INTENSE CITY

Walking down Cecil Street on my way to work this morning, my mind is scattered like old newspapers in the November wind. I am watching an old black and white movie playing somewhere behind my eyes. I am not there to witness anything; the sparkling diamonds in the street, the naked trees reaching to the sky like a prayer, or to hear the soft voices of the whispering wind. Still asleep, I spill out over the familiar neighborhood, forgetting who and where I am. Then, at the corner at the top of the street, suddenly unannounced, like a surprise phone call from my mother, there is a subtle shift in my awareness. It’s feels like a door that has opened slightly, revealing a small strand of light. Magically, an inner space appears. From here, I watch thoughts roar past and, paying no attention to them, they dissolve into a white canvas.

“In the world but not of it,” I think to myself and suddenly everything disappears, like a drunken magician has pulled away the tablecloth and all the dishes have come crashing onto the floor.

I spend the majority of my life being continually swept along by the natural current of both outer and inner circumstances. I call this my life. If I am lucky enough, I remember to make an effort to go against this current. As the river of life rushes past, taking me along with it, I try to grab onto a branch to avoid being swept out to sea. For a moment I realize that I am not just this whirling world of mind. There is something else here and maybe, for a few seconds, I am not entirely lost.

All spiritual teachings speak of an inner quiet or silence. How can I simply observe whatever is taking place in and around me without manipulating anything. Can I find a place in myself from where I am able to observe from, like Christopher Isherwood said when he describes that he is, “a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.”

I look at the sky and ask, “Who am I?” If I am sincere with myself I realize that I haven’t got the foggiest notion. Sure, I have a lot of ideas about who am I am, but these are just a collection of old dusty photo albums and scratched vinyl that I have pillaged from garage sales over the years. It appears that I consist of a cyclone of thoughts and feelings, all vowing for supremacy over the other. If I am not presiding over this chaos by observing it, I am sold to the highest bidder, or the one who makes the most noise. In my case, it is usually the thoughts that are victorious. I am fooled into believing that is what I am. Continually I am taken by this process and repeatedly I fall asleep, drugged like an opium addict.

I search for an attention that can illuminate this mad house. A certain force that doesn’t waver, even when I am confronted with all the ugly and unbecoming parts of myself, or the predictable reactions from glimpsing something that doesn’t quite fit into the beautiful stories I have created. I need to embrace those to, like the second Bodhisattva Vow, “Delusions are endless; we vow to cut through them all.”

I see that I take in the raw experience of life in and around me and then I create a commentary or a story out of it. The next things that happens is a reaction to that, where I say to myself, “I shouldn’t do this,” or “I shouldn’t feel this way.” This is my situation. I am all in pieces and it is this continual functioning that keeps me from experiencing each precious moment of my life. It’s like living in a fog that filters my real life through a mechanism that spins out stories and dreams. These fictions keep on rolling out and repeating themselves of who I am and who others people are. It’s a poor substitute for a real life that could penetrate,  right into the bones.

Would it be possible to have an inner quality, or a force that is strong enough to stay with whatever is taking place — quietly watching?

There is an idea in the Gurdjieff tradition and Zen as well, that there are two worlds or two pools. The first is the world of our functioning which includes the ordinary mind with all of its commentaries, opinions and ideas as well as the emotions that move through me like the weather. The second world is completely different. It utilizes different energies and is composed of an entirely different order. This second word is always beckoning to us, but it is hidden behind the veil of the first world. Siddartha describes this second world beautifully as “a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.”

So where am I now? Do I have a wish to be? How do I experience this wish? Practically speaking, it is neither this nor that. How can I gather all that I am into this very moment? Can I make space for another level to appear? A level that is not something I have, but rather something that I am in, like a state of grace.

(Photo: Harriet Hoctor as human question mark, 1920’s – from Where is My Mind)

Frederick Franck – Social Mask
“the human face closed off”

Frederick Franck – Human Face
“open, revealing the True Self”

(Photos by John Lewis Stage from Spirituality & Practice)

The hay bales on the hill
stand like soft soldiers,
firm in their presence.

(Photo: Dom W – Hay Bales at Sunset)

I think it is the human situation to be prone to distraction or to be self-deprecating when things are not what we expect. It is how we are.

It’s an interesting study – our situation. I see that my mind wants things to be a certain way. My body, on the other hand, isn’t interested in what my mind wants, it desires other things like certain foods, sex or to just be lazy. So how can I expect it to listen to the demands of my mind?

I need to be in a relationship with my body. I need it to by my ally. For a long time my body resisted my efforts at meditation, often by producing tensions in the organism. Now it has realized that it gets something out of it, mainly relaxation, so it cooperates.

Our emotional life is similar. My mind says, “I shouldn’t feel this way about something, I should stop.” The emotions don’t know any thing about this. It’s like they are over in another corner speaking an entirely different language.

We have these three separate parts to our vehicle. The body, the mind, and the emotions, that are all working at different speeds and speaking different languages. Meditation is one method in which we can bring these parts together in order to function in a harmonious way.

I try to set a time each evening to sit quietly for five or ten minutes and try to be aware of this body. I don’t need to do anything except observe what is taking place.

I see that I give in to my resistances all too easily.

Before I approach my meditation, I can say to my body that, “if you allow me to do this, I will let you surf the internet for an hour as a reward.” This inner bargaining can be extremely useful.

And above all else, I try to remember to be kind with myself, especially the parts that remain interested in this effort.

(Image from Fran F.)

“Me, my only baggage.”

— Henri Thomasson (Photo from Futuremilk)

At one meeting a man who had just started coming to meetings said, “Mr. Gurdjieff, what are you trying to do?”
“What I try do?” Mr. Gurdjieff- replied, “I try show people when it rains the streets are wet.”

That struck me so strongly that I have never forgotten it.

When Mr. Gurdjieff was here on his last visit to New York in 1949, I happened to be alone with him one afternoon in his apartment at the Wellington. In the course of a brief conversation I said to him, “Mr. Gurdjieff, years ago a new man in a group asked you what you were trying to do. You said, ‘I try show people when it rains the streets are wet.’

“I say this?” he asked me as if with great surprise.
So there is the first unforgettable remark and an addition equally unforgettable.

— Edwin Wolfe, “Episodes with Gurdjieff”

It is so difficult to maintain a conscious attention. The incessant activity of everything around me continually steals my attention. How do I find a space inside that can just observe this continual interplay of thought and feelings without reaction and without judgment? Maybe I can try something, like sensing a particular part of my body or going against a small habit to see if I can call a quieter part of myself that is referred to in many traditions as “the observer” or “an influence”.

It is difficult to know where to begin. I feel a little uneasy and uncomfortable and yet there can be a feeling of separation from that. Maybe I can see my poverty or have a strong sense of my lack of relationship with my Self. I try to stay there, no matter how unbearable it is, and in the act of remaining there watching, perhaps something can be called. With a strong unwavering attention on the body I can ask myself what would it mean to be sincere and can I find a wish to be sincere with myself?

Sometimes during meditation when I find I am capable of maintaining an active stillness there is a shift in my centre of gravity from my head down into my lower abdomen. With this effort in attention the mind becomes quieter and I see that this sensation in my abdomen feels organic and instinctual. There may be tensions in the body or in the emotions, but I realize that they are not all of me. With a directed attention on this body here and now, by remaining relaxed and waiting, a larger sense of myself as a whole can come into view. Can I study how the mind, emotions and the body are interconnected? Can I gather attention and make a home for it inside from which I can observe from? William Segal describes this effort when he says that:

There is the ability to be engaged very actively in life, but at the same time to be non-attached. One does what one does with full enthusiasm: I love to drink coffee, to paint, to dig a garden or chop wood. But can I be wholly in the act but not attached to it? And at the same time, be in relation to this “other,” this stillness, which is in me, in you, in everything. This requires discipline, which one reaches through various methods. It’s not only meditation, and it certainly isn’t through scholastic studies or through prayer of the ordinary kind, although prayer can be a cessation of thought, a giving up, a letting go and being here totally. Now, perhaps, to be that way does require a great preliminary doing; I’m not sure about that. As an old man who has been through a lot of that sort of practice, I don’t think it’s really necessary. I don’t see the sense of it now. I think if I were in the hands of a master today, he would simply tell me, “Look, mister, just be still. Watch your breathing. Get your center of gravity down here.” And then this appears. This is in you, it’s always here. All one has to do is open to it. So I don’t see the sense of all these schools and all these disciplines. I do see the sense, because one is unable, one is not capable as one is, in ordinary life.

My inner work begins with the study of sensations in the body. I try to sense my right arm or my left leg. These exercises need to be rediscovered over and over again. I have to begin fresh each time I approach this question of sensing, otherwise it remains just an idea, a dead and empty thing that I try to do. This body or vessel that I inhabit has a life of its own and it need to continually be in question about it to discover it. I can see that sometimes I can have a real sense of my arms, from the inside so to speak and at other times my legs are more easily penetrated. Why can I sense this particular part of my body and not the other at different times? Why can I only sense the upper part of my spine and not the lower?

This beginning work on sensation is elementary, but we must begin from there. Lizelle Reymond referred to the deepening of this question of sensation when she said, “all spiritual experiences are sensations in the body. They are simply a graded series of sensations, beginning with the solidity of a clod of earth and passing gradually, in full consciousness, through liquidness and the emanation of heat to that of a total vibration before reaching the void. The road to be traveled is long.”

There are vast worlds contained in this organism that I am not ordinarily in touch with because, as Segal demonstrates, “the average attention span is too short, and attention is easily diverted; the ability to ’see’ is rarely deep enough.”

This capacity for a deeper attention needs to be developed as Madame de Salzmann once said, “Behind the visible there is much that cannot be seen. Attention is your only chance. Without it you can do nothing.”

A tremendous amount of energy goes into protecting and upholding this illusory image of who I am. If I am sincere with myself I see that I really don’t know and I cannot accept this fact. So in order to calm this state of uneasiness I am continually encouraging these ideas I have of myself in order to feel secure and comfortable. It gives me the illusion that I am one person and that the world is linear and not so chaotic.

Socially it’s appears to operate like a conspiracy. If someone says something that offends this view of myself, I instantly react negatively. I feel uneasy. In a sense I feel that my existence has been threatened and immediately the walls become a little stronger and a little wider. If, on the other hand, someone gives me a compliment, I immediately react with “good” feelings towards myself. I feel more comfortable and a little more secure. So as long as someone is in agreement with my projected image, I respect them and in turn I uphold the image that they have of themselves, although this happens, for the most part, unconsciously.

This repetitive circle in which I protect something that really doesn’t exist is what I call my life. Actually, maybe it would be better to say, it eats up my life. To see this process in myself directly without any coloration or distortion brings a great deal of suffering. Can I remain with this naked impression of myself without running away from it? Can I have the courage to see myself as I really am, without the excuses or justifications that inevitably appear?

I need to have thousands of these direct experiences of myself and I need to suffer them. Something within me is fed by these direct impressions of myself. Seeing is an alchemical process, where over a long period of time and a lot of inner work, something is strengthened and becomes more permanent.

Everything can be seen through the analogy of energy. Situations and circumstances are all energies in movement. Tensions appear when our mind, emotions and our bodies are not operating harmoniously and the energies become blocked. These energies wish to be whole just as the external world is whole and harmonious. So restlessness or agitation, for example, can simply be that the body wishes to move in order to ease muscular tensions and allow energies to move more freely. On an emotional level these tensions could be rooted in fear or in something someone said to you a few hours ago. The real question isn’t about how to get rid of them, but can I try to simply be aware of them? Where do they originate? What is their relationship to all three centers? Often my body and mind are completely at the service of the emotions. I need to see how everything is connected. Can I be aware, for instance, that my emotional state is written in my posture at any given moment. Can I see that I live my life ordinarily through acquired habits and emotional attitudes that have become hardened through repetition?

Sitting here, I come up against something,
Perhaps it is a desire to change my state,
or for things to be different.

I try to bring the question, “Who am I?”
It remains unanswerable.

Having grown tired of living in the basement,
I take the mask off.

I wish to see and to be seen.
Until there is no longer a struggle for, nor against,
just a yielding to that which is.

(Photo: Ken Jackson, Dokusan)