Going Home

"If you think you're so enlightened go spend a week with your parents." ~ Ram Dass

Gurdjieff taught that ordinary man's thoughts are automatic thoughts [tapes] which  we play over and over in our minds. Eckhardt Tolle calls ordinary thinking "the voices in our heads" and refers to  negative automatic thoughts as "the pain body" or "the story of me". This inner chatter in our brains, these inner stories we tell ourselves automatically, which we call 'thinking',  are triggered by anything and everything. Like leaves on the wind they are blown this way and that and they are constantly running - often without our even noticing what we are thinking.  They are, for the most part, negative thoughts. Whatever you call them, they are habitual, automatic, illusory reactions to the external stimuli in our every day lives, which trigger them. When my mother went off on a tear, nagging the same old tune, we children used to look at each other and joke: "Who put the nickle in?" [the jukebox - Yes, it only cost a nickle at one time long, long ago and far, far away.] We knew it was an habitual rant triggered by something someone had just said or done, or some situation she found herself in. For instance,  whenever we were preparing to visit family she became ridiculously angry. Often we ended up not going at all because she'd worked herself into such a state she had to lie down to rest. Later, when I was in my twenties, I noticed that I did  the same thing.

These ideas about automatic thoughts, behavior and emotions beg the questions: What is real? What are real thinking, feelings and actions? If these thoughts are not me, then who am I? One can begin to find answers through self study. Jesus exhorted: "Know thyself." Why did he say that? What is self study? Does one have to become a priest, a monk, a nun or religious zealot to know oneself? No. One does not. In fact, I believe, as Gurdjieff taught, it is a work best practiced in life. In life, we are exposed to every possible opportunity to observe what we are, as we are at the ordinary level, and in life, we have every possible opportunity to practice countless exercises and methods for transcending the automatic somnambulistic state we usually live in. Today there are innumerable teachers, methods, and organizations that can support one's study. It is important to study with others who have been on a real journey of self study for some time. One can only get so far on one's own.

Two of the most important lessons first taught in real systems of self study are practical lessons, which teach one how to become aware of the sensation of the organic body and how to 'see'  the automatic thoughts. These lessons are taught through instruction in meditation and specific exercises specially designed to help us see these automatic processes in ourselves clearly. Very quickly, serious students are able to verify  that indeed, they are on automatic pilot and living lives in a 'waking' sleep -  which by the way,  makes for very good sheep,  ripe for shearing.  The shearing comes in many guises and forms. One just has to turn the TV sound off and watch the pictures on the screen for about an hour to get an idea of how pervasive this shearing is today. Media, a wonderful technology in and of itself, is used to keep you asleep, hypnotized and enslaved.

During family reunions, each of us played our specific role as laid out from birth - each innocent lambie pie was all primed and ready for the 'shearing' at each event. For my part, after I married and became a mother myself, the entire holiday season automatically kicked off in my mind way before the first gathering in November for Thanksgiving. The internal litany began almost imperceptibly like clockwork at the end of September. By the first of October the internal 'accounts books' [see Nicoll on keeping accounts in Commentaries - Book I] were wide open and out in front of me every day until early March, which is,  as you may notice, way after all the winter holidays are over... and no sooner were they put aside for a short break - out they would come again for Easter. What an amazing internal timekeeper!

The  madness  would begin with mental lists of all the relatives who would be attending gatherings, followed by anxiety and stress about what to cook, what to wear, how I looked, how the house looked, what had I and my husband and son accomplished during the year to make my parents proud since we'd seen them last, and on and on. By 1 November, the associative account keeping was well under way. Each name on the list triggered another thought, which triggered another thought, which triggered another, which triggered another and on and on ad infinitum. By automatic association - grudges, resentments, and old wounds related to each person were  examined, aired out mentally, verbally and emotionally and added to - along with holiday decorations and linens. Last minute Christmas gift buying was  'dealt' with - what a chore it always seemed to be - fraught with anxiety and the need to impress and please.  The lists of gifts that had to be gotten was always accompanied by stomach churning internal and external "litanies" of "why should I have to give anything to this one or that one who did this or that to me or to my son or husband" [who by now were shrugging their shoulders and wondering: "Who put the nickle in?"].  Before I met the Gurdjieff work and began real self study, I tried all the usual recommended methods, means and ways to "get a grip" and to be calmer when around my family. Meditation, breathing exercises, mind control, hypnosis, therapy, and tranquilizers did not help cure this terrible curse over which I had absolutely no power. Without fail, year after year, the automatic processes crippled me emotionally. Poisonous anxiety and negativity oozed through my cells and infected those close to me. I became a card carrying lunatic with a stone heart. There was no real me; I was just a nasty little bundle of angry impatience, resentment, and defensiveness -  a mess that people took for me when it appeared. I did not suffer alone - Everyone else in the family as well as masses of other people on the planet were (and unfortunately still are) in similar, ripe for the shearing, states. We all knew our "roles" and played them perfectly year after year. We were totally unaware that it was all habitual and automatic illusion. We believed that was reality and that was how it had to be. We believed it was real life. More unfortunately it perpetuated ancient rifts in our family, eventually estranging us from one another as adults - in some cases irreparably. Most of us are strangers to one another now I am sad to say.

After I met the work all of that began to change for me, and because it changed for me, it changed, to some extent, for my family. It didn't change immediately, but it did change. It changed because I changed; I learned how to be quiet inside and how to be more discerning and  compassionate. I learned how to sense when the automatic processes began and I learned how to transcend them. Negativity was traded for love, and understanding. I could remember that, above all else, I loved my family - even the ones who enjoyed stepping on my corns and pushed my buttons. I was not perfect but I did get so much better at it every year. "Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?" became my mantra. I used to (and still do) sing it silently when negativity tries to push in and take over. Sensing my body and breathing were the anchors used to keep my feet planted firmly on the ground.

This doesn't mean one must become a push-over or doormat. Mrs. Lois Bry once said: "Never fear to despise the odious." She was talking about something else at the time, but I found, as with many things that were said to me by the wonderful people I was fortunate to meet and study with in NY, it applied to a myriad of other situations and circumstances on many levels. 

We can go home in the surety that we can be free of the terrible effects habitual negativity. We can be open to love. We can be with our families from an internal place of peaceful intention and share this great  gift with our families and friends by simply Being in peace. We can "conduct [ourselves] justly and tolerantly toward the weaknesses of others" [and our selves] as Mr. Gurdjieff so wisely suggested. We can become remarkable men and women who are living breathing parts of the solution, not parts of the problem. 


Strive to Be Love, Be Happy, Strive to Be Peace

(Brought to you courtesy of Lalo's internal clock :-)*