I want to write about our Theme on Likes and Dis-likes. Mostly I am going to include a few long passages of what Mr Bennett has said about the subject; but to begin.
I sit here to eat and something is presented I truly don’t like. I can avoid it, do without it, but decide in the moment to work and I eat it.
I sit down to write this and instead of accepting the position of my body I want to change things; move my body to make myself more comfortable, stretch a bit, do varying habitual things before I settle in. Or I work and just relax deeply into my position and let go of all the neurosis.
If I work, some energy is created that creates an opportunity for more work. We struggle in the moment and try not let life go by on automatic. Our choice is in will, in action.
We see a dis-like, someone we avoid for example, and we go toward the person, we get a bit of a taste of freedom; some energy is created. We struggle deeper and perhaps get a taste of a something inside of us that is free of likes and dislikes. This can be an important Touchstone.
We can know in ourselves a different quality – higher than what I ordinarily am.
From Mr B:
What can be free is that which can occupy a position between like and dislike, so that instead of there being two states of like and dislike, there are three states: Like, dislike and freedom. These form a triangle or a triad. When you really understand what it is that I am now talking about, you understand a great deal that could be achieved with this work. This is why it is not a question of suppressing like and dislike, because if this twofold action–pleasure- pain, or enjoyment and suffering–is strong enough, the third one–the one which is able to be free–can also be strong. In general, people who make progress in this work, and have a possibility of going forward, have strong feelings, strong likes and dislikes, strong urges, strong enjoyment and acute suffering. They know the difference between really making demands on their bodies and indulging their bodies. When they have these kinds of strong forces working on them, the third force, the force of their own “I” where they can be free, also can be strong. It is very far from being a question of suppressing these things. They have to play in us. They have to produce this tension in us. We have to do this particular trick which is described in the chapter on the organization of man’s existence by Ashiata Shiemash, that you have to consciously strengthen the forces of non desires. This is the way to become free. Otherwise one is entirely a slave to one’s desires. It never says that desires must be eliminated or suppressed, but that the strength of non desires must be increased, so that non desires can be stronger than desires. Then there can be freedom.
Gurdjieff said the Buddha taught that the best way of freeing oneself from one’s own egoism, from the consequences of the properties of the organ Kundabuffer, is to set oneself to bear the manifestations of others displeasing to oneself. The other side of the same thing is not always give oneself to situations that are pleasing to us. There is a certain science of this. It is not a question of forcing oneself all the time to do things one dislikes, or depriving oneself of the things one likes. That sets up wrong kind of force in us , not the way to freedom. With experience and practice after a certain time, you can come to recognize a situation where it is right to act in a certain way in order to be free. You see that you’re going to be caught in some situation and you realize that here is an opportunity for acting as a free person.
And one more:
When we really come near this question of freedom something in us revolts entirely against it. I remember very well and I’ve been doing work which did bring me to the point where I knew and saw that I had the power. I saw that I knew exactly how to do it, so that I could feel exactly what I chose to feel. If I could do that, then I would be responsible for my life. I could no longer blame anything outside myself, because what was outside me could not touch me. Therefore, I had to be the answer. If I was in a bad state, I was able to change it, and if I did not change it, I could not blame anyone else. But I wanted to be able to blame people, I wanted to say that it was not possible that it could have been different. So I think that anyone who comes to have a real taste of what it is like to be free then also understands how strongly something else in us does not wish for it. Someone who says he’s quite sure he wants to be free, is still very superficial. That person has not yet experienced what is really involved. It is not only that to be free requires a price that one has to pay, but when one is free one has a new trouble and that is that a free man is a responsible man. Beneath it all, we do not want to be responsible.