emperor himself.
L was struck by Gurdjieff’s use of the phrase objective justice, seeing it as an expression of gratitude towards the mechanical people who had unintentionally provided the conditions for such valuable inner experiencings.
N suggested that objective justice meant accepting even unpleasant experiences as having a value beyond one’s personal likes and dislikes. Rather than condemning those around him, Beelzebub accepted the situation and was grateful for what it enabled him to experience.
L added that this conscious acceptance reconciled the opposing forces at work: although constrained by outward demands, Beelzebub willingly underwent the experience and found value in it.
N illustrated this with his own experience of meeting Prince Philip after completing the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. Looking back, he realised that his youthful disappointment arose from expecting an ordinary conversation, whereas the formal occasion required everyone, including the Duke, to fulfil a prescribed role. T agreed that the machinery of such institutions depends on people carrying out their roles rather than acting simply as private individuals.
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Passage
This gradual acquiring of the habit of judging the merits of beings according to the outer ephemeral appearance in all other beings, developed and continued to develop their imagination, which became strengthened about this, that just in this consists the acquisition of ‘being-individuality,’ and all began subjectively to strive only for this.
That is why at the present time, all of them from the very beginning of their arising gradually lose from their common presences even the ‘taste’ and ‘desire’ for what is called ‘objective-being-Being.’
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Discussion
N suggested that Gurdjieff was contrasting outward appearance with objective-being-Being, observing that people often place their trust in appearances rather than in genuine being.
T linked this to the passage’s description of outer ephemeral values, suggesting that the pursuit of individuality can become distorted when it is based primarily on external appearance rather than inner development.
