The Borromean Knot

L tended to be a little thick-skinned and did not react too much, but he did find himself reacting on several occasions. On one occasion he had arranged to meet with somebody at a particular location, and it was a cold night, and the friend decided at the last minute to meet somewhere else, which was warmer for him, so L had ended up walking a long way in the cold.

Once a day, when you become aware that you have reacted to something automatically, observe yourself, consider how compulsively you reacted, and blink once consciously.

L felt that if you made an arrangement to meet somebody, at a time and place, you would go to that place, so he felt himself reacting in annoyance, and he realised and then he consciously blinked. So that was an example, and this happened several times during the month, he observed himself having reactions, and he blinked. He liked blinking as the physical action, which is symbolic of waking up, and one of the first things we do when we wake.

O spoke of someone who was a very kind and generous person, but she always spoke in a way that made you feel she was telling you off, and O's automatic reaction was to argue back. At a certain point O realised that this was just the person's style. The person was not really telling her off. She had had to accommodate the complexity of the situation and the person, and just let it be, and it was a lot better. She thought this was an interesting observation, which can be generalised to apply with any person. People come with different styles and we interpret all the time, and we react automatically. The point is, how do you catch yourself doing it?

J said that one of his guests at Christmas, when he was slightly under pressure for getting the lunch ready on time, said "Let's do without the Queen's Speech," and to J, this was such an outrage, that his reaction was not as it might have been to someone who had come along for a nice Christmas day. Your reaction in a case like that did not permit, unless you really trained yourself to have the space or the time, of being able to check your reaction; it was too spontaneous. J distinguished between the reaction in the outside world to other people, and the reaction you observe in yourself. There was this difficulty in terms of reactions in the outside world, to other people, of restraint. What was said to him, to incur that reaction, was so shocking, so contrary to what one would normally believe, that it was an infringement.

During the month T had been remembering the CHALLENGE, and wondering what the automatic behaviour was. It had happened quite a lot, particularly over the Christmas period, being with people who were related. But it was after the event, when she felt rising anger, the solar plexus in absolute torment and anguish, remembering what had happened. At the time she hadn't remembered the Challenge, but it was after the events that repercussions and re-triggering happened, and there she was, sitting, elbows on the kitchen table, feeling this rage, and only then remembering to blink. She had come to the conclusion that emotional triggering, usually anger - suppressed anger - happened when other people's actions were completely unthinkable to her.

D said that what T had said was very important, because you could not escape - full stop - because it was going to come up, whatever you did. So there was no problem with reacting at the time, when you thought about it logically and rationally, because you were going to be affected, maybe hours later, a day later. So all these so called esoteric teachings might not be suitable or appropriate. So react, maybe you won't feel this terrible feeling later on. There was no right or wrong, it was how you react or how you feel about yourself, and how you deal with things. You will take the consequences whatever happens.

Responding to J and O, T wanted to hear if they blinked or not, because it was the body part of the Challenge, connecting the body with the brain and the heart. J replied that the reaction preempted blinking, it was so quick. By the time the moment had passed he was in a position to check what he was saying, engage the brain before the mouth. When the emotion of the moment had passed, and it had been almost too late the moment he realised, myes, he had blinked when he thought of it.

O thought we were making a very artificial distinction with the mind and the body. T had been very angry, and had felt it all over her body. The body had reacted anyway, so what was the point of blinking? Maybe the blinking was raising your awareness for something, but automatically your body is involved in the reaction. T said that what the Challenge did was take it out of the sea of it happening all the time, and not being aware of it happening and riding the waves of daily life - it had made it into something which was less of the sea and more of a thing which you could get hold of. RM said that the blinking, for him, was acknowledging that he had noticed what had happened. If he did not blink (or did not have some physical thing to do), the whole event passed him, he did not even notice that anything had happened, so the blinking was really important because it was an acknowledgement, like Know Thyself. It was telling him that this was what he had done.

The reading then continued from Chapter 28 of Beelzebub's Tales.

     

With acknowledgements to Harold Good
Watch this on YouTube

... "hordes" with the arch-vainglorious Greek called "Alexander-of-Macedonia" at their head, were dispatched thence and passed almost everywhere over the continent of Asia, they made, as it is said, a "clean sweep" from the surface of that ill-fated planet of everything that had been established and had still been preserved and carried out; so clean a sweep, that it left not even the trace of the memory that there could once have existed on the surface of their planet such a "bliss" ...

Jacques Lacan, psychoanalyst
 Source: Wikipedia

O said this sense about the generation of knowledge was interesting. There had been a few people who wrote in a way that people could not easily understand. One of them was Jacques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst. There had been other people in the past who wrote esoterically in such a way, that people would not use it in a simplistic, twisted way, so that it would only be accessible to people who wanted to know something like that and investigate properly. RM said that one thing he had noticed through all the great teachings was that the most effective teachings were done by telling a story, not instruction.

Borromean Knot as used by Lacan
Source: NO SUBJECT

L said that people like Gurdjieff and Lacan incorporated what they were saying into geometrical structures. You could not explain a shape, but by associating psychological concepts and feelings around different parts of the topology, there could be a basis for discussion between people and self-considering of emotional relevance.

If these separate aspects of the entire ‘spectrum’ of Naloo-osnian-impulses are described according to the notions of your favourites and expressed in their language, they might then be defined as follows:

(1) Every kind of depravity, conscious as well as unconscious
(2)The feeling of self-satisfaction from leading others astray
(3) The irresistible inclination to destroy the existence of other breathing creatures
(4) The urge to become free from the necessity of actualizing the being-efforts demanded by Nature
(5) The attempt by every kind of artificiality to conceal from others what in their opinion are one's physical defects
(6) The calm self-contentment in the use of what is not personally deserved
(7) The striving to be not what one is.

RM said he was one of those people, to one degree or another, he could see them all in himself. He thought this was where compassion comes from. It was only because he saw it in himself, that he could understand it in other people. N said it was the evil inclination. T asked about the fourth in the list: The urge to become free from the necessity of actualizing the being-efforts demanded by Nature. O said that people have short-cuts to achieve - if you like me you will give me this - but they might give it to you and you would not value it, unless you made the effort to get it. L said he had come across people who embody the sixth one - a calm self-contentment in the use of what is not personally deserved. J said it was interesting that each person seemed to have alighted on one particular defect.

Following Up

T had realised that for most of the time during her life she had been a follower. There was massive resistance to acknowledging that, so that was why the CHALLENGE was so difficult to get started on. Then she realised who she might be following at the moment. She managed to give attention to the hands twice. They were trembling, vibrating. She could feel the blood vessels moving.

Once a day, when you become aware that you are being a follower, sense your allegiance and consider what emotion is attached. Do I know it to be so, or is it just because it sounds good? Give attention to your hands and wait till you feel them tingle.

L had attended a meeting of followers, and although he was not a follower himself, it was interesting being in the presence of followers. He did the exercise with his hands and felt very strong tingling.

During the period allocated to responses, there was much discussion about following, and whether it mattered or applied to appreciation of art, but nothing was said about particular experiences of doing the challenge.

The reading then continued from Chapter 28 of Beelzebub's Tales. This led to much discussion on civil wars and revolutions in France, Spain and Russia, and the meanings of ego and waking up, but  not on anything related to the specific parts of the text.

"Reflected Glory"

L had done the CHALLENGE a number of times. In addition, he thought he had sometimes been pompous, and while that might be too short-lived to count as wiseacring, he sometimes stood on one leg anyway. A few times, he also responded in the same way after becoming aware of his thoughts wandering.

Once a day, when you become aware that you have been wiseacring, stand on one leg, and purposefully manufacture a feeling of elation.

N said he found himself speaking in a context, like work, and then realised that perhaps he was overextending himself.

T said she had experienced through the month many instances of wiseacring and needing to stand on one leg. This was shocking for her, because it was her usual pattern to forget the challenge, then try to remember it during the last two weeks and have to go back to find out what it was, but this time it was there very frequently. The thing that got her was manufacturing a sense of elation. It was so far removed from anything she had done before, or tried to do for herself - to make up a feeling - so that was really difficult. She realised there were great swathes of time when she was at work when she had been unaware of the challenge, but she retrospectively knew that she wiseacred there a lot. This was getting involved in long, drawn out conversations about things she knew nothing about, particularly the politics of the workplace which were toxic. She was not privy to why people in management made decisions, but she had all sorts of speculations.

LR was aware that she had not had much wiseacring this month, and the reason was because in the last few months she had become more internally quiet, but she had spent many years wiseacring, and trying to come up with intellectual claptrap - things she knew nothing about. So now she was letting that go and being much more natural and not trying to look for the right answers either, and admitting if she did not know something, or if she did not like something, she would say it. She used to try and draw on anything to give an answer. So that was insightful for her to see that she did not have any this month - she had been aware of it.

During the period allocated to responses, there was much wiseacring about wiseacring, but nothing was said about particular instances of doing the challenge.

The reading continued from Chapter 28 of Beelzebub's Tales.

     

With acknowledgements to Harold Good
this Watch on YouTube

But meanwhile, as this is not so, we ourselves must struggle and we ourselves must strive hard for our real happiness and for our real freedom and also to free ourselves from the need of having to sweat.

It is true that for eight months of the year we now have no trouble in obtaining our daily bread; but then, how we must labour those four summer months and exhaust ourselves getting the barley we need!

Only he who sows and mows that barley knows the hard labour required.

True, for eight months we are free, but only from physical labours, and for this, our consciousness, namely, our dearest and highest part, must remain day and night in slavery to these illusory ideas which are always being dinned into us by our chiefs and counsellors.

L said he thought the description of physical labours was a metaphor for the Gurdjieff Work. RM said he had a sense that what Gurdjieff was saying here, was that for so many months of the year when we were working, were grafting, that was real, but the time when we were sitting around talking about it was not real. The only time it was real was when we were actively doing stuff. But then we speculate and then you get all the bosses telling people how to be, and so on, and that was the problem. T said that getting the barley was hard work, but thinking there was going to be any free time or liberation from work was untrue.

...And we can only obtain real freedom and real happiness if we all act as one, that is to say, all for one and one for all. But for this, we must first destroy all that is old.

And we must do so to make room for the new life we shall ourselves create that will give us real freedom and real happiness.

Down with dependence on others!

 

Source: YouTube

O said we were all dependent on each other. She had to take public transport, she was dependent on someone running it. She thought dependency was everywhere. The only freedom we had was to make decisions in a given circumstance, so she did not know what he was talking about. D said this was exactly what the problem was. The only way to be really free was to become a sadhu, and they have to rely on external things. LR said it was taking responsibility for your own thoughts and actions and feelings, and that was a hard thing as we all knew. She gave the example of the film Playing for Time with Vanessa Redgrave. It was set in the war and she was a prisoner. While she was being raped, in her mind she was playing music. LR thought this was incredible, because she wasn't filled with fear and loathing, she was connected to something higher - she went beyond the body into the mind and higher feelings. J quoted Dale Carnegie: "Two men looked out from prison bars, one saw the mud, the other saw stars."

We ourselves will be masters of our own circumstances and no longer they, who rule our lives and do so without our knowledge and without our consent.

D said it was saying, give up your family script. Give up all the things that you know, and change your mind and do the work to be free. That's what we were here for. GC asked if this did not sound like a cult? J asked, why give up everything? Why not just give up what was wrong?

Our lives must be governed and guided by those whom we ourselves shall elect from our midst, that is by men only from amongst those who themselves struggle for our daily barley.

And we must elect these governors and counsellors on the basis of equal rights, without distinction of sex or age, by universal, direct, equal, and open ballot.’

O said he was saying that the people who ruled were people who had to be themselves awoken, and struggle, not just people who were elected by other people. RM said it was describing to him what true democracy could be. L said it sounded to him very similar to the genesis of the Russian revolution. J agreed, saying that he was describing a system which apparently made sense, but was inherently and internally contradictory, and then when you thought this was absolute nonsense - Down with dependence on others - we must all be one together! - then he says, somehow, this was actually the placard for a particular philosophy about which he was sceptical. So what seemed to be ridiculous turned out to be as ridiculous as the people he is describing. O said that the system in India started like that, with the governments being the wisest people to rule, and it became very oppressive.

Listen, and all of you be aware that we, the representatives of terrestrial beings assembled here who have thanks to our great learning already attained independent individuality, have the happiness to be the first to behold with our own eyes the creation of a Messiah of Divine consciousness sent from Above to reveal World-truths to us.

 

Elliot Alderson expresses his views
Source: YouTube

RM said that the problem is that people change their allegiances to whichever has the greatest power.

Thereupon began that usual maleficent what is called ‘mutual inflation,’ which had already long been practised among the learned beings of new formation and chiefly on account of which no true knowledge which has chanced to reach them ever evolves there as it does everywhere else in the Universe, even merely from the passage of time itself; but, on the contrary, even the knowledge once already attained there is destroyed, and its possessors always become shallower and shallower.

D said that was the dilemma we had.

And the rest of the learned beings then began shouting and pushing each other in order to get near Lentrohamsanin; and addressing him as their ‘long-awaited-Messiah’ they conveyed to him by their admiring glances what is called their ‘high-titillation.’ 

 ... if anybody becomes a follower of an already well-known and important being, he thereby seems to be to all other beings almost as well known and important himself.

J said this described basking in reflected glory. If you followed someone, and other people believed in the teachings of the person you were following, then they looked to you as an exponent. Is it so wrong? is the question, but it happens as a normal way of the order of life. It reminded O of Eichmann. When he was brought to trial in Israel, what he really said in his defence was, I followed, I followed. People gave their authority to other people that got a halo around them. That is something that Hannah Arendt talked a lot about in her book on the Holocaust, These were ordinary people that gave their authority to other people in order for the sun to reflect on them.

Labour and Sweat

With people at work, the arguments in T's mind were connected with energy whirling round in the solar plexus. She had not been able to remember the pause. With people that she knew well, she had been aware of it at the time; her thinking processes became more scattered, her voice became raised, and it was a more biological response. She had been able to pause afterwards, which was an interesting experience, because it was as if everything was whirling round in her body, so there wasn't equilibrium and poise.

Once a day, when something you say is disagreed with, observe how you are feeling emotionally, and then where you feel it in your body. Pause for a moment.

On one occasion, a lady who cares for J disagreed with something he wanted to do, and his reaction to that was entirely cerebral, he knew where she was coming from, and the location in the body was decidedly up top. On another occasion, a friend disagreed with him in an acerbic tone of voice, and the locus of the reaction was in the solar plexus.

Having been quite reactive most of her life, LR had been mindful this last month of her response to disagreement, aware that she needed and wanted to become responsible, looking in to herself and seeing how she wanted to be in terms of being calm and neutral, and not arguing back or even accusing. At the point when someone disagreed with her, she was aware of what was going on, and considered how she wanted to be. She realised she had a choice. Did she want to get involved, or did she want to try and stay in something she was constantly trying to form up in herself, which was an inner calm and stability, out of which she could come in a positive way when she dealt with another. LR's reaction was in the solar plexus, which is a seat of will, and another brain. She was also aware of her blood getting heated up, and her nerves could jangle. On one occasion she observed she had used an accusatory tone of voice.

N had met with a client during the month, who became very defensive when asked for more information. N explained further that the information was needed to pursue the matter further, and the client became very difficult about the whole situation. N could sense the tension in the room.

People disagreed with L quite a lot, partly because he was quite focused, and he knew what he wanted to do and tried to do it. Or people disagreed with him because they might plain just not like him, but whether people agreed or disagreed, he thought OK, he did not tend to react emotionally any more, or feel it anywhere, but occasionally, if there was anger associated with the other person, then he did feel it. He supposed that was being empathetic. L was part of a group of artists, and one recently sent a letter of resignation by email, to other members of the committee. L could see, just from the subject line, anger leaking out, and so it proved to be when he read the email. On this occasion he felt it around the heart, and then he paused.

Responses then followed. Responding to N, T asked if there was a point when he was aware of the pause happening in the context of the CHALLENGE, and if there was a period when he had paused. N said he was aware, and wondered What was really going on here?, and there was confusion and anxiety within him. He had sensed all kinds of feelings running through his body at the time that it was going on. He sensed it as well in the body, in the solar plexus, which was where you felt these things. Also, if he got angry, he sometimes felt blood coursing through his head, and he had to then calm himself down and meditate, otherwise it could have a strong physical effect on him. He was aware of the fact that the disagreements could lead to anger, which could lead to all kinds of things. So it was an ongoing process which you could see in your machine. It was purely a mechanical process, and if you could stop it, which you sometimes could, you had gone to a higher stage. He had realised during the process that he was not going to change this person's attitude in the meeting, and so they did pause it and moved on to something else. T asked if the pausing had been for the meeting or had it been for himself. N said it had been for both. GC said that N was the only one who had felt the energy in his head.

 

Source: YouTube

LR had watched the film Meetings with Remarkable Men again, and on this occasion she caught something new from it, that she'd never seen before, and it was to do with the depiction of pauses. They did not waste language. In the film, the young Gurdjieff would ask a question to his father. There would be a long pause. Then his father would give a brief answer. They were coming from a place of respect and value and honesty, and being precise, rather than the waffle we all have, and there was a feeling of substance or content. For her there was something significant about the pause before she reacted with people.

The reading continued from Chapter 28 of Beelzebub's Tales.

     

With acknowledgements to Harold Good
this Watch on YouTube

... Already by the time this terrestrial what is called ‘Papa’s-and-Mama’s-darling’ was approaching the age of a responsible being, he was, as it is said there, very well ‘instructed’ and ‘educated,’ that is, he had in his presence a great deal of data for all kinds of being ‘egoplastikoori,’ consisting, as it is usual there according to the abnormally established conditions of their existence, of various fantastic and dubious information; and later, when he became a responsible being he manifested himself automatically through all kinds of corresponding accidental shocks.

LR said the significant word here was responsible. It was as if he had created himself. She had the feeling responses in him became automatic, having worked through, overcome or faced the accidental shocks, because we all had accidental shocks, and a shock was a move up.

RM said that a lot of education was instruction, and it became instinct. Education gets people to become automatic machines. How do you make money? How do you do this? How do you do that? RM had a sense that this was what Gurdjieff was talking about, and that the parents were channelling him into  that way of thinking, becoming a machine, as most of us did become.

When this later great learned being there reached the age of a responsible being, and although he had indeed a great deal of information or, as it is called there, ‘knowledge,’ nevertheless, he had absolutely no Being in regard to this information or knowledge which he had acquired.

T said he was not being allowed to have his own experience of anything, he was just being filled from books and other people's words. J said it was the difference between pure and applied mathematics, You could learn information that was not of emotional importance, and you could apply it, but to deliberately cut yourself off from one or the other was a mistake. N said this was very different to the education that Gurdjieff himself got, as described in Meetings With Remarkable Men, where his father would get him to do all kinds of trades, and when he was about to master one, his father would move him to the next thing for him to learn, so he acquired all this practical knowledge.

Well, when this unprecedented Kashireitleer was ready, the subsequently great Lentrohamsanin inscribed upon it his invention concerning a topic which, indeed, it had occurred to nobody to discuss before, and for which, in truth, there was no reason why it should have been.

Namely, in those wiseacrings of his, he then criticised in every way the existing order of collective existence.

This Kashireitleer began thus:

Man’s greatest happiness consists in not being dependent on any other personality whatsoever, and in being free from the influence of any other person, whoever he may be! 

...Undeniably, life under the present state-organisation is now far better for us than it used to be before; but where then is that real freedom of ours upon which our happiness must depend? 

Don’t we work and labour as much now as during all other former state-organisations? 

Haven’t we to labour and sweat to get the barley indispensable to us to live and not to starve to death like chained dogs?

J said there was one thing he could not see. What he was discussing was the state of society. We did all this. This was bad. What we have got now may be an improvement but is it good enough? How come nobody had thought to discuss that before, and why wasn't there any point in it? L said that somebody had to be the first. J said that the text was saying he was on an entirely false trail, but it seemed a reasonable thing that he was doing, even if he was wrong about what he suspected should be the case.

Cry Baby

L thought he usually listened when he was talking to people, so the trigger did not occur much. Also he worked alone, and did not have much conversation. When it did happen, he found the  CHALLENGE very salutary. Because the world was quite absurd, and our position in it, as mortals and fitting within society. It could be looked at as a ridiculous, and absurd thing, full of fantasy and imagination, which was the main thing, but it was good to be aware that things were not as rigid, predictable and sensible as might be thought.

Once a day, when you observe that you are not listening to somebody you are in conversation with, notice the absurdity of everything, take a conscious breath, hold your breath for a moment, and then take a slightly longer outbreath.

O had read the Challenge several times, but never caught herself not listening.

Z was like L, he tended to listen. Even without that aspect, it was good to have a reason to breath. He had not been able to understand the reference to absurdity, apart from a general sense of absurdity, so he had not been able to pick out what was behind the association between that and coming to find yourself not listening.

N said that, like most people, he was listening a lot of the time, and part of his professional life was very much listening, but he had been in a few meetings during the month with a lot of Israelis, and he did not speak Hebrew. They were all talking amongst themselves, and they veered off into talking in Hebrew. That was a time when he experienced the absurdity situation because he had not even been able to follow the language, and some of the things that were being said were absurd, when he did understand what they were saying. There was then a kind of disconnection with the people there when that happened, so he supposed there had been some absurdity inherent in the situation, but he had not sensed any philosophical absurdity per se.

When T was totally focused on something, she sometimes became aware, suddenly, that someone was talking to her. She had not thought deeply about the absurdity of it, though it may have wandered in and wandered out of her mind. When she remembered to breath after becoming aware of not listening, it was a huge relief, so she had enjoyed that bit of it. She found it difficult connecting up all the bits of the challenge at the same moment, and that was the challenge.

During the time allocated for responses, there was discussion on a wide variety of subjects, but none on specific instances of doing the challenge.

The reading continued from Chapter 28 of Beelzebub's Tales.

     

With acknowledgements to Harold Good
this Watch on YouTube

The mentioned maleficent "invention", or as they themselves, that is, the contemporary terrestrial learned beings, name such an invention of a learned being there of "new formation", a "composition", or even a "creation", was actualized, as I have already told you, two or more centuries before the time when, during my fifth sojourn there, I first reached the city of Babylon, where partly by coercion and partly voluntarily, learned beings had been assembled  from the surface of almost the whole of the planet.

O said this paragraph expresses a link to Babylon, and implies that the particular psychological state was devoid of objective conscience, though they were very learned. L thought Gurdjieff linked the text to the legend of the Tower of Babylon.

... For his elderly and very rich parents he was what is called a "first-born", for although the blending of their Exioëharies had been many times actualized between them before him, yet, as I found out, they, being deeply engaged in the business of acquiring riches and not wishing to have any hindrance for this, had recourse at each actualizing of this sacred blending to what is called ‘Toosy,’ or, as your contemporary favorites express themselves, ‘abortion.’

T asked if this were about the priorities of people who choose to get wealth, not acknowledging the significance of human life, that they kill it before it has arrived on the planet. Z asked if the text were not describing the conditions which could produce someone of great influence but undesirable qualities.

Knock! Knock!

J said it was a difficult CHALLENGE, because it implied that you had to be doing something creative before you could start the challenge, and that was not something that came to order.

Once a day, if you become aware that  you are doing something creative, observe whether you are calm and in the flow, or else making an effort and stressed or impatient. Stop what you are doing, and go outside and breathe in deeply.

The one time T had managed to be in a creative space and remember the challenge, there was a knock on the door just as she was about to finish. This was very unusual in that environment, which was usually a deserted place. This dissipated the remembering of going out into the fresh air, which was the physical part of the challenge.


RM said that one of his misfortunes in life was to be extremely impatient about things. If he was being really patient, there was no stress involved, and creation occurred. But his natural impatience would sometimes cause stress. If he meditated, the stress seemed to disappear, and the creation just happened.

On one occasion, L had not been in the flow when he became aware that he was doing something creative, but felt he had to continue, and just carried on, but the next day, he became aware that he was in the flow, and stopped and went outside and breathed the air. Another day the same thing happened, but he forgot to do the breathing in. The air was not good - it was a polluted day, and he experienced the air. These challenges had a number of steps, and he frequently forgot some of them even if he remembered to do the challenge. On another occasion he did it properly - he was in the flow but he stopped, and went outside and breathed in. There was another time that he was busy working and realised he was in the flow, and he just carried on, because it was counter-productive to stop. If you wanted to get something done, sometimes you had to get on with it, and press forward and use will power. He thought that was what the Gurdjieff Work was partly about, building up that centre which could apply will power, and to  apply that until the job was done.

Responding to T, J said that this idea that her creative inspiration could have been shattered and sent to the four winds, rather like the gentleman from Porlock who ruined Coleridge's inspiration, assumed that she had a fix on the source of the creative impulse, whereas the creative impulse which comes in a moment of stress might be the more authentic. That brought him back to his point, which was that it was important to get the result down first, and that took priority. T said that the tension, resistance and stress for her, was not getting down to being available to have the time for being creative. D said that T should not have answered the door. That was the problem. According to Gurdjieff's teachings, you have to break through. That was the point. Will power. To have that extra energy to create the will not to be distracted. To have that inner strength, inner will. Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do! Enlightenment! T said it was also important to be able to take an enforced break. Maybe it doesn't feel natural, but otherwise the activity is driving you rather than the will driving it.

The reading continued from Chapter 28 of Beelzebub's Tales. This led to much discussion on whether or not there was free will, and the purpose of existence, but none related to the paragraphs read.

Horses for Courses

Becoming aware of something from nature outside, had seemed very important to L. The artefacts we made were more recent additions to the world, but the fundamental, essential reality was that of nature. He had done this CHALLENGE when his mind was drifting, or if something was upsetting him. Sometimes he would do it at an arbitrary time, as a meditation to get back to base.

When you realise that you are going down an avenue where the mind is taking over, breath in deeply, become aware of nature with your senses, and take a slow outbreath whilst humming, so as to cause a vibration in your head.

N worked in an environment very removed from nature, a basement with artificial lighting. He did not know what the weather was like outside, and there were some days when he was working so hard, he did not even think about that. He was thinking of bringing a plant into the office, or something which reflected nature to him. If he was feeling continuous thoughts about something, to do this process before the emotional centre clocked in and made him go wild with those thoughts (or put him into a different state of mind), he could self-remember enough to be able to see those thoughts which led to a different emotion. By doing this, he found he connected much more with a deeper self which was able to stop the runaway horses of emotion taking root.

In the first part of the month, T had remembered the challenge when she was late, or at work, or rushing to something. She had remembered to do the deep breath and the humming, but it was just on a few occasions when she remembered about connecting with nature, and it had tended not to be the natural world, but seeing her hand, or feeling her face. So it had come at points of stress. In the second part of the month, there had been some intense life events.- two funerals in a week, and it was more connected with intense emotion, and thoughts racing. So it was a relief when she was doing the humming. For her the vibration in the head was difficult to sense.

During the time allocated for responses, there was much discussion on the benefits of nature, but none on instances of doing the challenge.

The reading continued from Chapter 27 of Beelzebub's Tales.

With acknowledgements to Harold Good

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Of course, these objective attainments then, as it is said, ‘attracted-the-attention’ of all around them, who thereupon made those who had attained stand out from their midst and paid them every kind of respect; they also strove with joy to merit the attention of these outstanding beings and to have for themselves their counsel and advice how they themselves could attain the same perfecting.

And these outstanding beings of that period began in their turn to make the most attained among themselves stand out and this outstanding being thereby automatically became, without either hereditary or other right, the chief of them all, and recognising him as chief, his directings were spread correspondingly, and this recognition included not only the separate neighbouring parts of the surface of your planet, but also even the neighbouring continents and islands.

J said this described how people take authority by degrees, and what starts off as an impetus for freedom, becomes stuck in glue. RM said that we liked the glue. I want my glue instead of yours. O said the teachings were incompletely transferred because they were only listened to with one of the three centres. L said that from the moment Ashiata Shiemash appointed deputies to spread his philosophy, he had already divided society between those whom he favoured and those he did not.  Once the latter wanted to join the select group, there would be the seeds for conflict..

The results of the Very Saintly Labours of Ashiata Shiemash were then also very definitely reflected in respect of that terrible peculiarity of the manifestation of the psyche of your favourites, namely, in their ‘irresistible-urge-for-the-periodic-destruction-of-each-other’s-existence.’

The process of reciprocal destruction established there and ensuing from that terrible particularity of their psyche entirely ceased on the continent Asia, and only proceeded occasionally on those large and small parts of the surface of that planet of yours, which were far from the continent Asia. And this continued there only because owing to their distance the influence of the initiates and priests could not reach and be transubstantiated in the presence of the beings breeding on these parts of the surface of your planet.

...The said decline in both their death rate and their birth rate proceeded because, as they approximated to an existence normal for the three-centred beings, they also began to radiate from themselves vibrations responding more closely to the requirements of Great Nature, thanks to which Nature needed less of those vibrations which are in general obtained from the destruction of the existence of beings.

N said there was a cosmic reflection in Gurdjieff's philosophy between organic life on Earth and the whole planetary system - reciprocal maintenance - and if things got out of balance there were wars, destruction and famine.