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Wednesday, December 20, 2006
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- Thursday, December 21, 2006
Wednesday, December 20, 2006Reaction
It's interesting to me how quickly I react. Today at work there was a situation where I got in trouble for something that was- objectively- not my fault at all. My negativity got to work on it right away, exaggerating, complaining, feeding fuel to the fire. I mentioned it to several co-workers, crabbing about how ridiculous it was. I'm like this all the time. Emotional reactions- negative ones, that is- are very powerful, very convincing, and they tend to run the entire show as soon as they make their appearance on stage. They usually get out there unscripted, before the director has a chance to say anything, and damned if they don't determine the course of the whole play from that moment on. It may have started out as a comedy, or a simple drama, but before you know it it's tragedy- the emotions always want what the Germans call "Grosse Theater," that is, "grand theater." In this particular case, almost before I knew it, my emotions were front and center suggesting extreme and ridiculous "solutions" to the matter- all of them, by the way, intensely stupid and damaging. This would be laughable if it weren't for the fact that I know from past experience that every once in a while, if there isn't anyone sober sharing the stage with the hysterical fool, these idiot ideas get acted on. Very high-maintenance- and extremely unnecessary- disasters ensue. Luckily, every once in a while, someone else shows up on stage with my emotional circus, watching the whole sordid affair with an intelligent sense of skepticism. Today's uproar wasn't so awful because, first of all, I saw what was going on and was able to go against it a little, and also because in the end I saw that the whole thing wasn't such a big deal. I had to apply the "it's not so bad, really" filter to the situation several times in order to back down off the emotional ramp I was building. That filter really can help in a practical way. Today was one of those days. The emotions are very quick, and they exaggerate everything. They tend to lie to me about most things- that is to say, the information they provide is self serving, partial, one-sided, and unreliable. It's true as far as it goes, but not often true in a helpful way. Emotions are like the song of the Lorelei: they make a beautiful "sound" that lures me right onto the rocks and then they eat me. So when we use the phrase "consumed by passion," what we mean by it is in some ways literally true. My life is food and I am supposed to be eating that food, carefully, intelligently, sensitively. When I am negative, partial, and fully invested in emotional reaction, however, my life starts to consume me. This means that most of the time I am being eaten instead of eating. As I look around me I see that we are all pretty much like that. It's another example of the inversion we create in life, where everything that is supposed to be coming in goes out, and vice versa. Day to day, we are bleeding from so many psychic wounds that we don't know where to apply the bandages first. Triage involves self observation. We can't fix any holes in our inner state unless we learn to stand back and look for the leaks. Thursday, December 21, 2006Breathing in and out
There is a tremendous value to breathing in and out. We do it every day but we're not there for it. It just happens. Now, you may think to yourself, that's the way it's supposed to be- after all, the whole organism is arranged so that this takes place without us having to supervise it. Good thing, too- because the way we usually work, if we had to remember to breathe in and out, well, some damn thing would happen and it would go right out of our mind and we'd forget to do it and we'd die. Fortunately there's a center in us that understands this and keeps it going- just like it digests our food. We could never manage work that detailed or that fine with our ordinary mind, so we have a different mind that does it for us. But in the matter of breathing, there is something else going on. This is an activity where the participation of the attention can effect a remarkable change in the relationship we have to our bodies, and what they can take in. Air is saturated with prana. Yoga schools, knowing this, have all kinds of esoteric exercises designed to increase the intake and uptake of prana. And just what is prana? Technically- that is, theoretically- speaking, it forms the physical bridge between the astral and planetary bodies. That's why the esoteric yoga schools take such a great interest in it. In the larger scheme of things, however, we can only say with certainty that it's a mystery. Gurdjieff would have called it a higher substance. It may well be the same manna from heaven that fed Moses' tribe in the wilderness. Whatever it is called, however it is explained, this much is certain: it's a subtle food that supports our experience of being. In sufficient quantity it can transform our inner life, putting us into touch with a joyful support for our daily effort. It can truly bring about an experience of what Christ called "The peace of the Lord which passeth all understanding." People just don't know prana is there. If everyone was aware of how ingesting prana can feed the joyfulness of daily life, we'd all be trying to do that. Unfortunately, it's generally inaccessible to us because we are not arranged properly inside. The parts that can take it in don't work well. The parts that can bring it to places where it can be of use don't work well. The parts that store it don't work well. We can get chemical substances that substitute for it- nicotine is one- but they are temporary, addictive, immediately draining and ultimately poisonous. Yoga (if it's practiced in its esoteric form, as opposed to a glorified form of exercise) has a whole set of techniques for repairing the organism's prana mechanism. Unfortunately it takes a lifetime- or perhaps numbers of them- for any of this to succeed in most people. Gurdjieff was better informed than most Yogis, and, I think, had a fairly simple and very practical method for bringing people into more direct contact with this work. It did not involve complicated physical exercises (although, to be perfectly fair, he had them, in the form of his movements.) No, Gurdjieff's method was this: Put the attention at the place where impressions enter the body. You can read more about this in P.D. Ouspensky's "In Search Of the Miraculous," pages 188-189. (Harcourt Brace edition,) If you want to understand just how comprehensive Gurdjieff's understanding of this entire matter is, read the whole chapter. Your eyes may glaze over, true, but I can guarantee you'll never think about your body the same way again. Now, Gurdjieff spoke of impressions in this chapter in rather general terms, but based on a number of years of study I firmly believe he was pointing Ouspensky (and the rest of us) towards a very specific kind of impression: that is, the impression of air entering the body. He repeatedly draws chalk circles around the whole subject which point the reader in that direction. There is a long, deep and joyful work involved in exploring this, and this isn't the place to expound on it. It's enough to say that those who embark on a serious study of this question may discover things about air and breathing that surprise and astonish. Breath supports life. Appreciate it. Download 1.48 Mb. Share with your friends:
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