Self-awareness
By self-awareness I mean self-remembrance, acute knowing that I am here, alive, doing this action, being in this place: the stick that is sharpened at both ends - aware of the point of focus, and the one focusing ... both at the same time.
You should know what this means, and if not, look back to where this has been explained in more detail.
The best way to think about self-awareness:
Everything you do in a state of self-awareness is yours. Everything else belongs to something else.
The essence of the actions you do in a state of self-awareness flow into your ‘active’ self - the one that you personally own. The one that you take with you when you die.
The essence of the actions you do in a state of self-forgetfulness, goes home to the original owners of your automated self - lost forever.
Your automated self was formed primarily through the influence of the automated selves of your parents. You repeat their perceptual centre as well as their style of action, modified by secondary sources. Secondary sources are from the automated influence of your culture and species.
Naturally there is another source stream - that which you bring across from your entity pre-birth. Unique differences to you alone. This source is also automated, and mostly belongs to the vast forgotten past of residual, external influences upon you from the universe, in every way unimaginable.
Is there anything that is really, really you - not the product of some other source? The answer from most reliable traditions is usually ‘no’ - except perhaps just some slim, slim thread of possibility. Who knows? Lets just say if there is some inner core of self-ownership prior to the practice of self-awareness, it is remote, miniscule and of the nature of perceptual essence. I am inclined to say that nonetheless, it does exist.
Thus, the aroma from all your actions and experiences is mostly the property of other sources - perhaps you will retain a mere whiff - like a faint fart.
Only when you ‘act’ and ‘be’, from a state of self-awareness - self-generated self-awareness - can you claim the results as your own. Everything else is done as service for unknown forces. Everything else is lost into the void.
Only when in a state of self-generated self-awareness, can we create “I am”.
Karma
If this is the case, how can karma attach itself to a person who is in complete automation? Surely the karma from such a person’s actions will shoot home to the originator?
There are sayings: ‘Yea though the deed must be done, yet woe unto he through whom whose hands’, and ‘Ignorance is not a defence’.
This indicates we acknowledge that despite not being the owners of the actions we perform in ‘sleep’, yet we are the agents, and as such we must wear the culpability - at least to some extent. But the primary weight of karma will attach to the forces which initiate the behaviour and attitudes.
Thus whole cultures, and the human species, carry the primary weight of karma. So long as we identify within our culture and our species, we personally are forced to work out within our own lives, their karma.
Very little of our actions create personal karma - unless it is done within self-awareness. Thus the fierce warnings about the ‘weak face’ of those who have achieved personal power and self-awareness. Then the karmic consequences really do cling to our unique spirit - beware.
Effort
Personal power comes from effort. Simple as that.
Physical strength comes from physical effort. Inner strength comes from inner effort. Simple as that.
You can’t build muscles by lying around. You can’t build inner power by lying around.
You can have realisations by lying around, but realisations without the power to enact, the ability to ‘do’, is fantasy pure and simple.
There are four levels of effort:
1. Passive effort. Efforts we make because we have to, or because there are others with us who are making the same effort.
This type of effort should always be employed wherever found. Passive effort is still effort, and with the right approach is extremely rewarding. The key is always the right approach. For example, you are sitting taking a break, then the boss tells you to do some task, or you realise the washing-up has to be done, or the lawn mowed. In that moment, where you are pulled from your respite - that is the moment: you are being pulled but you can go willingly.
This is also called Demand effort. We have to keep the body alive, so we have to work, we have to get up in the morning - every morning, and go out to keep body and soul together. What a blessing! What an opportunity to build power. Demand is the gift of the Saturnian gods.
2. Willing effort. This is the next major key to building power. Whenever demand calls us to effort, we waste our opportunity to build power because we do it reluctantly. We resent and complain. Okay we have to do this job, make this effort - but look at those people over there, they have everything and they don’t have to make any efforts... it’s not fair! And anyway, I hate this work, and I hate being made to make efforts by people I don’t respect.
It goes on and on - there are always reasons for us to make efforts in a bitter, disgruntled mood. Instead of building power, it drains away from us. This kind of effort is still of value - better to work and complain than to lie around and complain. But it also weakens us in another way.
When we overcome our displeasures, our complaints, then we make another kind of inner effort - and effort of attitude. That kind of effort is priceless, and produces another level of power to our being. When the decision is made that the effort must be made, don’t look back or look at others. Throw yourself fully into the task with willingness and delight.
The more tired we get the harder it is to keep a positive attitude, and the more inner effort we have to make - thus the greater the rewards in our personal power.
3. Intentional effort. Self-generated effort. This is mainly the efforts we make when we don’t have to. But it is also the efforts we make when something is demanded of us, but we make it our own - we accept full responsibility and no longer say “I am doing this because I have to.” Instead we claim it as our own, and run with it as if we had made it up. We call that ‘adopted’ intentional effort.
But primarily self-generated effort comes from tasks we initiate from our own inspiration and will. There is a big difference. I like to go to yoga classes, because the teacher-group scene pushes me beyond what I would do on my own. Left to ourselves, we often give up sooner - no one is making us sweat and struggle on. Its easy to stop and rest, or give up for the day. To choose to enter hardships and struggle, to push ourselves beyond our limits, from our own initiative and sustain, that is a level above. And the inner rewards grow immeasurably.
This is why on this path, we are encouraged to take the more difficult road. Whenever some task presents, try to stop the common approach of finding the easiest, quickest and most convenient way to do it. Purposely take the long way, the difficult way - walk on the rougher side of the road, climb the harder face.
4. Self-aware effort. This puts the whole scheme together. Through self-awareness, when we build inner strength through willing, intentional effort, we build it in our own spirit-bank, not someone/something else’s.
This is the critical component - adding self-awareness, self-remembrance to our efforts. Not only de we have to remember to ‘not resist’ effort, struggle and difficulty; not only do we throw ourselves into efforts and tasks that are not necessary; but we have to remember ourselves while doing it. When all these components come together, we attain the level of being that we should be living as a constant. Instead of this being an acme of our spirit possibility, a momentary achievement, it should be seen as the normal state of our consciousness.
The problem with all this, is that we can’t do it. Simple as that. It’s impossible. Oh we may pull it off for a few seconds if we really focus, but that’s our limit.
You can read these groovy words, and nod sagely about the efficacy of the ideas, but its all fantasy and tales of another universe. This is why Gurdjieff said before we can ‘be’, first we have to be ‘able to be’. How can we do that? We need personal power to have personal power, awareness to have awareness, spirit to have spirit. Anything that can build a minimum of potency will assist us to creep slowly towards this ‘normal’ state of being.
How are we to find the window of opportunity for this transformation of our inner sentience? Dissonance!
Dissonance.
Dissonance is whatever disturbs our slumber. Instead of running from dissonance, seek it out. Unfortunately harmony sends us to sleep. I know we all like it - I love harmony. Sweet, soothing, creamy harmony ... yum! And it has it’s place, lets not be too masochistic. We all need those moments when the universe aligns in peace, goodwill, well-being, loving-harmonious-sympathetic accord. But beyond its initial healing balm, something insidious grows deep inside us. That is why we have been thrust down here on earth, “into the horror” as Leonard Cohen says.
We are banished from our Divine Father’s house, destined to wander in the desert and wilderness until we learn this lesson. Until we embrace the desert and wilderness with that spark of light that is our own. Dissonance is the road of creativity.
When Gurdjieff was lying near-dead in his bed after his car accident, many well-wishers and devoted followers visited him. He wondered why he felt so terrible after they had left. All they sought to do was offer their sincere sympathy and love - to comfort him in whatever way they could. But the result for him was hours of inner wretchedness. Once he awoke to what was happening, he coined his famous phrase “came-sucked-me-out-and-went-away’.
He was cast into the most terrible despair that he was not going to live long enough due to his internal injuries, to accomplish even a fraction of what he saw as his life’s tasks. Then like a bolt of lightening he recognised the answer to his 24 hour pounding question: where was he to find the energy and health to complete his work? One clue was those times when he sat on the bench in front of the house with his wife and mother, both of whom were dying. The intensity of anguish he felt for both of them, especially his wife, was overwhelming. But he didn’t fail to notice that after these sittings, he was filled with the most intense, creative energy to apply to his work. How could this be?
On his realisation, only hours from the moment he had irrevocably committed to end his life if no answer could be found, he saw clearly what he must do. He went on to live a very long life after that, confounding the doctors, and completing all he had set for himself. How did he begin?
He sent away everyone around him who was making his life comfortable. He banished all those who had become indispensable to the smooth running of his world. He went further - he poked the sorest spot of every person he met in the quickest and sharpest way, causing horrendous consequences for his personal life and his financial-business dealings. In short, he made his life as painful as possible, and in so doing, healed himself and accumulated more energy than he could ever require for his goals.
But he did it willingly, intentionally, consciously and with self-awareness.
Dissonance separates the Tectonic Plates of our personal lithosphere - our outer being. These vast concretised plates of identity shift apart just a fraction through dissonance, and if we have the courage and strength, we can look down into the core of our being. If we look down with self-awareness, we penetrate to the very essence of our existence with a spark of pure brilliance. Nothing can transform us more potently than this experience.
The prize of self-technology, is to separate these plates widely, and to stand in no-mans-land between them. To steal oneself against the panic attack of this experience, and look down, in full self-possession and knowledge of one’s impudent impermanency. To steal a glance into the infinity of darkness below.
And the best form of dissonance is culture-shock ... but that is for another time.
Michael Maher 2009
