Am I?

May 13.

There's a cardinal outside.

Cardinals have a loud, insistent call that includes a kind of OCD feature, hitting the same note over and over, followed by a descending note. Either that, or a group of descending notes. The descending note always starts out sounding upbeat, optimistic, and positive, then takes a nosedive. It's as though it gets infected by some kind of melancholy the moment it starts.

Human beings equally have a habit of doing the same thing over and over again, starting out optimistic and then discovering it's difficult to sustain the emotional tone that things begin with. I need to keep an eye on this, because doing the same thing over and over again doesn't always serve my life; every once in a while, I need to do something new, even if I don't want to. Perhaps, especially if I don't want to. As a friend of ours in Paris told us in January, we need to get out of our habits and challenge ourselves with something different. The virus has certainly done that for all of us; comfort zones are no longer safe places.

Unfortunately, this has brought out the paranoia in people; and it turns out human beings are extraordinarily paranoid. The number of utterly absurd conspiracy theories on the radar screen right now is staggering. The situation raises the question of whether or not human beings are actually, in fact, "intelligent": apparently it is quite possible we are by a very wide measure the very stupidest creatures on the planet, if not the entire universe. Yet it goes on expanding; and every time you think that the note has descended as far as it can go, a new, lower note sounds.

Viruses are ordinary things, a commonplace part of our physiological and immunological landscape; they exist everywhere, in every creature, and play important roles in the biosphere in every known ecosystem. Yet the destructive imagination of human beings has turned them into special things that belong to assorted countries and political groups and are, in various versions of the conspiracy theories circulating, in one insidious way or another under the direct or indirect control of human beings.

This is where the matter gets interesting, because in the end, it's all about mankind and our collective hubris. We are, it seems, pathologically unable to admit that we're not in control of everything. No matter what happens, it's always the fault of some other ethnic or political group.

We find out we're not in control; and we become enraged. It turns out that conspiracy theories are nothing more than emotional immaturity, naked on parade.

Blame always carries a subtle subtext that the humans are in control. Of course this is absolutely delusional; humans are definitely not in control anything, most especially themselves. As Tolstoy so tellingly noted in War and Peace, human beings, especially the "important" ones, always cast themselves in the rules of decision makers, leaders, and controllers, unable to see that every single one of us is being carried forward by tides so vast it is impossible that any of us could actually have the least control of them.

We're in complex and serial denial about our relationship with nature. That's what it comes down to. We can't accept the fact that nature is larger than us and does, in the big picture, whatever it wants to with us.

We're born and we die. We don't have control over that.

Omygah. Let's blame someone for it.

If I'm not in control —and I think that current events have illustrated quite conclusively that I'm not –then what is my role? What is possible for me?

It turns out I have the potential to be responsible for myself. That begins with my inward action. I'd like to try and get through the day being responsible, showing an intelligent and compassionate attitude towards others. It's certain that I'm going to lose touch with that thread of intention during the day; but I need to keep coming back to it.

The question is, how to remain in contact with my inward intention. I need to study it carefully, know where it begins and what it consists of. If there's any intelligence at all in me as a human being, it starts here.

In order to study this more carefully, throughout the day, it's helpful to become still inside for a moment. To stop and to sense myself. If I make this the only clear aim I have for the day, already, it's a huge thing.

To only have one aim: to be still for a moment and to sense. Nothing else. Not THINK about being still and sensing. Just be still and sense, without thinking.

Pause in the midst.

Let thought become stillness and sensation.

One of the interesting exercises that Gurdjieff gave his students was to intentionally intone the words “I am” within themselves during the course of the day. There are a wide variety of versions of this exercise.

However, in my many years studying Gurdjieff's ideas, I've never heard anyone rearrange this exercise in a practical way that can turn it into a question, rather than an affirmation. This is surprising, considering that the entire form of the Gurdjieff work is to ask questions, sometimes as habitually as the cardinal sings its note. The irony is self evident; and perhaps lost on those who engage in it.

Using Gurdjieff's idea as a question requires that we reverse the syllables and do something new for a change. Instead of going through the day saying, “I am,” one might instead ask oneself, in a new way:

Am I?

I don't know if I am—and perhaps this defines my lifelong resistance to the exercise. “Am I?” seems to be a more useful formulation to me.

Instead of insisting on something I don't fully understand, it invites me to participate in an exploration of it.

Go. and sense, and be well.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.