Relaxation

Reiki is a wonderful tool to help trigger a relaxed state of oneself. Receiving a Reiki session can bring one to a deep state of relaxation. This is a comment I have often heard from people receiving Reiki for the first time as well as with people already acquainted with this practice. In itself it is very good, relaxation being a “luxury” for most of the people nowadays, plagued with the cares, anxieties and stresses of their own lives. Unfortunatly, this state of relaxation is generally of a short duration and gets dissolved rapidly in the usual stress of one’s life. There are several reasons for this, one being the state of identification one is constantly in about one’s life and all the cares and anxieties that go with it. Another reason is that this state of relaxation has been induced from the “outside” : one laid down on a table and let the Reiki practitioner did the session. So apart from the desire to get rid of tension that led one to request a session, the relaxed state didn’t involve any conscious act to be brought about; it “happened”.

In the system developed by Gurdjieff to bring one to self-knowledge, a great emphasis was put on relaxation, conscious relaxation. It is reported by Maurice Nicoll that Gurdjieff said that the essence of his teaching was contained in “relaxation and self-remembering”. Gurdjieff was pointing to the state of tension in wich we live our lives and gave the advice to his pupils to get the awareness of this fact by realizing how our body bears so much unnecessary tensions even in the act of just picking something light on the floor. And it even goes further than that : just sitting on a chair, we still are in a state of tension.

If you wish to have a glimpse about this, right now as you read, just try to turn your attention on yourself and especially on your body. Try to feel, or to be more precise, to sense your body in a general way : the way you are sitting. How do you feel ? How is your neck ? Your shoulders ? Your belly ? The arm you use to move the mouse of your computer ? How is your face ? How is your breathing ? Do you feel relaxed ? If you have sincerity towards yourself, and you are not someone that is used to practice conscious relaxation, the answer is probably negative. You probably caught your body in more or less this state : stiff neck and shoulders, contracted belly, tense face (clenched jaws, wrinkled brow), short breath.

Now, as you keep reading, you can try to relax in a conscious manner. Bring your attention to your face...and then bring it to your eyes...just sense the muscles of your eyes...and relax them consciously (here of course, not to the point they get closed, so you can keep on reading !)...then slowly move down your attention under your eyes...around your nose...and let it expand to your chicks...and relax them...consciously...let your attention spread to the other parts of your face...your lips...your chin....until it encompasses your whole face...then move to your forehead...feel the tension there...and relax it...consciously...then spread your attention to include your entire head...be aware of your head...and the tensions going on it...and relax them...consciously...then move down to your neck...the back of your neck...then the front of your neck...and let them relax...now move to your shoulders...relax them... bring down the attention to the arms...relax them...consciously...try to feel the relaxing effect combine with the outgoing breath...as you do this, can you notice a flow of energy spreading into your body ?...now bring your attention to your upper body, the torsoe and the back...and let them relax in the outgoing breath...do this for a moment : just try to feel your entire body...and let it relax in the outgoing breath, natural breath...do it for a moment...how do you feel now ? Can you feel a flow of force in your body ? Do you feel different ? More alert but at ease. Look around you at your direct environment. Isn’t everything more clear, more vivid ? And at the same time, isn’t there a stronger sense of presence and attention ? If this is so, you have a slight taste of what Gurdjieff called self-remembering. Of course, this is not going to last and you’ll be brought back to your usual state of tension without even realizing it. But you have a clue of what conscious relaxation means.

If you can practice everyday an exercise of this type, say for 10 minutes, you’ll be amazed to see what changes it can bring to your life. Gradually you’ll be able to evoke this state of relaxation in the midst of your activities and so take some distance with the tensions provoked by the events that you encounter everyday; events that invariably drain force out of you and leave you in a state of negative emotions. In short you will begin to understand what drags you down in your life and brings identification -- I still have to remind that it’s not going to happen in a few days (we’re so used today to have what we want by pushing a button). You will begin to grasp that another state of yourself is possible, even in the midst of your daily life, without having to engage into a spiritual retreat (short or long) or looking for the “secret practice” or the “ultimate mantra” or whatever of the sort.

This way of working on oneself has been beautifully summed up by Machik Labdron, a tibetan yogini from the 12th century, in these words : “Relax, be aware.”

Three-brained being, multiple 'I's

It became a “standard” to present the Reiki teaching together with an introduction to the chakras. For those of you who are not familiar with this, the chakras are described as wheels of energy forming the parts of the subtle energetic anatomy of man. Gurdjieff, when he started to introduce his teaching at the beginning of the 20th century, presented a model of the inner functioning of man that has a certain resemblance with the indian chakras system but which is actually different. One element that is similar to the chakras system is the number of centers which in both cases is 7. So far, the comparison stops here. To me, Gurdjieff model is more coherent and insightful to bring an understanding of the way man functions. It is truly a map that can help one understands oneself.

As was said, the system of centers presented by Gurdjieff is sevenfold. In this post, I will mainly focus on presenting three of them, which is more or less what Gurdjieff did at first with great ingeniosity, for it connects to other “ideas” that composed the whole teaching. “Ideas” that I intend to touch few words on in future posts.

The three centers I want to talk about can be acknowledged by anyone. They are what compose the fabric of our inner life : thinking, feeling, moving/sensing. These three elements are the means through wich we live our life. We have thoughts, emotions, sensations and movements. Unfortunately, these elements are not working in harmony towards one another and that is one of the reason why we bear much suffering and contradictions within. They actually run by themselves, in a mechanical way, by reacting to the influences of the outside world. It can be said these three centers have “minds” of their own. They have “independent” impulsions, reactions, towards the events that we have to face in the course of our life. Say we decided in our thinking, to wake up earlier the next morning to be able to have a longer meditation session, thoughts that brought with them a slight emotional response colored with enthusiasm, then the next morning when the alarm rings, we definetly don’t want to wake up and actually don’t. What happened ? Well, another “mind” took control of the situation that is not the same mind that decided the night before to wake up. This example shows how divided we are innerly without really being aware of it. We actually have multiple ‘I’s living inside of us due to the lack of harmony between the three fundamental aspects of our being. Those ‘I’s have their origin in one or the other center and combine or use the other two. And this without any form of consciousness or attention but mainly through mechanical reaction. One doesn’t acts, but reacts. And what reacts is one of the multiple ‘I’s that developed itself through one’s life and the situations one has had to go through. The only way to “see” this for oneself, so that it doesn’t remain just an information that we agree with, is self-observation over a long period of time. One has to recognize by “taste” how one or the other of these centers is at work in a given situation. That is, throughout one’s daily life. This is the object of work on oneself : first, acknowledging our inner divisions (the mess we call our inner life), then working towards unification.

This three-brained being model is really worth putting one’s effort to understand. Enounced by Gurdjieff almost a hundred years back, it matches today the discoveries made by science in the neurobiological field over the last fifty years with its three-fold brain description : reptilian brain, limbic brain and neo-cortex that developed in the course of evolution. And in the practical spiritual field, the alignment or unification of these three “brains” is probably the only way to reveal the most elusive, mysterious and quite not understood part of our being : Consciousness.

Resources :
Man - A Three-brained Being. Keith A. Buzzell. Fifth Press
Becoming Conscious With G.I Gurdjieff. Solange Claustres. Eureka Editions

Self-remembering (bis)

Not pretending myself being an authority in the work, I wanted to add the voice of one of it to what I said about self-remembering in my previous post. Though it is short, this excerpt bears insightful indications about the practice of self-remembering.

“People keep on thinking about self-remembering, but they do not do it. It is necessary to stop the chain of automatic associations every day. This can be done by inner stop -- that is, stopping everything, all thoughts, etc. This is the beginning of self-remembering. But people, as I say, keep on thinking of remembering themselves, and never do. To remember oneself one must stop everything and lift oneself into total silence and total loss of all ordinary sense of oneself. This takes a little time. But most people cannot spare even one minute to do it because they are slaves to their machines, so they are bound and glued to the ceaseless and useless flow of mechanical thoughts, negative emotions, personal accounts, etc. It is a great pity, especially today, when the external hypnotism of life is so strong that people even think such toughts as that the war will make everything better, that people do not give themselves the first conscious shock. Help can reach a man only as the result of this shock. It cannot reach him in the flood of his personal thoughts and troubles and emotions. Help, wich comes from the direction of higher centers, cannot reach the Second State of Consciousness ; it can only reach as far as the Third State of Consciousness. Today, when so many people are hypnotized by war, there is more force available in the world than at other times for those who seek it, if they can only touch it. But it cannot be touched by associated thinking wich only keeps a man on the same level as if he were saying again and again : “I must jump”, not realizing that if he wishes to reach a higher level he must really jump. It is no use saying : “I must remember myself.” You must actually remember yourselves.”

Maurice Nicoll. Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (p.90)

Self-remembering

Self-remembering is undoubtedly the “icing on the cake” of what Gurdjieff brought to the world in his incredible teaching. All that have been said and written by Gurdjieff or Ouspensky or other exponents of this teaching find its meaning and resolving in this one and only point : self-remembering. Without it all the theoritical aspect of the work (a term used to call this teaching) can easily remain on the level of the intellect only, and in this case will fail to bring one to a deeper understanding of oneself and one’s relationship to the world. I would even go further in saying that it can bring the opposite of the intention behind all this fabulous work that certainly demanded tremendous efforts from those who transmitted it. The opposite effect I have in mind is the inflating of one’s ego with all its pride and vanity instead of a diminution and an eventual eradication of these undesirable properties of oneself.
So what is self-remembering ? There are many aspects in the work that can refer to the term itself and also many ways of self-remembering but ultimately it points towards our own deeper nature, what or who really are. And the term itself implies that we forgot something that we have to remember; in this case : our own inner self. This is the state we leave in and that Gurdjieff calls “sleep”. Self-remembering can help us to awaken from this “sleep” we live in and moreover self-remembering is the state of awakening itself. It can be said that there is the practice of self-remembering and the state it leads to, the practice of self-remembering being tied to the exercise of self-observation. Genuine and persistent self-observation throughout one’s whole daily life will inevitably brings one to a first taste of the state of self-remembering. An awakening. One will be “puzzled” if I may say so. Awakening brings a total shift in the perspective in which one understand and view oneself and so in some ways we can say that one will inevitably get “puzzled” by this reversal in perspective and find oneself a bit like the Hanged Man of the Tarot. This is self-remembering. This is also connected to what Gurdjieff called “seeing one’s own nothingness”. Here I find meaningful connections with some teaching of the Ch’an tradition that, in how I understand self-remembering, can be very valuable to study. Some texts from the old chinese Ch’an masters are really amazing evocations of the state of self-remembering and also more recent ones. I think particularly of Xu Yun, and the verbatim of his talks called “The prerequisites of Ch’an training”. In this text he described at some point in a very simple and insightful way the practice of the hua tou which is a form of questioning one have with oneself. And he explains that this questioning, which is based on asking oneself when one is doing something “who” is doing this something, should gradually evoke a kind of doubt about oneself; and this doubt needs to be cultivated if one wants to find what one really is. This, I feel, is really evocative of self-remembering, which brings a feeling of uncertainty or more a form of questioning, but that in this case wouldn’t be coming from the intellect and covered with words but a direct feeling or cognition, of uncertainty. It’s not like panic what I try to convey, even if in panic itself, the state of self-remembering could happen. But true, like the chinese master said, from this point you can really get uplifted and have a glimpse of your true self, Real 'I'. Again, I recall, like Gurdjieff and even Ch’an masters did, it takes some time before getting to that and it takes a lifetime to mature. But they also say that it is our birthright.