This continues the meeting of Thursday 19 July 1979, with the Cedar group. This next question was from Tim, who said he had been working on accepting how other people do things, without being offended or taken.
“It is not quite clear,” said Mr Adie, “not quite clear exactly the angle on which you are working. When you say “accepting”, what do you mean?”
“I will give you an example.”
“Yes, that is always the thing, always the need.”
Tim then explained how he was new at his job, and those who have been there longer get together and chat in a corner, sometimes laughing. His task has been to accept that they can do this without his having to be included. It has happened three times this week, and he has felt a strong pull to go over and join in.
“Do you try to sense your body?” Mr Adie asked.
“I did once, and it helped. But then I left the room, and I forgot.”
“It is a very interesting situation, isn’t it? Very. I mean, you’re a real man, six foot and a half high; that job, that pay, and those people; and there is something taking place.”
“How do you understand it? Do you see the sort of shadow play they are indulging in? It’s like a vortex which has a force dragging you in. All sorts of considering, things arise in your mind, should you go over, what will they think if you do, what will they think if you don’t, how is it going to add up? All this is going on, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“How to be quite relaxed in it? Obviously, it is not going to pay you be aloof, marked out as one in the outer darkness, so how you are when you don’t go over and join in the nattering is rather important from an ordinary point of view.”
“But our point of view should include and also go beyond the ordinary. There are all sorts of interesting questions there. I would use it. It won’t be going on for ever. Soon they will either want you in, or disband, or something. And certainly the impulse you have to free yourself has to be repeated. Then, you want to take some alternative point for your attention. It can’t be negative all the time.”
“If you resist a pull, you increase the pull which you resist. So don’t resist it, just find something else to do. Get on with your measuring, your figures, or whatever else is available. It would help your attention if you try and be just a little bit quicker, or a little bit neater, or a little bit more precise. Use these circumstances to help that, which is good even from the perspective of your career, but for us it has the added importance that you are intentionally being a shade more careful for your inner work. This is the thing: your state. What is your being-state? How are you functioning in your role? More relaxed? More attention?”
“Otherwise, it goes back to this vortex. Try and work like that. It would be very interesting, and don’t seek for it to be changed. See how you relate to the others: for example, there may be two of them you don’t mind but then you’re not so fond of the third one.”
The next question was from Jenny. She said: “I don’t have about that, I just feel that I have been too tired to make the morning Preparation, and I have lost a place to work from.”
“You have to go through that,” replied Mr Adie. “You see that you had some place, and that now you cannot find it again. But you cannot maintain yourself there unless you are serving it. You have this place of work as long as you are motivated towards it. The inner possibility is an act. I have to act. Time after time after time, I cease acting, and then I haven’t got a place any more; my attention is all outside.”
“But when I am searching for the way back to that safe place, I begin to hear the voices of my dreams as the voices of phantom: “I’m too tired to do the Preparation. It’s too cold this morning,” and so on and so forth. It’s just lies. Of course you’ve got time.”
“But what if I wake up late for an appointment?” Jenny asked.
“Then your struggle is not with the dreaming. If you have to absolutely dash off to an appointment then you’ve lost your chance. It’s a different struggle from what you were speaking of. You said that you were too tired in the morning. That is rubbish, because that Preparation will immediately help my fatigue. I can always pick up some energy. But if I decide to just throw it all over and go back to bed, I have to be careful that I don’t deliver myself to more dreams, that I don’t pick up the newspaper when my eye falls on it, or spend three quarters of an hour with a silly book. How often do you really feel that you couldn’t possibly do five minutes of a Preparation?”
“I find that if I do try it, I become aware of all the energy I have wasted.”
“Then try and come to this inner place which is reasonable, which is serious. You see? Serious. It is a direct struggle, and if you don’t start it now, it will become harder, so you might as well get going.”
“I train myself to overcome particular obstacles. Those obstacles are on this level, and when they have been overcome there are more on other levels to be met. It goes on like that for a very long time, until the end. Do you know what I mean by that? I mean full freedom. Man number seven.”
“I am living the life of an evolving being, seeing how it was, struggling against these denying factors.”
Joseph Azize, 23 January 2020
