Friday, October 8, 2021
5:30 a.m. [After some private kvetching.] Well, in Casablanca everybody’s got problems. As Rick said, “yours may work out.”
So let’s change perspectives and see how it looks. Immediately, calmness, a soothing distance, a lack of immediacy, in a way. My ears ringing, particularly the left. The back hurting only a little, and only in one place, though that may be because I am not moving as I sit here writing. [However, the back pain did not return later.] An indefinable sense of less vertical pressure: I am not being pushed down, as it were. Breathing is all right, without the borderline feeling of unease. All this, pretty immediately on my changing states consciously.
So now how do I feel about the scales? [I had gained, rather than lost, since Thursday morning’s weigh-in.] Perspective says, changing course – that is, reversing course – can hardly offer promise of assistance, and merely assures that I will have to resume this course or resign myself to continuous weight gain, so what choice is there? None in that direction. I can try to exercise or I can continue on as I have been, but those are the only routes that offer promise. And I guess I knew that; it is the emotion of disappointment that was arguing otherwise. Sort of, “I’ll show them.”
Similarly, the question of achieving something with all that queued – or rather, stored – record of conversations. I can scarcely do less with them. I must do more or something different. Even organizing the binders on my shelves has helped in a way; it makes the bulk more evident, more accessible. But they won’t summarize themselves.
Time to begin, but I am reluctant. I may do some crossword play first, maybe put this off for tomorrow, even. Good idea? Bad idea? I know it’s my choice, I’m just asking your opinion.
There is an emotional link between the way you try to lose weight and the way you try to do the work. The less you leave it to “wanting to feel like it” and the more you do it as an accepted way of life, the easier it is. But the problem you face is, how do you listen to the inspiration of the moment and yet be systematic? And the answer is, make system your framework, and the feeling of the moment subject to it, as, say, you had to do when you were in a job. Use the framework as scaffolding.
5:55 a.m. Okay, so unless you have something else in mind, I thought we might look at what I got during our drumming session on Wednesday.
Go ahead.
“What is our path to greatest joy?”
Openness, because openness is the opposite of shrinking from life.
Joy is the path. Follow your bliss and it increases.
First, do no harm. A clear conscience leads to happiness. Again, no need for shrinking (from memories).
Live in great confidence.
In other words, openness, which includes openness to joy, innocence as best you can achieve it, and faith. Not so complicated a formula.
Some might say, yes, but how do we attain it?
You don’t attain a formula, you live it. And let’s say, as an aside, that “try” and “intend” may sound like the same thing, but they are not.
Yoda says, “There is no try. There is do or not do.”
And someone inspired that line, because it exposes a common misunderstanding. (The line is not a misunderstanding, what it exposes, is.)
I’m listening.
When you intend, that is holding a course. That is following a course, watching your compass to be sure you are going where you want to go. When you try, that is saying you are not succeeding, with the implication not only that you have not yet succeeded, but also that you cannot yet succeed. “Try” is an implicit declaration of inability, you see. You mean it as “I am making the attempt,” but it also adds, silently, “and failing at it.” That is why “There is no try, there is do or not do.”
So as a practical matter, how do we assure that we are following a course (however discouraged we may be at any given moment) and not silently saying “But I can’t do this, at least not yet.”
You set your teeth, with or without dramatics, according to taste, and you follow your compass. That’s what intend is, it is being pulled by your chosen future, you could say. It isn’t difficult conceptually; there are no techniques to learn (though each person may find it worthwhile to invent or adopt specific rituals to serve as encouragement and reminder). It is really a setting one person in charge, rather than allowing various people to take the help depending upon any little change in the weather.
A la Gurdjieff.
His approach and his explanations were different because his times and circumstances are not yours, but he did know what he was about. Look, you all want to crystallize a permanent being anyway. Well, take this as a practical exercise. Teach your crew to follow one captain, rather than rotating the conn. And there’s no use saying, “I am the captain.” You are more like the shipowner, selecting and then maintaining the captain. (And if you will not do it, who will?) Choose who you want to be captain; that is another way of saying, Choose who and what you want to be, want to express.
All right, I get that. Interesting distinction, between captain and shipowner. I think that will be useful.
So let’s look briefly at what you got when you asked “What is our path to greatest joy?”
- “Openness, because openness if the opposite of shrinking from life.” You should understand this very well. As older people often say, the sins they most regret are the ones they didn’t commit. Or, more neutrally, what they regret is far more often the things they didn’t do, not the things they did do. Why is this, do you suppose?
It seems clear enough, in context. The reason we don’t do something we want to do often boils down to fear of some sort. Yes, there may be other constraints, but often enough, we’re afraid, like Mr. Prufrock.
And the two forces in life?
Yes, that’s my point. Love, which is expansion and inclusion – and fear, which is constriction and exclusion. And I don’t know how we can be expanding if we are contracting.
Ergo, a default position of openness, in effect, is a default position of willingness to love what comes. That may not be obvious, and in some moods may seem to be impossible, but it is true. Now, “to love what comes” does not necessarily mean to greet it with cries of joy, like George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life”: “Yes, I’m going to jail, isn’t it wonderful?” But it does mean, “This comes next, let’s see what it brings.” You are going to the hospital, to the unemployment office, to jail, to bankruptcy court, whatever. Scarcely grounds for rejoicing, but it will be a new experience, and you could choose a relatively calm curiosity about it, a trusting that nothing happens by chance.
And there’s no use saying of this advice, “That’s easy for you to say.” Whether it’s easy to say or not is not the question. The question is, are we right? Are we giving good advice? If it’s good advice, it doesn’t have to be hard to say.
As Sam Spade said, “What do you want me to do, learn to stutter?”
Exactly. Easy or not to say, it is easy or not to practice, and that is what is important.
- “Follow your bliss, and joy increases.” Surely this is self-evident? Should you expect that the way to increase your joy is in seeking out the things you don’t want to do? It is true that everyone’s life includes things they would just as soon skip, but that doesn’t address the point here. Here, the point is that if you follow where your feelings lead you, it will work out, and probably better than you hope. This is in a way the inverse of the previous point. Just as advocating openness says, “Avoid shrinking from life,” so “follow your bliss” says, not only don’t shrink from it, embrace it, trust it.
Again, I don’t know why this wouldn’t be transparently evident.
You are forgetting your past in which you did not pursue what would be “too good to be true,” and you are not recognizing the present in which you are still doing it.
Ouch.
Still, you’re right: It ought to be evident. However, like most things in life, it won’t do itself. It can be hard enough to find your bliss, if you look with the wrong tools. (Hint: You want to be paying attention to feelings, not to logic and especially not to “practicalities.”) But once you find it, you still need to follow it, and that often requires a decision of some sort.
- “First, do no harm.” You can’t live without doing harm; that is an impossible ideal. But you can intend to do no harm. You can make your life about not doing harm. You can, in short, do as little harm as possible, and certainly you can live by refusing to do harm consciously (that is, by decision), nor, to the extent possible, by inadvertence.
As it says in one of the Dick Francis books, “Deal honorably and sleep soundly.” Something like that.
Yes. It isn’t complicated, it is merely a matter of having your captain include it in the standing orders.
- “Live in great confidence.” We should scarcely need to add anything to this point. Everything we have been telling you, all these years, is to this effect. What Jane Roberts brought through, and Cayce, same message. It is a safe universe, it was made for you (in effect).
Thanks. Today’s header?
Why not Living in Joy, or Living in greater joy, something like that.
Okay. Again, our thanks as always.