Tuesday 13 October 1987

Seamus:   In the movements tonight Mr Adie, I found myself very, very tense.

Mr. Adie:   To begin with? Or at the end, or when?

Seamus:   I did not feel very good at the end, not how I usually feel after the movements, I usually feel very uplifted, if that’s the right word. But I felt very tense, at a loss, I knew I was not doing the movements well. I had very little if any sensation.

Mr. Adie:   But you’ve missed a lot, haven’t you? I mean you’ve been away a lot.

Seamus:   Yes.

Mr. Adie:   Well, then you are sort of challenged all the time to do a movement you don’t know.

Seamus:   Although last week, not last week the week before, was the first time back and I felt I had a lot more presence in the movements, I was a lot freer.

Mr. Adie:   You had a different state. Then what is the question about it?  How did it arrive? Is this what you want to know?

Seamus:   Yes.

Mr. Adie:   Then what have you been doing today? What happens this moment has a good deal to do with what happens next. Any shock may come, of course, and alter the course of things, but nevertheless the present moment controls the next, to a certain extent.

If I am absent in this moment, if I have no presence, no sort of inner active reality then the next moment cannot supply, cannot receive what it would otherwise might, because I’m just not there.

So, how do you come to the movements? And what have you been doing? And so forth. And what was it that was making you tense? I want an attitude that this is just the opportunity I need, no matter how bad my state, because you have a fresh chance in special conditions there.

Seamus:   I think I have seen, not think, I have seen a similar state or the same state before in movements.

Mr. Adie:   The point is the movements is an opportunity to work hard for one hour with material from a higher source. So if I am tense, let me work, it has to be the best option, surely. If I do that, I’ll find that I almost certainly finish less tense. But if I’m in thoughts, or dreams, or, then I don’t study the movements well, and so on and so forth.

Of course, I get tense if I don’t know the movements and I’m continually sort of behind, or doing the wrong movement, then I feel that. I feel that jangling, that non-correspondence, that disharmonious condition.

But the movements are a struggle. Everybody who’s ever done movements knows that it’s a struggle and a suffering. It can be rather painful to my self-image to not to be able to do a movement, but I have to accept that and try and not lose hope. Hmm?

Seamus:   Yes.

Mr. Adie:   Good. Would you say that this is right Helen?

Helen Adie:   Yes, absolutely.

Violet:   When you spoke on the weekend about a new beginning, it, I felt a strong association with what I was feeling. And it’s had two connections with my work. One I’ve been able to read Beelzebub with a different attitude and a different understanding. And two, in a practical sense, where I’m working at the moment there’s a lot of complaining and a lot of people don’t want to be there and I often found myself caught up in that.

Mr. Adie:   Yes.

Violet:   So, I’ve made it my aim to rise above that, or not …

Mr. Adie:   Not be party to it. That’s very, very good from every point of view. There’s something always going wrong everywhere and people are getting into little cliques and say, “it’s always going to be like this.” “And so and so.” “And this person ought to go and that person ought to stay.” “And this thing should be altered.” And they get together and then someone burns something, or knocks something over, and that’s the pattern. But if I don’t participate at least, I’m related a little bit to the other kind of life that’s there. From every point of view, it’s better, good.

Sid:   Something, a question that you answered on Saturday about divided attention. The way you answered it has changed my understanding completely of that. It’s something which I thought I understood, but the way you answered it has given me a new lever on how to work.

Mr. Adie:   Good, have you got an example?

Sid:   The only one I can remember is that this morning I was listening to the radio and decided every ten minutes to turn it off for half a minute. There was a difference between when I was there, and decided to turn it off, compared to when I just more or less automatically looked at the clock and went to turn it off without any presence. At one stage there was a definite presence before I turned it off.  At other times the idea has come back to me, and the possibilities seem richer and richer.

Mr. Adie:   You mean divided attention in order to see really? In order to realise what is going on? I have a body it’s manifesting and I divide myself between that and how I see. Is this the division you understand?

Sid:   The division but, the change in understanding is the difference between I have in the past thought of it more as, I’ve been working doing something and it’s bringing back a bit of attention to me, whereas now I see that it’s been present and directing some attention to what’s outside.

Mr. Adie:   Yes, certainly, certainly. Well, work that. But of course, I live also on impressions. If I’m dividing myself between what is outside and myself then I receive those impressions, so I get that food I need. In other words, I am present to feed. And?

Simon:   Well, all that you said about that on the weekend has come back.

Mr. Adie:   Yes. Yes, dividing one’s attention is an enormous factor. It gives me a duality, I have a duality. I have a daily mundane life which is a great movement and enormous amount of instinctive work: all the hunger and the digestion and the breathing, the movement of the blood. All that is an enormous work going on and I give it no attention, it just proceeds. All the daily things, people ring me up. I’m in the habit of putting my boots on and going off. All this is habit from previous things. So that is motivating me from outside or from the past. So, so far in the account there’s nobody there.

There’s no sculptor so there’s no sculpture. Now I need a work, I need a work of sculpture, there has to be a sculptor for that. So, I have to see what I’m doing, what I’m feeling and then I begin to divide things according to their values. Something is more important obviously than another, something’s more desirable than another. My complaints are rubbish. And my other kind of feelings different. Then I get levels and then I get higher levels. I recognise different levels and ideas, and so on. It expands the whole of my life. But I need the two levels together. I need this mundane life with all its richness and colour and I need myself, the life of something which sees, which is a higher level, higher than the animal.

Without that we’re not really as good as animals because they function much more perfectly. I’m always saying you hardly ever see a bird miss its flight, it’s exquisite in its perfection. And all the animals, too, are the same, they always fulfill their function, their jumps, it’s a marvellous degree of perfection of movement in all the animal life. And then all the vegetable life, and they’re free of a mind. They have all the function, all the energy flows through them automatically. We have a mind and it if isn’t working sanely and dividing things according to value, it’s just dreaming. And the energy of that mind is going into movements and interfering with them and making my movement botchy and breaking things and dropping things. My emotions send me into spasms, I get unreasonable and so on. So, it’s that division.

It’s a very strange thing, I even feel two opposites. I feel a division and I feel a coming together. I feel myself; I have an image and it’s alive, it’s a real thing. I’m not divided from it, I am it in a way. So, if I see something, understand it, it means, in a way, I agree with it, I am that that I see, that it has to be that.