Notes from Bob Sabath:
Inner Practice and Movements Exercise
Some of the highlights from this week’s reading:
How can we bring the work up to the place of incoming impressions? In brief, by remembering the work emotionally. The more we through right self-observation feel our own helplessness, the more we realize our ignorance, the more we see our mechanicalness and that we are a machine, the more we perceive our own utter nothingness, the more emotional will the work become to us.
Impressions coming in through the senses fall, as it were, on a thick net of Personality which catches everything … with its strong Buffers, its fixed Attitudes, its mechanical Associations, its Rolls automatically set in motion, and its ideas that it knows and can do, with all its contradictory ‘I’s, with all the different forms of negative emotion, which it has acquired by imitation, with all its habits of identifying, considering, self-justifying, imagining and lying, centered in the False Personality.
We will continue with our core inner work practice that was given the first week, but this week will engage the practice as we begin to make a transition into the morning work for the day. If you wish, continue the practice as well at the other times as well, start of day, middle of day, end of day. Practice abbreviated forms of the practice — but enough so that all three centers are involved, and you sense and feel emotionally your presence and need for higher help. Don’t let the words get in the way. If Lord is problematic for you, use another of your choosing.
As a reminder, this is the core practice that we will use for the remaining weeks:
Become aware of the natural flow of your breathing for a few breaths, noting the sensation or presence of the physical body as the air comes in and goes out. Relax the body as you breathe out.
Let a feeling of gratitude or wonder arise. Relax into a feeling of gratitude or wonder for life or for whatever you may feel gratitude for. Do this for a few more breathes.
For the next few breaths, say inwardly “I”, as you inhale, breathing with the intention of taking in finer energies or substances in the air and feeling a connection to Higher help. When you breathe out say inwardly “AM”, with an awareness of your whole body physical presence.
Finish in three breaths with Inner words: “Lord Help Me”; “Lord Help Us”; “Lord Have Mercy”.
The exercise itself is a form of self-remembering — returning from “all these other things” back to ourselves. Its aim is to practice three-centered awareness — observing (seeing), sensing, feeling. Engaging all three centers and having a sense of whole body awareness is essential. Activating gratitude, wonder, a sense of our own being, or our own inner poverty and need for higher help — all are good catalysts for self-remembering.
Continue to work on Movement #39 and the First Obligatory.
As part of your practice this week, you might also explore connections between the weekly lectionary reading for the current week and the Nicoll commentary reading for this week, as well as choose a logion from the Gospel of Thomas as part of your weekly meditation.
Week Six Reading from Nicoll’s Psychological Commentaries
The following reading is taken from Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, Vol. 1, 1996 Edition: Samuel Weiser Inc., pp. 56-58
NOTE: This week’s reading is edited to reflect more inclusive language. This is the third of five parts on the idea of transformation in the work and how the work of transformation begins with Self-Remembering and the First Conscious Shock.
The Idea of Transformation in the Work: Part 3
In order to continue these talks about transformation let me take a question of this kind : “What prevents impressions from transforming themselves in us? Why does this not always happen?” Let us again study this subject.
Impressions should pass on in their octave until they reach Mi 12. You will remember that they come in as 48, but do not continue to evolve. (See Fig. 1). Remember also that the First Conscious Shock is to make impressions pass on in their evolution, namely, to Hydrogen 24 and then to Hydrogen 12. That is, by means of the First Conscious Shock, Do 48 becomes Re 24 and then Mi 12 (Fig. 2). (NOTE: If this does not make sense to you, just ignore. It is terminology used in the Food Diagram which we are not studying at this point).
Now two things must be borne in mind and clearly understood:
The First Conscious Shock is a conscious effort
(1) The First Conscious Shock does not happen to an individual asleep. It is a conscious effort requiring special knowledge and self-observation and given in connection with the incoming impressions of life and a person’s mechanical reactions to them. Roughly, it consists in seeing the object and seeing one’s reactions to it simultaneously and without being identified. This process is sometimes put diagrammatically as follows:
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The First Conscious Shock gives every cell in the body a different food
(2) The First Conscious Shock to the human machine increases the energies of the machine in the form of Hydrogen 24 and Hydrogen 12. The result is actually to give every cell in the body different food — that is, higher hydrogens. In regard to this second point let me remind you here that neither our psychical nor the physical functions can be understood unless it is grasped that they can both work in different states of consciousness.
If the First Conscious Shock is applied, the Third State of Consciousness is touched, with the result that the human machine works in a different way, owing to new energies, both as regards its psychical and its physical functions.
The Third State of Consciousness is the state of Self-Remembering
The Third State of Consciousness is the state of Self-Remembering, which we should possess but which we has gradually lost because of the wrong conditions of our life. Today it can be said only to occur in the form of very rare flashes.
You can create in yourself increasing degrees of self-remembering by deliberate efforts
It is the creation of this Third State of Consciousness that forms the First Conscious Shock–that is, the first object of the work is to recover this lost state, namely, to make you remember yourself until eventually you do not merely have rare flashes of increased consciousness (over which you have no control) but can create in yourself increasing degrees of self-remembering by deliberate efforts.
These efforts, which belong to the First Conscious Shock, gradually cause the machine to work more rightly. Many wrong functions, both in the psychic and physical spheres, acquired by the wrong working of the machine in the two lowest states of consciousness–that is, in darkness–then begin to disappear of themselves.
What prevents impressions from transforming?
Let us now return to the question as to what prevents Do 48 from passing on to Re 24 and then to Mi 12. Why does not this always happen? It does happen in childhood — and to a certain extent Mi 12 is created in the body in early youth. We may remember its action.
As we grow older, impressions more and more are intercepted by Personality
But as Personality grows more and more thickly round Essence, it happens less and less. That is, impressions are more and more intercepted by Personality, which is represented in the diagram by the double line marked X.
The thick net of Personality catches incoming impressions
Impressions coming in through the senses fall, as it were, on a thick net which catches everything (save a very small part, which passes onwards and produces a very small amount of Mi 12).
This net is the Personality, with its strong Buffers, its fixed Attitudes, its mechanical Associations, its Rolls automatically set in motion, and its ideas that it knows and can do, with all its contradictory ‘I’s, with all the different forms of negative emotion, which it has acquired by imitation, with all its habits of identifying, considering, self-justifying, imagining and lying, centered in the False Personality.
Something opaque has formed itself at the place where impressions enter
All these prevent impressions from passing on in their normal transformations. In other words, something opaque, as it were, has formed itself at the place where impressions enter, and closed up the way for their passage onwards.
Now from the standpoint of Triads, impressions entering as Hydrogen 48 cannot pass to Hydrogen 24 unless Hydrogen 12 is present. Hydrogen 12 must be brought up to the place where impressions are entering. Personality is constructed mainly out of Hydrogen 48–the Formatory Hydrogen–so you have impressions 48 falling on Personality 48, and since the necessary elements of a triad are therefore lacking, no transformation is possible.
In the case of food–ordinary food–that is, Hydrogen 768–on being taken in, it meets with the gastric juices, and their active ferments, belonging to the order of Hydrogens 192, and the result is the transformation of 768 into 384.
The work itself must brought up to the place of incoming impressions to act as a “ferment”
But in the case of impressions once Personality is formed, no corresponding active “ferment” meets them (in this case Hydrogen 12). The work itself must be brought up to the place to act as a “ferment”, for the work is to make us think in a new way and to awaken us.
How can we bring the work up to the place of incoming impressions?
What does this mean? How can we bring the work up to the place of incoming impressions? In brief, by remembering the work emotionally. The more we through right self-observation feel our own helplessness, the more we realize our ignorance, the more we see our mechanicalness and that we are a machine, the more we perceive our own utter nothingness, the more emotional will the work become to us.
The work can exist merely in Personality
The work can exist in us as Hydrogen 48. Then it is merely in Personality, as something formatory, in the memory. It can exist in us also in terms of Hydrogen 24. Then it is emotional. It can also become so valuable, so important to us, that it begins to have the intensity of meaning and significance that belong to Hydrogen 12.
In that case, False Personality will begin to collapse and we will become “as little children”. This is one meaning of the saying — ” Except ye become as little children”. If your love no longer runs always into yourself, into your habitual ideas of yourself, your strange vanity and esteem of yourself–that is, into False Personality–then the direction of your will alters–that is, the resultant of your desires alters.
The whole way in which you react to outer life changes
When the valuation of the truth of wisdom/esoteric teaching becomes stronger than self-valuation, it begins to act on you. You begin to take everything differently. The whole way in which you react to outer life changes. (Why cannot you all understand that life is impressions?)
You no longer react to impression from your mechanical personality
You no longer react to impressions from your mechanical personality by always saying the same things, feeling the same things, and so on. You begin to act from the work–that is, in quite a new way.
The work comes up to the place where life is entering you as impressions and stands beside you
The work comes up to the place where life is entering you as impressions and stands beside you. You begin to see life through the work and instead of wasting your time in hundreds of forms of useless internal considering or negative reactions, or of identifying, you seek for the power of the work to help you to change these mechanical reactions which you are now aware of by observation and to transform your habitual ways of taking things.
You begin to live more consciously at this point where life is entering as impressions.
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