Other People
Every day we are confronted by other people. We may like them; we may dislike them. We may be indifferent to them. But every interaction is an opportunity to see ourselves. JG Bennett talks, in his essay, about how other people are the key to our own inner work. He says “..we are dealing with people. We forget this obvious thing, and therefore we expect from them something that cannot be-a degree of perfection, a degree of integration which we ourselves do not possess.”
He goes on to suggest that we work with the body, a better ‘rememberer’ than the mind—-Connect with yourself using the right hand and the other person, using sensation in the left. Let us try this for a couple of weeks and report.
This is very important!
Hello people in this photo. They are as follows: xxxxxxxxxxxx.
The Movement in Inner Life.
It is said that man has an outer life and an inner life. The outer life is his or her actions, employment, relationships and interactions. The inner life is the commentary on all of this, which proceeds as automatically as the body hungers, thirst, tires or lusts. How can this inner life come under control? How can we use the silence where we are alone to further our aim to understand the role we must play?
Today, I saw my thoughts slip away in my practice. I said to myself, “There go my thoughts running off.” But what was it that noticed? And what caught my attention? It seemed to me to be the movement, the slipping itself that brought me back.
This week(s) let us try to see the shift; the moment we are drawn away to the automatic proceedings of our imagination. We know that a person standing still is does not grab our attention as much as one running by. Try to use the action of distraction to see our automatic processes.
What is real about me?
Gurdjieff called his third book, Life is real only then, when “I AM”.
What is this “I am” and what can be done is attain real life? One teacher of the Work, Ronny Stennett-Wilson spoke about how we lie constantly to ourselves. We attribute knowledge to ourselves that we really do not have, making presumptions about the falsity or ignorance of others. We therefore lie to ourselves. We boast to others about our work, children, knowledge, possessions. We lie to others. What is true about anything we say or do?
In Stennett-Wilson’s words “ It isn’t possible for us to tell the truth because we don’t deal in truth” Lying is what we do. It is who we are. So, can we be without lying? What can we do to be true? Let us look at what we can do-not just blame ourselves and put ourselves down for being as all humans are. That is just another form of lying.
We can only, at this point, dimly sense the possibility of being real, being present. We can, however, practice. This week (s) let us spend as much time as possible with the reality of our right hand. We can touch it; it can touch objects and the sensation can stay with us. This simple but difficult practice can be done over and over again during each day. Do it when you are at work, shopping, driving or talking to others. See what changes and bring your observations next week.
Theme #2
What am I living for?
Every day we get up and go about our business and then we come home and do it again tomorrow. Is this what we want out of our brief three score years and ten? Or is there something else to do or somehow else to be? This week we will ask ourselves this question and try not to answer too quickly. There are obvious answers of love, money power, of being a good householder or the pat answers provided by religion but with this question we are invited to look deeper. Does my life have a purpose? Is there something I need to find? We shall work on this by
holding the question before us as many times as we can remember it and consider our present task and if it is germane or useful to the question. Please come Thursday prepared to share your efforts with all.
Like & dislike (the first liberation)
“Themes are more than ideas to be thought about. They are aspects of practical wisdom; how to live. This wisdom can be awakened by making an active contact with our own experience. Observation is not enough and thinking is totally inadequate. The aim we have is to work towards and new practical understanding of life so that we can begin to live differently. The relation of our inner life to the external world, our bodies, other people and nature needs to change. The new life cannot be reduced to a set of rules or commandments which can only dictate behavior. It has to be discovered in action, in the hazards of life; and usually through many small moments when something is revealed to us.”
“ First look at this to see if it is possible to come to a conclusion about it, whether we wish to be free in relation to likes and dislikes. If we wish to be free, there are ways and means for liberation, although it no use to show you the ways and means if you do not consciously, or more likely, unconsciously , do not wish to be free. “
“Remember that all kinds of emotional reactions are alike. They are reactions. There is not good or bad in slavery. Slavery is slavery. You have to see for yourself that not ne of us is better than the other. Exactly the same forces work in all of us. We all have the same egoism, the same self-love. It is hidden in many different ways. “
Subjection to likes and dislikes makes people’s lives miserable and some cases very miserable. It narrows and constricts their possible responses to the world. In spite of that, there is something in us that clings to these things and identifies with them. When you hear some people say, as if it wee a merit, that they do the things they like and avoid those they dislike…what does this mean? It means one is shutting oneself off from a whole lot of possible experiences. Like and dislike is a kind of warden that keeps us in prison of our own imagination.”