A Fourth Way Group Based in New York City
Impressions being food is one of the extraordinary teachings of the Fourth Way. But what does this mean?
First, we don’t know. This is where we should begin.
How to begin working with this? When we are observing something, anything, can we observe ourselves observing.
We spend a good deal of our time thinking about something we are not actually engaged in. Are we involved with what we are engaged in during the course of our day. Is our mind for example present in what we are occupied with.
There are many influences that effect us, inwardly and outwardly. For one example, there is a collective energy about that we are often unaware of. We have a vague notion of negativity or heaviness in the air because of current events, political theater, or mass hysteria. These are often shadow expressions on a collective scale. When we work, stay unhooked, not-identified, in contact with our inner self and bodies and open to our feelings we have a powerful tool and antidote to the collective field, which is strong just now. Often, people push it away by avoidance, shutting down, wearing blinders, even going inward into denial. This is a good time for inner work and unhooking from the collective field.
There are many ways of working with Intentional Suffering. I speak now about the intentional enduring of the unavoidable suffering that arises from the automatic experiencing of life and our nature. We accept what is, we are aware of it, we feel it in our bodies, emotions and mind. We are impartial and stand our ground vs taking flight – Our drive to escape (aversion) often drives us more into it. The complete acceptance of suffering can lead to its end, its action can be like a solvent on our self-importance and vanity.
From Mr Gurdjieff:
“And this time, beyond any doubt, I again established that during the first three years of my authorship, my labor-ability, as well as my productivity, in reality at all times strictly corresponded in its duration with the length and quality of the, so to say, “degree of contact” between my consciousness and the suffering proceeding in me on behalf of my mother and my wife.”
We are working with observing ourselves, our bodies, while we speak. This takes strong intention and the invoking of intention is a large good part of this. Can we speak intentionally, separate even a bit while we are speaking.
Our stuck-ness is resistance and what we resist seems to persist. We know and have the experience of how much better we feel after doing inner work and yet our inner opposition continues and may even strengthen. There is a tension within between our two parts – When we stay with ourselves, be with who we are emotionally and go deeper into our character and its flaws; grasping, laziness, fears, pride, needs and so on, we suffer. We see and we suffer – a little bit, sometimes more, and we hang in there with it and just be; Not squirming away, rising above, thinking it through – being present to presence. Still inside, and if needing to go out and do, being ‘alone in the crowd’ – outwardly with our business and inwardly with the Work. This takes courage – to not go outward, hide, or allow the centers and their habitual needs to dominate the moment.
The Fourth ‘Rule’ of the Kwajagan is “Solitude in the Crowd” – that is, being outwardly with people and inwardly with the Work. How possible is this for us, to have steady presence and inner contact while we engage outwardly in life. Doing exercises, attending group meetings, going on retreats are essential, but the essence of our work is when we are engaged in ‘the marketplace’.
For this to be serious we have to have genuine Wish. So the questions before us are; How Do I Increase Wish; How important is this to me? What do I have to sacrifice, how do I become less identified? Do I have the Wish to increase my Wish?
Mr G famously said that people ‘work to avoid the work’.
The Work is to be present to self and not to be obsessed with self. To work in a serious way but to be light. To let go of our knowing – to be in a place of not-knowing and opening.
We are working with breath and have been working on three different exercises. What is your exercise – which exercise resonates in you and allows you to glue your attention to the breath during the day. Done somewhat steady and continuously we move from the outer exercise to the inner exercise and from there to the inner heart.
As JGB said, “It is a matter of knowing how to bring oneself to that place where our attitudes are under our own control, where it is possible for us to say THIS, and not THAT.”
Put another way – Some things only become real when a particular level of attention is available. To be one and whole in the face of life is what matters. When I am conscious of this I can feel an inner life within and a peace that – as Madame states, ’nothing else can give’.
We fall back, see our incapacity, feel bad, want to run away, fall into laziness, automatism and complacency. If I fall into passivity and give in I am lost to the new, to the real, to the inner joy. Again Madame, ” Do I really wish to explore the Unknown? Or am I only an armchair adventurer, a dreamer vicariously gaining the experience from another’s travels?”
I don’t know what people do without inner work. Genuine inner Work is the soul of life. True presence enables everything. True suffering and loss enable Love.
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.
We are working on sensation, on being present in this moment in our bodies. On first thought, this seems so ‘same old thing’, but lets look at this for real.
How often during the day are we present in our bodies, and more importantly, in two centers; Present in body, present in mind, now.
This is no small thing – pressing our attention to be present during the course of our daily activities, in at least two centers is essential for becoming human.
Make this real, practice in stillness and quiet when you can, and then use your attention to be as fully present as you can be during the course of your day. We need to be in attendance to ourselves.
It is essential to know who we are and how we interact with life and the world around us. Many of us in a moment or in chronic situations face others’ stupidity, fear and ignorance. All of us know this. But what we have to see is our own unceasing negativity, often rationalized or excused because of external conditions or others being the way they are.
This cannot happen in our work. If one is in a situation that is intolerable you can leave the situation or if you can’t, work with it as best you can. Seeing our negativity, not others, is our work. Freeing up our negativity and reactional part is what we have to do.
We need to create in us over time a certain level of energy that can help us resist surrounding influences and external situations. This is essential. And that energy, if present in us, allows us to open to an even higher energy that is more active and intelligent.
Our focus is not on others negativity, but on ourselves – noticing our energy, attention and whether a finer energy and attention is present. A finer attention allows us to relate the whole of ourselves to a higher force. This is the work. We experience in ourselves something higher, finer, a different quality – different from how I ordinarily am.
We have this higher, finer inner life and we have the life we lead and live. Being awake means being awake to both these, not grasping at one over the other, but being awake to both realities – living in two worlds.
Our constant need to affirm our place in the world, control it, to have what we want, creates in us fear and the need to be reassured. We get swept along constantly and will until we create in ourselves and learn to turn to another part in ourselves. A part that for now may be unknown.
Make this real.
Our theme is attention and attempting to come to an attention that can accept. Where we experience our presence inside and things as they are outside. When I accept, I can serve. The attention is there, we need to be touched by it.
Two tasks can help us in this. The first is to eat consciously. In particular, to set ourselves to be present and conscious at the first bite of each meal. This is not easy, but frees us from eating on automatic and allows a higher digestion of energy to take place.
Secondly, to take in the Active Elements from the air during our morning exercise and ideally one other time, for ten minutes, during the day.
To be attentive we need to strive to be quiet inside and to come to the realization that inner quiet comes from above.
The Tragedy in Connecticut and our Responsibility to Work
We usually keep current events separate from our work, that is, events running on linear time from those of our work which are eternal. And the relativity of events – I saw yesterday that a thousand people were murdered in the Congo last week and it is not mentioned in the news – is good to keep in mind.
Never the less, the shootings in Connecticut hit home for many of us, for many reasons. How can we work with such a wrenching event.
We all have an animal and an angelic nature within, as does society as a whole. The shock of the news can remind us of our human and humane side, the part of us that is empathetic and compassionate, our inner life. Being positive about humanity is difficult during these times, but it is what our work consists of.
No matter what is taking place, there needs to be people who can separate from the daily news, and put out positive energy, healing energy for the future and for humanity as a whole. This is our work. Not to be consumed by external events, retain our presence, increase our presence, stay grounded and attempt as best we can to put out affirming energy amidst the negative.
This may seem a tall order, but it is what we are here to do. If there were a critical mass of folks working on themselves as described, things would change, society would be transformed. That may not be the case, but our work is to be positive for the future, so a future of Love and Compassion is in potential. Let us send from our presence, positive healing energy to all beings, to all who suffer and to the future of life on our planet.
Jerry Toporovsky December 16th, 2012
We are working with Attention. Attempting to be attentive to our attention.
We have an automatic attention where we get around and do complex things, but aren’t present or aware of our actions. I can get up after writing this, find my way out the door, down the stairs, and go buy a newspaper, all in sleep, on automatic. I can drive my car on a familiar route, completely mechanically and then be amazed I arrived safe and sound without the involvement of my consciousness.
Then there is an attention that involves our being present and aware. As I sit here I can sense my hands, my body, and come into a state of awareness, the beginning of waking up. I am here, aware of my mind being present, mindful of the sensation of my body and alive to my feelings. Collected, here and now, in this moment.
We work with our attention as continuously as we can; being present, alive in three centers; mind, body and feelings. Aware as often as I can be of an inner presence, an energy and aliveness inside me that is present irregardless of my state, level of energy, mood or feelings. To remember myself – my inner life, my wish, and the energetic presence that lives inside me. Being attentive to attention – to be able to separate the present moment from the present situation.
But there is another level of attention, beyond our collected awareness. An attention we have to be open to. An attention we have to allow. The sensitive awareness attention needs to be organized, focused on, made steady – and then we can be in a position of opening to a higher level that can come.
Our search is for consciousness when we are often too concerned with ourselves. There arises over time a preference for consciousness, where we can let things be and open to a deeper attention. An attention that is not from me, but in me. We don’t have to be a certain way to be related to this attention.
When we open and this attention comes, this conscious energy is present, we are less reactive, identified, less concerned with our image and able to externally consider.
Remembering that our work is not about subjective experience, but about service. Consciousness is contagious.
Jerry Toporovsky 12-11-12
The work is about allowing. Being receptive to higher energies and allowing them to enter our being. For this to occur we have to render our centers passive. Our bodies need to be in an extremely relaxed state, still, no tension. Our minds, the mechanism of our personality has to be passive, immobile, serene, inconsequential. Opinions, thoughts of I, righteous indignation, reactions, need to vanish. Our emotions, so volatile, swinging, need to be passive as well. Calm, non-reactive. We need to have courage and intention to make this happen.
And then…..
We allow. We render our centers passive, still and allow the higher to enter. Conscious energy. It is unmistakable, not subtle. A feeling of effortlessness takes over, an opening to the higher, the blinders taken off, a centered presence now in the solar plexus.
This will blend with automatic energy in us and the result is a non-forced, present, surplus of sensitive energy. At that point it is so important not to confuse what is going on with “I, which is something on a different, and higher level. Just be with yourself. The new person that is you.
The work is about learning how to love. For this we have to get out of the way. Life and the work will provide shocks, tensions, change. Be still, non-reactive in front of them. Accept yourself, both the angel and the animal. Always separate the present moment from the present situation. Trust in the work.
Jerry Toporovsky — September 10th, 2012