What does Gurdjieff and the 4th Way have to offer when it comes to the feeling center?
Gurdjieff presented the idea that, “Man is a three-brained being.” That each of our centers— moving, thinking and feeling, have their own intelligence. The problem is, we don’t recognize the truth of this. We don’t allow our centers to function in the way they work best for us.
Last week’s blog touched on the thinking center.
But what about emotions? Ever since my year with Mr. Bennett at Sherborne House, I have made a distinction between emotions and feelings. I see emotions as reactive (both positive and negative) and feelings as objective. For me, feeling has the taste of something finer, higher, beyond ordinary like and dislike.
My familial and cultural proclivity is to ignore feelings, tamp-down emotions. I was far into adulthood before recognizing that a quiet feeling is still a feeling.
Gurdjieff’s teaching is often accused of ignoring emotional work. Perhaps that is because Gurdjieff recognizes emotional reactions as a form of “sleep.” I can feel happy that my grandchild is coming to visit, but when he is with me, do I enter into his sphere of experience and share that moment with him? Or am I thinking about how to distract him so I can start breakfast? I’m happy as long as it’s about me. Entering into a non-reactive feeling state requires a finer energy that is not always available to me.
Just this past week, I listened to a 1973 recording of Mr. Bennett speaking to newcomers. When asked what methods he was using at Sherborne House, in particular about his past work with Bapak Subud, I was struck by his answer. The central exercise of Bapak Subud’s teaching is the Latihan, in which one comes “under the action of the Great Life Force for the purpose of releasing blocks in oneself.” Mr. B said that he eventually saw that this exercise was “powerful and effective” for some, but not necessary for all. What really brought him back to Gurdjieff’s teaching was the realization that Subud’s Latihan experience “could not produce the required results for transformation by itself alone.”
Bennett also mentioned that he had found “other methods more appropriate to Gurdjieff’s intent.” Those methods he incorporated into the Basic Courses at Sherborne House. I know of two specific exercises that fit that description and open one to work with negative emotions on the one hand and objective positive feelings on the other.
Working to transform my habitual negative reactions, I open my inner space and allow room for finer positive feelings. This in turn opens me to listening for and responding to what I am here to do. Not my will, but Thy Will. It’s a vibration, a resonance. A dance.
When I am attuned, I can respond.
Well said Roberta. It was/is a part of the work I needed desperately and not much was given, to my understanding at the time, to emotions and emotional center. I have never been the smartest person in a room and the intellectual presentation of the work never appealed to me. I did learn a practical way to work which paid dividends. But reading Ospensky and his writings on negative emotions transformed it all into what is now a working knowledge of what is needed. Feeling is another level and came to me very late. It is what guided my decision to take a course and the last to come back around in the end.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Sam. It’s encouraging that we can still work with the tools that we were given, once we let go of “should” and find our own way in.
One thing I know for certain, the joy emanating from you in that beautiful picture with your grandchild is golden. Thank you for sharing : )