Secrets of the Solar Cycle, Part II

The harvest, from Vezelay

The organic sensation of Being is the result, then, not just of a food – air being, as Gurdjieff described it, the second Being-food of man—but also of a process whereby the food is created for us. Hence, Gurdjieff’s solioonensius. 

It's quite typical for higher understandings of various kinds to flow in as a result of solioonensius; the process naturally makes such understanding available to those who are receptive in the same way that sugar naturally tastes sweet, or lemon tastes sour. One can actually learn a great deal about cosmic processes just by paying attention to these ordinary things with Being, rather than by trying to figure things out with intellect. All natural phenomenon correspond to spiritual ones; our natural instincts can inform us here, if we sense them.

Because sunspots have a high degree of variability in the emanations they produce, the effects that they have all the atmosphere of the planet and the material that we can take in as a result of it vary as well. This is also correspondent to human agriculture, in which there are many different crops, each one of which gives us a different kind of nourishment. Like ordinary food, spiritual food (referred to as spiritual food of the body and blood in the Christian communion) has many different varieties, each one of which nourishes a different part of Being. We need to eat a balanced diet of spiritual food for proper inner development; and although we seem to think we are to be in charge of our spiritual process—an irony indeed considering our capabilities of being in charge of outer things—we should in this case let the digestive organs of our spiritual being do their work without interference, in so far as possible. This is why Gurdjieff insisted his pupils should not engage in breathing ”exercises.” 

All that is truly needed is our attention.

A meal is prepared for us and put on the table in front of us: how many times have we encountered that concept, both in Christianity—where it’s a core teaching, Old and New Testament both—and other religious practices? Food is not perpetually available and perpetually served. It only arises and is made available season by season, and through effort. Most of the efforts of self remembering, seeing, attention, and sensation exercises are ultimately aimed at awakening a capacity to absorb this food.

The organic sensation of Being can’t develop without this food; and the food only becomes more available with the application of a finer attention, which is what Gurdjieff meant when he said that in order to transform the substance of impressions, the attention had to be placed at the point where they entered the body. This is not, mind you, the attention of the intellect alone; it involves the attention of all three of our perceptive parts. Of those three, by far, the attention of the body becomes the grounding force. The feeling is the sensitivity. The intellect only has the capacity to comprehend the perception conceptually. It is the conductor; but without the musicians, it can do nothing. 

This finer food responds and corresponds to Being in a way that requires a different language. Like the substances themselves, the kind of attention that they generate and are attracted to is finer then the ordinary, rather coarse nature of our sensation of ourselves. This is why I so frequently use terms of my own, such as the molecular sensation of Being, and refer to an intimate awareness of self. We need a new language to understand new things: you can’t put new wine in old bottles. In some senses, reading books from the past about the Gurdjieff work colors it too much with what went before, and not enough with what goes forward now. Language has changed; societies, habits, and customs have changed; the world has changed. So we need new ways of working and Being that correspond to those things.

At the same time, we need to understand the ancient teachings that brought us this work. They need to be understand freshly and in the context of the way we breathe in and out today, to be sure; as they need to be done in a deep respect to the past – but not enslavement by it. We have to be ourselves, today, and be as original as the day that we live in, which has never been before. 

That needs to be embodied in an objective appreciation of cosmic phenomenon—which, today, we ignore as immaterial, even though they are the most material things in our spiritual life. 

It needs to be embodied in an appreciation – not a dogma –of our heritage.

This particular understanding about the nature of the solar cycle came to me at about 3:30 this morning when I woke up and sensed the action of new sunspot AR 2762, formed on May 1, which is a part of the new solar cycle. This cycle has produced some interesting effects already; for example, in late April, the presence of two sunspots, one from the old and another from the new, cycle effectively canceled one another out due to their reversed polarities. It was one of the very few and rare instances in recent memory where I did not actively sense the presence of either of the sunspots as they arose. It was only late in their evolution that one of them predominated and, consequentially, produced a much higher than usual food in the atmosphere of the planet. Apparently the tension between them refined substances that can only be made available at the bottom of the solar cycle, when polarity is reversing itself. 

This should be of interest to others who can sense such emanations. It deserves further study. 

Go, and sense, and be well.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.