Gurdjieff Dominican Group
THEME: Time is passing
Small group:
January Seminar 2004
Our small group worked for three days on this theme. We
first tried to remember events from the past in our own lives each time the
bell rang. We saw that most of our memories were moments of
self-remembering. One important observation pointed out that children do not
have the same sense of time as we adults do. They have no notion of hours, days
or weeks. We realized that something happens to us as we become aware of time
in a linear fashion.
Our next exercise was to be aware of time and our relationship to it. It was
observed that the passage of time is truly expanded in a seminar setting.
We were able to notice more and the sense of time passing was not as
obvious as it is in our regular day to day lives.
Finally, we tried an exercise in which we recalled an event from the past hour
and then projected our awareness to the next hour. We were to do this each
time the bell rang. This proved to be a more difficult exercise, specifically
in seeing the future.
For all of us, time eats away at our lives and as we have
moments of being awake, we realize that we have been asleep. When a
moment of self-remembering occurs, will can enter in,
something that exists beyond time and space. It is in these very moments that
we are able to have choice and this is our greatest freedom.
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Exercise for the Day:
The Present Moment Exercise: When the bell rings, collect yourself, and
then become aware of an activity in the last half hour that you did with
intention, a waking moment. Now, see yourself doing an intentional act in
the next half hour and bring those
two actions together in the present moment.
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Reading from The Way to
Be Free by John Bennett
Vorstellung
The German word Vorstellung is usually translated
simply as "representation," but I think it is the best word to
designate what enables "will" to enter this world. There is an
action in which we place before ourselves what we are "willing"- this
is the vorstellung. By representing an event to
ourselves, we can create the means by which the event can come about. We
are part of the event itself and this is not really mysterious. It is a
creative action that is particularly important at this moment of history when
we have to create, not make, a new world. Some people say this is to be
done by thinking the new world, but thinking has to be understood in a much
stronger way than in the ordinary sense.
When I use the word vorstellung I do not mean
thinking, but something very strong and direct. The act of representation
is not to put the image outside of ourselves, but inside ourselves, so that we
really experience it. It is very important to train this power of
representation. Working at it together can be a great help, because by
oneself it takes much time and determination.
In the way of vorstellung we do not make a plan--we
open up certain possibilities for something to happen. We can look at the
situation in front of us and say, “Is this setting me free, or making me a
slave?” Plans always fail because if the projected result is achieved,
the price is not what one expected. If one is not prepared to pay the
price, the result will not come. Only the behavior of a machine can be
planned.
Outstripping Time
The idea of being able to travel outside of time and space is not so fanciful.
We do this whenever we make a free choice, which is possible only when we
are confronted with more than one possible event in a given situation.
When we make this choice- and it is always a hard choice-- it involves
some sacrifice of the actual in order to gain the potential. When we make
it, we go out of the determinate world into a different region. But then
all we ever do is to make a kind of loop in the line of time, because we are so
constructed that we are unable to maintain ourselves for very long on a
potential higher than that of our own bodies. Therefore we find ourselves
constantly back in the material world.