A struggle with my own patterns and those of Gurdjieff’s Dances epitomized my work during the recent ten-day International Movements Retreat at Claymont.
My aim entering the retreat was to allow my body to learn the movements and to minimize thinking. However, there came a point, several days in, when I realized my head needed to be involved or I’d be stuck in a familiar Do, Re, Me pattern of not learning the dances for myself.
The feeling of responsibility towards the movements felt like the first interval in my personal enneagram of the retreat. I too readily leave learning the movement to others, even when I am in the front row. The sense of responsibility was the boost I needed to get to Fa.
Personal Patterns
Of course, my habitual patterns and work are tied together by how I am, so it gets complicated.
Even recognizing my responsibility couldn’t change me. Some patterns are so deep I am not aware of them until their manifestation irritates someone else and they let me know it. This happened a couple days later and left me in a tailspin of self-doubt and justification. I even contemplated leaving the retreat. I felt lost in the Harnel Aoot between Fa and Sol. However, we worked our way through the difficulty and something shifted. I had arrived at La.
The Tableau
A couple days later, during an uncomplicated movement that creates a moving tableau, I was doing a particular gesture. Looking up while bobbing gently with the music, my hands were relaxed downwards from the wrists as my arms moved from side to side.
Gurdjieff’s phrase, “pouring from empty into void” came to me as I moved my arms. My feelings, already tender from the recent encounter, saw the reality of how my patterns repeat over and over. It hit home and tears spilled out as this gesture evoked the pouring from empty into void.
I was in danger of sobbing uncontrollably and interrupting the class. Then I remembered that emotion too, can be food for my being if I incorporate the energy. Continuing the gesture, I sensed my right leg strongly and directed my emotion into the physical sensation of the leg, where it blended.
Still feeling a sense of futility, I moved into the next gesture. Holding my left arm at an angle like taking an oath, with my right hand on my heart, my legs moved as if purposefully stepping onwards.
A legominism, which is Grudjieff’s word for hidden meaning, came to me.
Yes, I keep repeating the same patterns. But I’m beginning to see myself because I want to. What counts is staying on the path, even when all I can do is continue trudging along. I felt hope in that. This realization seemed the bridge between the final Si-Do interval of my retreat enneagram.
The final gesture in the tableau was oriented downwards, but my head was again turned upwards, this time towards the light.