On Trust
Consciousness does not belong to the
Teacher. A teacher is simply trying to help a pupil develop it. Steiner states
that until Christ, human beings needed to follow superior beings and “Teachers”
in the form of King-Priests were to be followed What comes with Christ,
according to Steiner, is the possibility of every human being to develop
consciousness. The “divine”, so to speak, becomes accessible to “people”.
Gurdjieff brings the “state of presence” “self-remembering”. The act that when
practiced is in itself free of time: supernatural, divine. It seems to me that
both Gurdjieff and Steiner approach consciousness from the standpoint that it
is accessible to any human being willing to pay its price with their will. It’s
interesting to note how strongly they disliked each other and yet how
complimentary their systems turn out to be, both different Ways of Life.
Do we understand the nature of positive
emotions? I certainly am a beginner in the subject so I would suggest we
explore it together. We could ask: Is Trust an identification? Is
identification a lower expression of a force within us? Is Trust a “state”? A
“State of grace”? As a “state of grace”, is it “the self” or an aspect of “the
self”? Isn’t it a fact that we can only not be in a state of identification
when we are in a state of presence? They are both “states” but in one “One Is
Not” and in the other “One is”. In the former one’s identity has been
transposed, one’s “energy” has gone outside of one’s self and landed in another
person or thing, “possessing” or becoming “possessed” by it loosing one’s self
in the transaction. If that is so, wouldn’t identification then come from
desire? The urge to posses rather than be and let it be? And wouldn’t desire be
the illusion that one is incomplete? That one must have someone or something?
That one “wants” something that one doesn’t have?
We are told in The Work that in a state
of consciousness we are “complete” “whole” and do not identify. That the state
of presence is a state of consciousness and that we can access it through precise
practices first of which is: being present.
So the next question would be to realize
whether one wants consciousness or one wants a teacher! (Can Consciousness be
wanted? Or does the desire disappear as soon as one Is? At what point in the
process is there a shift from wanting to being?)
A teacher incarnates consciousness but
then what is a teacher conscious of? Life and death? If we pretend to have a
teacher in The Work, what is the “Work” in The Way of Life? Why did Ouspensky
publish with Gurdjieff’s authorization, the techniques that practiced by any
human being would lead them to consciousness? Why did Steiner do the same thing
and based his teaching in the fact that human beings of today have the “being”
to become conscious if they work at it hard enough? Of course, they were
themselves teachers but Ouspensky seriously separated from Gurdjieff who
authorized his work. What did Ouspensky realize when he separated from
Gurdjieff? That the System could be offered to “life” and give access to all
human beings without an actual teacher because people needed to practice and develop without following
another? That the act of “following” in our times is in itself a retrograde
step? That in The Way of Life, “Life” is the Teacher? That consciousness is the
penetration of the whole of life and it cannot come by giving one’s will up to
another then working all of one’s life for their benefit as it happens in
cults, while the pupils are submitted to denigrating serfdom? How can pupils
develop being if in the relationship with the teacher they are “submitted”? A
hierarchic relationship between human beings can never pertain to
consciousness. Conscious beings do not submit anyone, they “share” life and in
that “sharing” they convey consciousness to those around them who will try to
reach it by inspiration not submission. There can be no trust in anyone
demanding submission. If someone trusts such a person, they are trying to walk
with a broken spine
It seems important to be clear about the
different components of the “play”. If “consciousness” is what the hero is
after then the teacher must have it to be able to convey it and if he/she doesn’t,
the whole experience must necessarily be a deceptive one that doesn’t mean that
both “teacher” and “student” won’t learn something. From one angle, as long as “one
is not” everything is a mistake but the mistake is part of the process of
getting there, from another, everything is a success when transformed.
On Compassion
So where is
compassion? Where in our bodies could we place it when all seem to agree that
it’s not in the body? Even though they give birth to every child? In our
movements perhaps when we avoid pushing others not from programming but from knowing
their presence? Or in our hearts when totally beaten by our own neglect we
openly hold our self’s regret?
We might
not know where we are going when we walk within our self’s path
But when we
get nowhere and there’s still life enough to hold that nothingness
We understand
There is no
need to look for things in places when nothing can live without them
No need to
challenge the whole within, without
Perhaps we
could smell it in the spring or taste it in the autumn, walk along with it in
the winter and rest ourselves in its summer womb.
Or witness
it in every flower as much as in each movement of our self’s expression.
Thoughts so
delicate in whispering, words that scream for love, for justice, for life.
There is a
justice that comes from every act of compassion while people struggle to become
whole.
There’s a
compassion that knows that every human being must respond for his own self. So
we can help each other be.
On Objectivity
One of the difficulties I find in the
quest for what is objectivity is the fact that most people are looking for it
in them selves. That is certainly what we’ve understood from Gurdjieff in the
idea that “Life is Real Only When I am” but that doesn’t mean that we cannot
understand objectivity with our reasoning because we cannot wait for all people
to become conscious to give meaning to our lives today.
In Patrick Lowery’s post there’s a
glimpse into the objectivity of an environment to offer an openness to the
students that can allow them to “be” open to learning, sharing, living the
experience of education. A place can be objectively conducive to more or less
“wellbeingness” and it affects the subjects under its conditions in specific
ways. A park has a different objective effect on every individual than does a
house or a church. A swimming pool has a particular effect different to a ski
mountain. It isn’t the same to spend holidays in the jungle or in the city nor
to spend years of one’s life in a cult or a “School”. There’s an objective
reality to the world itself whether individuals are subjective to it or not and
from its reality can come very great beauty, very great “regenerative
processes” as much as great suffering and degenerative processes.
Likewise there’s an objective reality to
rituals and institutions. The ritual of marriage presupposes certain conditions
to which the couple aims to live up to and institutions of power and
administration, like governments, aim to protect the people and hold up the
laws in their benefit, whether that is what is happening in our times or not.
There’s an objective reality to the
ideal of humaneness that people can live up to or act against and in fact all
“unconsciousness” in the human individual acts like an animal for the
possession and appropriation of its “egoic”, instinctive life at no matter how
many other human being’s cost because the ideal of “wholeness” or “sharing” is
simply not in the consciousness of such individualities. There’s no
consciousness of the “whole”: not the Earth or the individuals. The fact that
in such unconsciousness humanity is separated by continents, nations, races,
social classes, religions, cults, clubs and so on, simply shows the
consciousness of each individuality, group, nation struggling to “posses” as
much as it can, in detriment of the whole. The “privileged” in power in no
matter what institution or nation, act for their own benefit and “clan” when coming
from the instinctive centre’s impulse.
The “ideal” of “sharing” in animal life,
the concept of suffering, death and ritual begins to exist in higher animals
such as elephants who take their dead to particular places, try to help those
who are wounded and “play”. In human beings the ideal of “sharing” is connected
to the “clan”: the nation, the club, the cult, the “group”. Mass behaviour
prevails in these type of “sharing” and a hierarchic system of power as much as
an instinctive “ethos” prevails. There is no consciousness of “sharing”
objectively for the benefit of the whole of mankind although the Earth itself
is a limited “pie” in risk of being destroyed and consequently those acts are
“objectively” tending towards a process of “self-destruction” of humanity as a
whole.
The lack of consciousness about the
“pie”, the Earth, is in itself a limitation of consciousness. Thousands
struggle to protect it while millions struggle to survive in it and a few “own”
it in papers or guns and pay for its devastation without anything but their
benefits mattering but whether other human beings matter to them or not does
not concern the Earth itself which equally suffers the devastation and the
“whole” of “life” enters a process of destruction that carries everyone with it
no matter how active they were or weren’t in the actual process. Those who are
not conscious of themselves, their lives and their rights allow for others to
make the decisions on what concerns the whole and all are equally the victims
of the unconsciousness.
These “facts” can be verified in every
institution present in our lives today, be it in politics, economy and
religion, education, health or construction in which it is clear how the
hierarchy in power serves itself with the best of the pie submitting others to
its instinctive impulse. This perhaps, we could understand as Influence A and observe
in them the life of the instincts in the human being or “unconscious life”.
Regenerative impulses, influence B and
C, run parallel to those degenerative impulses and they are clearly struggling
for a “better world”. There are objective effects to both possibilities and
people incarnate actual forces, choose and act on the influence they are
conscious or unconscious of, according to their level of being. There’s no
conscious evil but there’s “crime” and when processes enter into the realm of
“crime” they must be checked by the “Law”. When the “law” itself falls into the
hands of criminals, then there’s little chance for the human being.
