Notes from Nov. 30

 

Personal notes, Nov. 30 2020

The intellectual mind is perpetually locked into a self-inflected state of reasoning.

It can’t help but refer to itself. This is its natural tendency. It is furthermore constructed in order to do this.

Unless and until a counterweight is developed in the mind of sensation— and, afterwards, in the mind of feeling — nothing else can be done.

Each of these minds also has its natural tendency, its inherency, and hence its limitation. But the limitations of a mind without words are fundamentally different than the limitation of a mind that has them. These minds all need one another, because ultimately it turns out that a mind with words is indispensable for external relationship; and the development of all three minds depends to a large extent upon that factor.

Yet the intellectual mind serves as the thread that connects this; it’s not of itself the center of gravity of Being. That center of gravity rests first in sensation; this is that which knows that I am. It rests second in feeling, which knows that I care; and only then, if it is firmly grounded in these two principles, being and caring, does it effectively express itself in the medium of intelligence and meaning. 

Intelligence and the consequent development of meaning without these two grounding factors becomes what Gurdjieff would have called psychopathy. 

These are technical matters which won’t be of help unless one understands the permanent nature of sensation. One must begin there in order to conduct this investigation effectively. And when one begins there, one begins, essentially, in nothingness, in the fundamental field of vibration that receives. Only by beginning in nothingness and receiving is the fundamental field of feeling stimulated. 

I’ve been pondering this question this morning because there is a sense of the end of things, and an understanding that feeling needs to come to the highest state of its own intelligence in confronting that inevitable fact. Here one brushes up against the reason that the intellectual faculty of each center is essential for its development; and that while each center, like the whole Being, needs to be grounded first in its sensation of itself and second in its feeling of itself, they all need to develop into the highest possible state of intelligence, which Gurdjieff would have called the objective intelligence, in order to grasp the essential nature of one’s Being and oneself. 

Paradoxically, the objective intelligence of Being does not rest within one’s self; it's manifest from a higher place and a state of grace. That's a subject for long discussion.

Pondering this, one sees that a certain form of wisdom must develop not just in the mind, but also in the sensation and the feeling. That wisdom is an awareness not of grand expansions, but of tightly constrained limitations. It is within the tight constraints of those limitations that Being must dwell; and it is not given a choice in this matter. It's as tightly constrained as the place to which devils are banished. 

All aspiration, in a certain sense, consists of fantasies about exceeding these limitations; yet we'll not exceed the limitations, any more than we'll avoid the inevitable consequences of our own mortality. 

We are within the limitations; and this is the truth we must absorb.

In this context, it becomes essential to see fantasy for what it is. One can't eliminate it; and one must have it, because it is a form of play for the intelligence. The intelligence, if it's deprived of play, will quickly sour in one way or another. Intelligence is a child of Being; and like any other child, it needs to be given toys to play with in order to keep it occupied. This, while the adults of Being settle down to the real job, the real work, of making a serious effort.

Serious effort always begins from and remains within the limitations. The limitations help both to create and define one’s nothingness. 

Nothingness and the sense of thereof is actually a support for the emotional center and the development of feeling. It's only when it's contemplated as a property of the self and a thing to be owned that it becomes damaging. One could have a long discussion about the way that depression emerges from this self-inflection of nothingness. Self-inflection of nothingness is no more than an effort to retain somethingness in the face of the inevitability of death.

I’ve been reading Meister Eckhart’s sermon 89 over the past week. This is a long and complex sermon that has many important thoughts related to the above questions, although the relationships may not reveal themselves easily. 

It's the taste of material like this that needs to be rolled over on the tongue of one's spiritual being, again and again, in order to get a better sense of where we are and why our suffering is necessary.

May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.