Themes

The times we are in are unprecedented, how to work now, even thrive during these times.

One – We live a good deal of our lives in sleep, in a world of self-mechanicality. Being based in a higher world, the natural world, is the necessary first step in our transformation.

We have to let go of our stories and thoughts from our personality that keep us in world 48. Thoughts of being inadequate in this work, powerless, having no energy, dealing with psycho-emotional not spiritual things. This constant tape loop in our heads, emotions and body keep us stuck.

Or the opposite – For some, feeling great now, taking advantage of the times, where the pride, arrogance and self-importance is the tape loop.

We can separate our self from our self. This is our work. By observing our self  stories, stories of our history, lies, images, self pity, tiredness – or their opposite. All of it needs to be separated from. This is our work and whatever technique brings you this separation is good.

Two – If you are under the weight of what is going on, don’t add negativity to it. Go out for a walk, exercise. Get the blood flowing, the body moving. This is important, whether you are feeling down in the body, mind or emotions. If you can’t sit, concentrate, don’t have energy, feel scattered, get your blood moving.

Three – This is a time of opportunity. Sit and work in order to establish a touchstone of being, of your inner life in yourself. Sit and concentrate until you arrive at a place of inner being, where the pull of the personality is not so present. Establish this over time.

And Then – Open to the higher, the finer in you. Learn to be in a completely receptive mode. You have to let go of everything; Your pride, feelings of inadequacy, negativity, history, worry, fear of the future and unknown. Just be, with no doing, expectation, let go of your story. Help is possible, open to it.

We are all in the same boat. The presence of the group, of the work itself can be of enormous help. Finer energy and worlds are present here and now. Always.

A few thoughts after last evening’s meeting. The times we are in are unprecedented, how to work now, even thrive during these times.

One – We live a good deal of our lives in sleep, in a world of self-mechanicality. Living and being based in a higher world, the natural world, is the necessary first step in our transformation.

We have to let go of our stories and thoughts from our personality that keep us in world 48. Thoughts of being inadequate in this work, powerless, having no energy, dealing with psycho-emotional not spiritual things. This constant tape loop in our heads, emotions and body keep us stuck.

Or the opposite – For some, feeling great now, taking advantage of the times, where the pride, arrogance and self-importance is the tape loop.

We can separate our self from our self. This is our work. By observing our self stories, stories of our history, lies, images, feelings of inadequacy, tiredness – or their opposite. All of it needs to be separated from. This is our work and whatever technique brings you this separation is good.

Two – If you are under the weight of what is going on, don’t add negativity to it. Go out for a walk, exercise. Get the blood flowing, the body moving. This is important, whether you are feeling down in the body, mind or emotions. If you can’t sit, concentrate, don’t have energy, feel scattered, get your blood moving.

Three – This is a time of opportunity. Sit and work in order to establish a touchstone of being, of your inner life in yourself. Sit and concentrate until you arrive at a place where the pull of the personality is not so present. Establish this over time.

And Then – Open to the higher, the finer in you. Learn to be in a completely receptive mode. You have to let go of everything; Your pride, feelings of self-pity, inadequacy, negativity, history, body tiredness being in control of you, worry, fear of the future and unknown. Just be, with no doing, expectation, let go of your story. Help is possible, open to it.

We are all in the same boat. The presence of the group, of the work itself can be of enormous help. Finer energy and worlds are present here and now. Always.

A few thoughts on a beautiful day.

A good time to work, to be positive. So many of you are, I am. So many in society, paranoid, negative, understandable, but too bad. Don’t get caught up in the consensus trance of fear, insecurity and suspicion. Yes, be safe, but importantly, be positive and grateful when you can.    

The world is wrestling with the virus but with much more; climate change and the future of the planet, authoritarianism, the new age of internet and globalization, the deep nature of gender suppression and racism – With what it means to be human!

Something new may be struggling to be born. A time of spiritual crisis and spiritual flexibility.

500 years ago, during a time of great change, John Calvin and Martin Luther dealt with new forms of communication and scientific discoveries, different but with parallels to our time.

Old structures, forms of Government, religion as we know it, are bankrupt or collapsing. Something needs to be envisioned and built.

It is harder for people to hide now. There is an old saying that ‘When the tide goes out you discover who has been swimming naked.’

How is our Work relevant now, how do we work to serve the future?

A few thoughts:

Resistance to unpleasant situations is the root of suffering. We have to work on ourselves to be able to withstand what is coming, to be present, responsible.

We don’t get to choose our difficulties, but we do have the freedom to select our responses. In the moment, do we have the courage to be with our inner life.

Hope is knowing that we are getting help. That connection is key.

We have to presume we do not know as much as we imagine we do. Be ok within the unknown.

Can we forsake our self-image and all the posturing about who we think we are!

The do’s and don’ts of our work are important, but we have to be compassionate toward ourselves. It is a time of stress, we work, struggle and also need to be loving to ourselves.

Many ask about Prayer and making it real:

We have to be present to pray. In general, if we are present deeply, others do not bother us. We can pray and concentrate.

Our prayer needs to be localized in the here and now. We need to collect, to assemble our disparate forces into a point of concentration, into our relaxed being. We pass into this attention and pass over our psychosomatic self. Our breath, emotion, mind, sensation, in rhythm with our inner life, our spiritual life. We are after something that is beyond us, but within us. At the heart of this is mystery, something beyond our knowing—Not a being, an essence or an object.

The triumph of love in the midst of suffering is at the heart of our work.

Some people want to be informed, not transformed. The courage to be in the moment is key.

This is a meaningful time and it is meaning that will inspire and hold us together. In situations like this, meaning is a vital medication for the soul. A time of connection and inter-dependence.

Wish for yourself and others:

May I be well and happy.
May I have no fears or sorrow.
May I be healthy and free of illness.
May I live calmly and peacefully.

“At the beginning, after the destruction of the organ Kundabuffer, when they, like all the other three-brained beings of our Great Universe also began to have a ‘Fulasnitamnian-existence,’ this second-being-food was normally transformed and all the fundamental elements proper to it, those which arise from the transformation of their own planet and those which flow into their atmosphere from the transformation in other concentrations of their solar system, were assimilated by their common presence according to the definite data already present in them, and the superfluity of certain of its component elements not used by individual beings automatically passed, as in us, into the possession of the surrounding meritorious beings similar to them.

“But later when, as I have already said, most of them began to exist in a way unbecoming to three-brained beings, Great Nature was constrained to change their Fulasnitamnian-existence into an existence according to the principle of Itoklanoz, and when gradually in the presences of most of them those definite crystallizations foreseen by Great Nature—which crystallizations are the most important part of the composition of the second-being-food, and which when assimilated by beings are transformed into substances for the coating and for the further perfecting of their higher-body-Kesdjan—ceased, owing to their abnormal being-existence, to be assimilated either consciously or automatically for the purpose indicated, then in consequence of this and also because the afflux of these substances, transformed in other concentrations and getting into the atmospheres of the planets, continued all the time to flow into the atmosphere of your planet, the result was that on this ill-fated planet, among your unfortunate favorites, there arose still another definite ‘disease’ which has already become quite definite in its harmful action upon them.

“The point is that not being used up for their predetermined purpose, the said definite cosmic crystallizations become, during certain displacements of their atmosphere, concentrated in certain of their atmospheric strata, and entering into them from time to time—dependently on various external surrounding conditions and also on the inner state of the common presences of your favorites, which by the way arises in them chiefly from the form of their mutual relationship—just into them as into apparatuses foreseen by Nature in general for the transformation of cosmic substances needed for serving the aims of the Most Great general-cosmic-Trogoautoegocrat, and not meeting there ’substrata corresponding to the requirements of the lawful process of Djartklom, they, that is, these cosmic crystallizations, during their subsequent free completed evolutions or involutions for passing into other crystallizations proper to this planet and before completing their transformations, produce upon planetary bodies, thanks already to other accidental factors, that action by which such a mentioned specific disease newly arisen there is characterized.

“Here it is opportune to notice that such a disease there having such a specific cause was named differently by your favorites at different times on different parts of the surface of their planet; and the contemporary beings likewise name it differently and also ‘wiseacre’ differently regarding the explanations of its cause.

“From among the great number of names of this disease of theirs the most widely spread there at the present time are ’grippe,’ ‘influenza,’ ‘Spanish influenza,’ ‘dengue,’ and others.

“As regards the introduction into themselves of the second kind of being-food, which continues among beings even still up to now, then, since they lost the possibility of existing according to the Fulasnitamnian principle, certain of the ingredients of the substances of the second-being-food continue to serve only for assisting the transformation of the first-being-food and for removing from the planetary body certain elements already used by them.

From Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, Chapter 32 “Hypnotism”, p. 570]

We work with having equanimity, being calm, staying present.

But how do we work with the pain and suffering that is in the nature of the pandemic, that perhaps strikes home.

My daughter Hannah’s husbands brother Bahi has the virus. Just out of hospital with double pneumonia. Because his respiration is ok and he didn’t need a ventilator, he is home with pneumonia in both lungs. Everyone I know in New York knows someone who has this, or who has passed on from it.

Passover Seder on Zoom with all my family from four different locations. Strange times indeed!

The ‘new normal’, the uncertain future, being in lock down over time, are all difficult to deal with.

How can we work with our suffering? We have to bear what is in front of us, what is going on within us. I have to see and be with myself, see how my energy informs and allows another part within to become active.

As Madame says,

“I suffer from my lack, my incapacity. I struggle to stay in front, not to prevail, but to observe the constant changes in myself. With this staying, an energy of a higher quality develops, a more conscious attention. A new feeling appears when the conditions of suffering are accepted, even wished for. I accept my powerlessness and I suffer. In this staying in front of my insufficiency the energy intensifies and becomes an active force that obliges the passive force to obey.”

We have to be with our suffering, grief, allow it to flow. It connects us to a deeper part of our self. To a softer, less egoistic side.

There is a saying that if the heart is broken, it is also broken open. Our world isn’t shrinking, our self is.

We are in a time of mystery and solidarity. The mystery of suffering is unanswerable, but allowing the suffering and pain to lessen the hold of our egoism and self is important.

Meaning is more than telling stories about how good came from some grave evil. People see suffering as  punishment, as a judgment on a nation or society, as an opportunity, as part of a story not our own.

We can interpret the present moment, not just endure or escape from it. If we simply seek to pass through all this in hasty expectation of a return to normal, perhaps we are missing the fundamental point.

What ultimately is our Aim. Survival yes, but more. Who am I, what is the meaning of my life, of life on earth, how can our pain and suffering bring us closer to our true self. We have to make sure we are transformed, not just informed.

A time for reflection and seeing who we truly are behind our personality, life obligations, jobs – all our busy-ness.
Not that our ‘busy-ness’ is not important, it is, on many levels. But seeing that the Lord in the Lord Have Mercy, resides inside of us, that connection completes us. Makes us whole.

Important we connect with our inner life, deep serenity, higher-inner breath. Residing in our inner, quiet, detached self.

Be very well –

“This moment humanity is going through can now be seen as a portal and as a hole. The decision to fall into the hole or go through the portal is up to you.

If they repent of the problem and consume the news 24 hours a day, with little energy, nervous all the time, with pessimism, they will fall into the hole. But if you take this opportunity to look at yourself, rethink life and death, take care of yourself and others, you will cross the portal.

Take care of your home, take care of your body. Connect with the middle body of your spiritual House. Connect to the egregor of your spiritual home. Body, house, medium body, spiritual house, all this is synonymous, that is to say the same. When you are taking care of one, you are taking care of everything else. Do not lose the spiritual dimension of this crisis, have the aspect of the eagle, which from above, sees the whole, sees more widely.

There is a social demand in this crisis, but there is also a spiritual demand. The two go hand in hand. Without the social dimension, we fall into fanaticism. But without the spiritual dimension, we fall into pessimism and lack of meaning. You were prepared to go through this crisis.

Take your toolbox and use all the tools at your disposal. Learn about resistance with indigenous and African peoples: we have always been and continue to be exterminated. But we still haven’t stopped singing, dancing, lighting a fire and having fun.

Don’t feel guilty about being happy during this difficult time. You don’t help at all by being sad and without energy. It helps if good things emanate from the Universe now. It is through joy that one resists. Also, when the storm passes, you will be very important in the reconstruction of this new world. You need to be well and strong. And, for that, there is no other way than to maintain a beautiful, happy and bright vibration.

This has nothing to do with alienation. This is a resistance strategy. In shamanism, there is a rite of passage called the quest for vision. You spend a few days alone in the forest, without water, without food, without protection. When you go through this portal, you get a new vision of the world, because you have faced your fears, your difficulties … This is what is asked of you. Let them take advantage of this time to perform their vision seeking rituals.

What world do you want to build for yourself? For now, this is what you can do: serenity in the storm. Calm down and pray. Everyday. Establish a routine to meet the sacred every day. Good things emanate, what you emanate now is the most important thing. And sing, dance, resist through art, joy, faith and love. “

We are stopping at 12 and at 3. Becoming present, doing the Gospodi, connecting to our groups and sending our goodwill to all of humanity.

This is being joined by the Guitar Craft/Guitar Circle community around the globe, who are doing a retreat in place, around 100 more people. I wrote as well to Camp Caravan, Claymont and the general Sherborne/Claymont list and many people are joining in around the world and very grateful for the opportunity.

An opportunity to connect daily with the community of people and groups working to strengthen the bonds of community and to everyone.

We want something to take place and we believe it will be the result of our efforts. We believe we must force a passage toward being. But it is just the opposite.

Being is always working in us, trying to break through the hard crust of our ego into the light of consciousness.

The primordial impetus animating human will is the striving of being toward this light. Thus it is not our efforts that produce the experience of being. They simply prepare the way.

The experience is not of our doing, but a revelation of WHAT IS. If we repeat unceasingly our efforts–and they need to be repeated–it is to learn to let the reality of Being emerge.

We wish to try to open without fear, to open not once or twice but constantly, until we become conscious of the power of the ego which separates us from life. We undertake this adventure of opening in order to know all the signs by which Being makes itself felt.

We learn not to look at ourselves as the measure of all things and as the master of our lives. We begin to feel that we participate in a great unity, in a great Whole.

Mme de Salzmann

Our overall Theme remains Staying Calm in a Raging World. We are working this week with Transforming our Denying Force. The denial force is sacred, the negativity of our personality is not. Seeing two forces, the affirmation and the denial together, not being identified with either, is the beginning of freedom.

Our denial force is deep within us and our centers. Whether through aversion, being slothful or indolent, strong dislike, feeling inadequate, avoidance, rejection,  evading unpleasant situations or people, being indolent, arrogant, feeling superior, complaining in general – This keeps us stuck in a small and automatic part of ourselves.

Can we see the depth of our denial automatism, the denying force in our nature.

Freedom comes when we become free of duality, of likes and dislikes.

When we see this in us, put the energy of it into sensation and presence. When we see our automatic denial, can we see its opposite at the same time and hold them together. If this occurs what happens to us in the moment.

Work with our new and powerful Morning Exercise. Keep it simple, just do it.

These are challenging times. Making believe this is no big deal, or over-reaction are both fantasy. Take care, be skillful and not-identified. For us ‘idiots’ into this work, this is a time of accelerated transformation. Let’s take advantage of it. 

Our Theme is Listening. Listening consciously, listening not from automatic personality, listening from three centers.

Listening to others – Not answering inside—not judging–giving space—being receptive–really hearing.

Not just with others, but sounds, hearing what the ear is picking up. Active listening. Listening Consciously.

Our theme is seeing our many I’s. It is not possible to see all our I’s, but ‘we can notice how many of our daily activities keep us from our lifetime goals and aims.’

Why are we in unprovoked denial? Mindfulness, from the word sati in Pali and Sanskrit, means to remember. Being present is to embrace life, its richness and blessing as well as the painful and tragic.

If we wish to be present, develop an inner life, be happy, we have to embrace our suffering as well – I understand this is counterintuitive. Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. Important distinction.

Let us be with our experience objectively, not become that which we experience through our lower centers and self. This is our aim and the beginning of freedom. Seeing our I’s is seeing the sway likes and dis-likes have over us.

Notice how many of our daily activities keep us from our lifetime goals.

Our theme is working with Identification. ‘Something attracts our attention, stimulates us, or we dislike something, or we have a feeling of pain or pleasure, or our curiosity or intellectual activity is stimulated. Equanimity is the radical acceptance of not-knowing and a means of not taking everything so personally. Unhooking is our theme.

One can never emphasize too strongly that nothing is gained by avoidance. Only by exposing oneself can one arrive at anything. If I dislike some situation and I avoid exposing myself to it, I am no longer free and I even throw away the chance of freedom.’

We should attempt to be untouched by bitterness, self-pity and victimhood.

Identification is losing ourselves in what we are doing or in our imaginary world. We are often identified by our need to be busy, to always be doing.

In particular we are observing our identification with impatience and complaining.

Next week’s meeting is on Christmas Eve, Monday December 24th at 7pm. We will do a short exercise, speak about our work that evening in relation to the true meaning of the day and then wander around the city together. Bring change for a bus/taxi as we will travel and walk together around New York.

This year I want to address a theme: ‘The World Situation as it is now and the relation of our work and our group work in particular to the world situation’. We will explore this from time to time and focus on that theme on the work weekend of June 1st – 2nd.

We lose ourselves by becoming absorbed in events, emotions, thoughts and other people. We become interested in something and a second later we don’t exist anymore. We lose ourselves and our impartiality.

Identification is taking things personally.

We are often not aware of our identification or our likes and dislikes, they are invisible.

We can identify with anything – with people it is inner considering; with our possessions, ideas, self-image, and so on.

Identification is one of the six negative triads, it is the world of delusion (96), the extreme negative of Freedom; Identification is the ‘false freedom’.

From JGB: “Gurdjieff said more than once that this teaching originates from a conscious source. To understand it we have to be able to approach it consciously, to be able to approach it through and not from the machinery of our ordinary selves.”

Work on seeing Identification in our daily life. See it in the moment; work with sensation in separating from it; can we see impartially. What effect does this have on our energy in the moment.

I wanted to summarize the work we did together during our day this past Saturday.

Continue doing the Morning Exercise and for those who were present Saturday add on the new section. If you have questions about this let me know.

We spoke of the importance of staying within our atmosphere during the day and that self-observation meant that we are aware of ourselves being aware. It is not just seeing something or someone with awareness, but seeing ourselves as we see.

We spoke and stressed the importance of spontaneity in our lives, having a ‘spontaneous mind’; the ability to laugh at ourselves and maintain a healthy sense of humor. “Spontaneity is the striving that is non-striving and allows a higher power to act”.

In a moment we may feel Gratitude, not because of any reason. Or experience a Joy that has no cause, not the satisfaction of desire.

We worked with Zikr Dayim together. If you are moved to work with this, do so during the day, good to do for 15 minutes at a time with the holdings.

We also worked with the exercise of ‘voluntary passivity’. Do this after the Zikr if you wish, or at any time. Truly let go, be completely passive and allow.

Be grateful to everyone and try not maligning others.

Try not make unimportant things important.

Work with the Morning Exercise I-Me-Am and use it during the day as you can when waking up to become more collected and present. It is important that our waking up not only be in our minds, our thoughts, but also that we wake up in our bodies through sensation as well as feeling the presence of our emotional center.

When we are asleep and identified our aura, the energy of us, goes out to whatever we are identified with, gets sucked away from us. When we are present and gathered in our atmosphere, present to ourselves, our collected energy stays and feeds our inner life and higher connections. Try and be aware of this each day.

The active and receptive work are not separate, we have to see that in working on our presence and collected state there has to be sacrifice, a letting go at the right moment in order to both sustain and deepen our presence.

We think and trust that our will and active work will keep our state, we hold on to our presence, our higher state, where what is needed in the moment is a letting go. In that moment we are receptive to the higher, finer energy within us. We let go of our ordinary will in order to experience a deeper presence and inner life.

We work with strong intention to be in three centers deeply; don’t worry about losing your state and open to something higher, something that sustains a deeper presence. The strong experience of being collected and non-identified is the first and important step, the letting go and opening to the finer sustains and deepens our experience.

Work daily with the Morning Exercise so we can go forward over time. The main thing is a strong Collected State, having the deep experience of the sensation of the body and the mind together and when one does, being present in the emotional center. Work with this deeply.

Our Theme is being Collected during our day. Setting an Intention to wake up in two or three centers a couple of times each day, even if briefly and being present in the centers, being free of surrounding influences and feeling a force and level of energy within.

The means of our work is our Attention; Is it on automatic or directed toward Consciousness. Is my attention just now un-identified; Am I affirming my inner life or my false I, an image I have of myself; My self-importance or emptiness of self; Am I feeding my ego just now or my Soul.

My Aim is to separate I from me.