I feel like I’m walking the line, and a thin one at that, between drowning in negativity and sending positive energy out to the future.
Part of me hopes the negativity I get caught up in is partisan politics, not our democracy being hijacked and turned into a Fascist regime. That I need to work on transforming my negative imaginings. Part of me worries that I’m a coward for not protesting verbally and visibly.
And if what’s going on politically weren’t enough, what about the impending environmental disaster no one wants to talk about?
Which is it? Negative imagination or dangerous reality?
Inner Balance
Either way, what the F am I supposed to do in terms of the Gurdjieff work which is where I find myself walking the line. Literally—inside myself. I’m either reacting to the news creating loops in my head OR taking a breath to blend finer energies with the negative thought to transform it. Or casting a higher feeling such as Hope, Faith, and Love, into the future like a lifebuoy. When I am successful in pursuing this work with negative emotions, it acts like one of those balancing poles tightrope walkers use.
Where I get into trouble is in wondering if this is enough. Is walking the line to stay balanced just serving myself? Is this a choice between inner work vs external action? Should I be doing both or concentrating on the inner as more important? Yet I fear I am a coward for not speaking out.
Weighing the Choices
And then I reflect on Gurdjieff’s history. He left Russia with his students (should I be fleeing the USA?) He then setup his school in Constantinople but left when the situation got hot there. In the end, he was forced to stay and weather WWII in Paris. But it’s also possible Paris didn’t burn (basically the only major Western European city not to) because of the positive energy he and his group were producing.
In the end, as always, I have to look at where I am in myself and what is available to me in terms of my own work. Over the years, I’ve cultivated an awareness of when I feel like I am walking the line. It translates as being in the right place at the right time. The trick is to be present to recognizing being on track or off balance. The only thing that seems to get me back on track is finding some tangible way to reengage with inner work. And that can manifest both internally and externally on this tightrope path we call life.
Hi Roberta, this is so similar to how I have been feeling. I had the thought recently that half the time I have the voices of Ezra Klein and Heather Cox Richardson and other bloggers and such, in my head and the other half I have Jerry’s voice as well as JGB’s voice and others. Kind of schizophrenic.
With Jerry we have started reading (rereading for many) In Search of the Miraculous. At the beginning Ouspensky’s reflects on conditions in Moscow at the time. In hindsight, things turned out worse than he probably knew then, and I certainly hope, worse than where we’re headed. However, one is struck with how he doesn’t lose focus of what is important in his search, he doesn’t get distracted. My thought is that he is pointing the way (a way) for us now.
Hi Marian,
I think you hit it. One of my realizations as I struggle with this is that the “balance pole” Gurdjieff (and Ouspensky) had as he walked and led his students through those times was the tenacious way in which he kept working towards his aim. That it was his Aim that kept him balanced and his feet walking that fine line.