What does Gurdjieff mean when he talks about becoming a “real” human being? One of Bennett’s goals for students at Sherborne House was to learn how to work at becoming such a person. My wish to meet “real people” and be “real” myself drew me in part to Bennett’s ten-month residential course at Sherborne.
But the road to becoming “real” is fraught with detours, side-trails, obstacles, and uncertainty. I find I am still very much myself—far from real. Sometimes I wonder if anything has changed at all. And then extraordinary moments like the one I wrote about last week happen. It’s those experiences that give me hope, that show me something has shifted in myself.
Lately I have been working on the exercise that George Addie showed Joseph Azize, called Clear Impressions. It seems like a basic exercise. Yet I know from experience one can delve deep into the most rudimentary practice. Just such an unexpected deep dive happened this morning, working with the exercise.
Essentially, the exercise uses divided attention to take-in external, then internal, impressions. With one’s mental energy caught-up in directing awareness inside the body, the other part of attention can notice external or internal impressions without “thinking” about them. The third part of the exercise involves opening oneself to engaging with the day ahead.
Being Human
What happened for me, was a sense of participation. An awareness that all of myself—physically, emotionally, and intentionally could participate in, and with, Life. The life outside of myself and the life inside of myself. The engagement wasn’t from a sense that now I am real, but from a sense that in order to be real, I need to participate. Which doesn’t change who or what I am, just how I interact. It’s this interaction with life from the whole of myself that fills me out as a Human Being—allows me to be a Real Human Being.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Roberta. Grateful!