The Aim:

1. To increase Real Will
2. To increase Consciousness
3. To increase Understanding

I'm putting this here as a simple statement of intent. It doesn't aim to be all and everything but it sets a simple structure to the coming year:

1. Twice daily Prayer.
2. Basic Work: The Seven Day Standard
- Come into a state of SR whilst in the midst of difficult & surprising events x 7 daily
- External Considering* is always conscious: thrice daily
- Record efforts on 5x3 cards & use notebooks, journals, etc, where motivated.
- Rest for 3 days.
- Repeat this 7/3 effort for the rest of 2009.
3. Read Calvin's Institutes (Beveridge trans.) daily following the Princeton Theological Seminary.
4. Swim 2 to 4 times weekly. Reduce strokes-per-length, etc.
5. I have a new instrument to study and learn. Daily.
6. Study work sources, either in short bursts or durations. Have regular 'projects'.
7. Always 'follow the claim of the object', willing things, willing people, willing events, willing the Work.

* Some practical examples of External Considering:

• new thinking
• avoid slander and cheap talk
• avoid making requirements of others
• transform negative thoughts of others into positive thoughts
• see all negativity as a gift
  
• put oneself in another's position
• find in oneself a state corresponding to that found in others - remember that you felt like this once
• discern the other persons needs and try to meet them
• remember that people are asleep, they know not what they do, they are machines
• "In relation to other people, you must not act without thinking. Think first, then act. If this person would prefer you to act in some manner and not another, it is all the same to you, so why not do what he likes?" - O

NOTES

I'm into the 12th day of this year long work effort, and though I do not intend to document a running commentary here, I appear to have succumbed to my need to make some brief note. The first seven days revealed some difficulty in meeting my own quota of three daily efforts to externally consider. That's worth putting on record because I'll be here at the end of 2009 assessing this effort. I also recognise some significant slippage (or perhaps levelling out on a plateau) since the previous work octave ended in Easter 2008. It's a truth: aim prevents drift. And finally, I intend through each successive 7 day period of activity to introduce additional work efforts to those outlined above. Currently I am giving up self-will 10 times daily. But at any rate, I'm circling in on all those features of false personality that never truly go away. (150109)

External Considering

Seven Day Aim

16 - 22 December 2008

For whatever reasons, I frequently find myself drawn into arguments. Truly unnecessary, even meaningless arguments that burn good energy and leave a bilious taste in the gut. Sometimes I observe the cause arising within others but often it is the out of control parts of my own being gaining unbridled expression. This aim seeks the non-expression of all irritations and disagreements and secondly the conscious effort to hear the other person: to step aside. As they say in kung fu, 'receive what comes, follow what goes'. It's simply a way of controlling the opponent's energy, to yield and let it go, to trap it, to handle it as one chooses - as the occasion demands.

The second element of this effort is good 'ole standard 7 x daily rote self-remembering and prayer.

Transform the Unmanifest

We want to place a point of consciousness at the tip of a particular activity or event. We want to transform something, at least one thing each day. We want to create energy of consciousness, preserve something rather than lose it in the ceaseless passing momentariness of the day. It doesn't matter what the event is - sailing a skiff, ironing your night shirts, milking an anglo-nubian, ploughing the legumes, cooking plantain ... for breakfast. Or something entirely different. We want to give what we have - our time - in conscious service to the Glory of God. We need to do this much to stand still.

But here's something to think about. While we aim to put consciousness into events, and recurrent trivial events at that, there are yet greater glories to uphold. Certain things are not meant to enter into manifestation - there are things that need not come down at all. The Work has always been something we experience in the flow of life. It picks us up in the commotion of daily living, long recognised as the best place to experience and thus find valuation for the Work. Amidst this daily agitation, we quickly come to understand that our point of contact is often already too late to effect much transformation. We are left developing a passive Observing I. No bad thing in itself but only an early day motion. Even in the heat of more direct efforts and planned programs, we are too often found bloodied, conquered by forces beyond our previous imagining. It is obvious to say it, we need to work in the unmanifest. If it sounds at all doubtful then observe something simple, a coarse event: the presence of negative emotions in daily life. So commonplace is this infectious fever - it's nearly invisible - we can say, almost confidently, by the time we are adults the majority of our emotional tagging of events will be negative. Our neuro-emotional networks are riddled with dark cancerous markers just waiting to release the next wave of negative energy into the world. The most trivial things are tagged to release this poison. It takes very little for most of us to throw out our dummies, those that don't see this have not yet experienced their personal limitations. We're such very delicate, self-important things. And none of this even touches on the influence of giant sinkhole events such as 9/11 or the current meltdown of the worlds financial institutions.

We are surrounded by people, they are everywhere and they are all making demands of us. When they are not making demands we find ourselves wrestling with ideas or monologues triggered either by the memory of other people or else in some other manner related back to our musings on our relationships with others, be that real or imagined, physically familial or as tenuous as connecting with a long dead author. And if any of that abates for a moment, life-events fill the vacuum, some crisis occurs. Or else we are overwhelmed with loneliness, boredom, a sense of inadequacy, lack of recognition for our personal genius or what ever other emotional stupidity is having the better of us. It is a world full of negative emotions swirling in a dynamic melange of human interplay. All of this negativity is first established in the unmanifest. By giving expression to our negative emotions we give 'it' manifest form to breathe and prosper. Once it's out there it runs amok - and that is the level at which daily life conducts itself.

And then we have the Work. We may practise placing consciousness in Dance Movements or the Art of Pancake Flipping but recognise that these efforts simply cock the hammer, the energy of consciousness that we so struggle to contain is what ignites the powder and drives out the leaden force of negative emotion. If we sit and wait, we get what comes. It's very simple. Never forget and work actively to transform the unmanifest. Not because we can or ultimately that we need to - after all, the fields are full of Angus, Guernsey and Charolais and the grass is usually green - but because it is the will of God. And because it is an expression of our Service that we seek to cleanse ourselves.

The Work is Service

The Work is Service. It's the only way to consider it. I think also that there is a lot in that approach. There is a lot that is revealed through Service. I'm speculating but my sense is that these people that find themselves chewed up/spat out in cults never had that perspective. I wouldn't like to say they are motivated purely by vanity or self-will, but I do sense this lack of Service at the root of their ailing and a possible cause for them being attracted to a cult circuit in the first place. Although, one has to reserve caveats for the exceptions. I suppose the cult experience is one way in which individuals are broken down and prepared for the real Work, but again how many of those types are fit for the Work I don't know.

Considering this idea a little further it is not difficult to understand that the Service we are discussing is directly the means by which we are preserved through Christ by the Holy Spirit. We are in voluntary Service to God through faith and - what has historically been referred to as - penitence: a word I find loaded with negative association. Yet, this inner remorse (that is the meaning of penitence) for one's own wrong doings, which previously I have written about on this blog as remorse of conscience, is clearly a defining characteristic of a regenerate soul. We are all prisoners of the flesh and the world, our will in bondage and slave to a depraved heart. Unless grace saves, we are lost; it's either the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Satan. This penitent aspect of our regenerate nature unveils, if only retrospectively (and somewhat painfully), the idiocy (sickness) of the ways of the Old man. So the Old man is subdued and we seek restoration with Christ through 'holiness of heart' - a property of Service that secures a true lively faith and covenant obedience (another word that disturbs self-will and worldly pride).

Of the names of God, and there are many, perhaps the hardest to come-to and the most revealing is: Father, which is in Heaven. The direct simplicity of the name Father heralds the whole Christian mystery. When Christ said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt. (Mar 14:36) he showed all that would how righteous service is done. It is the revealed Will of Our Father that we should know Him, so that we may become partakers in His nature. His is a Will that loves, and by the sacrifice of itself makes others partakers of the grace of adoption, heirs of everlasting salvation.

And through this internal call to Service one cannot mistake the operation of the Holy Spirit: For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts,(2Co 4:6) and heaven opens to us here now.

The Crown Jewels (That's You!)

Without the AV 1611 the Work is but a waltz through hollow dreams with a Cheshire grin waiting to be erased. So take the Holy Bible and read it thrice, get ye oriented, Genesis through to Revelation. And, do the practises of the 1st & 2nd conscious shock. Roll up your sleeves and prepare for work.

With that grounding, you will learn to keep yourself in a Serviceable condition, which is after all, what you are here to do.

Acknowledging that Gurdjieff taught how we might make the teachings authentic in our own being through the strivings of our conscience, I'll hand it over to the Victorian Reformed preacher, Charles Spurgeon (from his Twelve Sermons on the 2nd Coming of Christ) who summed up the Work perfectly:

"You are something more than dumb, driven cattle, that must think of hay and water. You have immortal spirits. Rise to the dignity of your immortality. Begin to think of the kingdom, the kingdom so soon to come, the kingdom which your Father has given you, and which, therefore, you must certainly inherit, the kingdom which Christ has prepared for you, and for which he is making you kings and priests unto God, that you may reign with him for ever and ever. Oh, be not earth bound! Do not cast your anchor here in these troubled waters. Build not your nest on any of these trees; they are all marked for the axe, and are coming down; and your nest will come down, too, if you build it here. Set your affections on things above, up yonder, -

"Up where eternal ages roll,
Where solid pleasures never die,
And fruits eternal feast the soul;"

there project your thoughts and your anxieties, and have a care about the world to come. Be not anxious about the things that pertain to this life. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."