This comes from a Tuesday night meeting at Newport on 23 November 1982.
A woman whose voice I cannot identify asked Mrs Adie: “I felt very strong after the week-end work. After the morning preparation, during the week, I set stops when I would come to myself. When I remembered the stop, I would begin to look for my state, but my state wasn’t clear to me. I can’t understand why.”
“Your effort was probably centred in your head,” replied Mrs Adie.
“Yes, I think it was. Then, today, when I came to myself, I felt like I was coming out of nowhere.”
“At what point was that?”
“It was the first stop after the morning preparation. I saw the time and stopped, and then, this coming to myself, like I said, out of nowhere.”
“Yes, there is a certain possible freedom in the head,” Mrs Adie responded: “You planned a stop, and you remembered it. Keep from from all thoughts at that moment. Of course you can’t understand it: you don’t really try and understand it – you try and feel it. To try and understand is a sort of wiseacring in the head. The head doesn’t understand. It has to be silent. That part of your head which will explain to you what it is, was not taking part in the effort. There is a part which does understand, but not in words: a higher part of your head that understands something, it knows something, but it doesn’t formulate a lot of words.”
There was a brief pause before Mrs Adie continued: “But as it is, you trust the words, and you miss them. So now, you need a different effort: listen, and don’t feel that you have missed something because you don’t have the words. Don’t even look for the words: this sort of experience you understand a lot better with your feeling.”
“If your head is silent then it is present. It’s also in control.”
“There are three levels within the head, and the part I am referring to is a higher part. It’s a new country for you. You just experience it. Just experience it. You will experience much more if you are free from that part which has to formulate everything. It is always willing to try, but it’s the last part of the head we need, because the process of real understanding begins on a higher level.”
“It’s a good report,” Mrs Adie concluded. “That you remembered to try to have stops after the preparation is not nothing.”
Joseph Azize
31 July 2016
