This continues the meeting of Wednesday 9 November 1983 with George Adie. The third question I shall report came from Indira. She said that she had found a buffer in herself to do with negative emotions.
“Good, but you cannot do everything at once. You have to choose something specific. There are different negative emotions, and there are different attitudes to the weather, your sister, your children and so on.”
This prompted Indira to say that she had in fact been working on negative emotions against her sister.
“I can prepare for when I see her. I have an intention to give her as enjoyable a visit as possible, to not touch on subjects which I know will upset her, to make it interesting for her, and also to make it interesting for yourself. Without that, you cannot get anything out of it. You can’t look at her as just being a source of material. She is your sister.”
“What is the quality of my attitude? There would have to be a real shift in my state. Something in me wishes. I can’t neglect her need or mine. Make your task smaller and more definite. Prepare. Is there something left in the question?”
Indira said that she now realised where she had gone wrong.
Then Biff mentioned that he had made an effort to do a much longer morning preparation of 40, 45 minutes.
“It may help. There is always a moment of choice. But I have to do the work now. The effect of an experience such as that may be to open me, to free me. I know, for a little while, that I am freer. Not totally free, but more freedom. I am not always looking to see who’s criticising me, I am not looking for praise. I am more related, not armed at every angle.”
“A moment of real relationship can affect me, and that brings up the “I”s who deny it. This is the opportunity to see the “I”s which cannot understand or share in that experience. I begin to divide, but if I am looking out for those I’s, then the work actually becomes more apparent. So I see that by beginning to become aware of a wave-like motion in my state, I find that I must do a preparation, because this isn’t good enough.”
“In that, didn’t you find a resistance? Something resisted? Not everything was in agreement before you started?”
Biff replied that it took four days for the resistance to die down. Mr Adie commented that our very presence, our sense of “I Am” allows us to see how much resistance there really is.
The next question, from Sharon, was simply to the effect that she had had a very powerful weekend, and thought that she could retain something of that during the week, but that in fact she could not keep the plan she had made.
“I need to be careful not to defeat myself with some idiotic idea. How could it have been the same as the weekend? Circumstances are different. People are not here, I am not here, you are by yourself. It is bound to be different. But there is some relation, and the different circumstances may make possible some experience which you need. You come here for a special experience, and then you go home, where you are trying to find what is possible in daily life. There is something not just critical, but gloomy, about such ideas.”
“But now, if you find that the plan is not helping at all then surely something has to take its place. What? Maybe if it was getting wooden, maybe if it was beginning to lose its power, I need to make a small change, or even to devise a new one.”
Then Nathaniel spoke. “I have a lot of helpful material from the weekend work, and tried to carry it forward. On Monday, I could maintain it almost throughout the day. On Tuesday it was only half the day, and today only two hours.
“We have discussed this before. Many times. There is a sort of rule for that. Do you recall it?
“You said to be satisfied with what is given to us, that we cannot hope to maintain a particular state,” said Nathaniel.
“Yes,” replied Mr Adie. “It’s always good to remember the aim, and the connections to my circumstances. Obviously, when a thousand different things are coming at me all the time, and I know my state is fluctuating, I cannot always be in the same state. It would be folly to want to. And what does it mean to say “the same”? What does “the same” mean? It cannot be conscious sameness. We desire consciousness to be unconditional. It differs from moment to moment, and to demand “the same” is to demand something other than consciousness.”
“I have to be careful of my head. Parts of my head are very useful for ordering things, and electrical problems, but are no good at all for the work. So, at this point, when this is my need, I have to keep the other parts a bit quiet, and try and get to the other part of my mind. You have three parts of the mind: a moving part, a feeling part, and even a thinking part. Our formatory apparatus is purely the moving part, automatic, going by habit. Repetition of old impressions. I spend too much time in a quandary. I can accept to be in a quandary for a bit, but not too long. I raise my head? You know that famous statue by Rodin, Le Penseur? He remained in that posture for much too long. He had to relax his back muscles, and straighten up.”
Joseph Azize, 24 February 2018
