Gurdjieff Dominican Group

HOME>>

JANUARY SEMINAR 2004 >>

THEME: NEGATIVITY

Small group: Benares

January Seminar 2004

Our small group worked on the theme of negativity. For the first three days we took, in addition to the task for the large group, an additional task related to negativity. Those efforts yielded a feast of observations. After that, we struggled - really struggled - to find a way to boil those observations down to a simple and useful exercise for the large group.

We finally realized that we had been looking at our difficulties - the things we were negative about - in entirely the wrong way. In life, difficulties are just difficulties. If we wish to work, difficulties are our food. If we had no problems, we would have to create some in order to work. So instead of being angry about our difficulties, or feeling sorry for ourselves, or whatever form our negativity takes, we should welcome them, find a way to work with them, and - ultimately - to be grateful for them.

We all agreed that Rumi talked about this better than any of us could:

------------

CHECKMATE

(Jelal al-Din Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi, Harper Collins Publishers)

Borrow the beloved’s eyes.

Look through them and you’ll see the beloved’s face

everywhere. No tiredness, no jaded boredom.

“I shall be your eye and your hand and your loving.”

Let that happen, and things

you have hated will become helpers.

A certain preacher always prays long and with enthusiasm

for thieves and muggers that attack people

on the street. “Let your mercy, O Lord,

cover their insolence.”

He doesn’t pray for the good,

but only for the blatantly cruel.

Why is this? his congregation lasts.

“Because they have done me such generous favors.

Every time I turn back toward the things they want,

I run into them, they beat me, and leave me nearly dead

in the road, and I understand, again, that what they want

is not what I want. They keep me on the spiritual path.

That’s why I honor them and pray for them.”

Those that make you return, for whatever reason, to God’s solitude, be grateful to them.

Worry about the others, who give you

delicious comforts that keep you from prayer.

Friends are enemies sometimes,

and enemies friends.

There is an animal called an ushghur, a porcupine.

If you hit it with a stick, it extends its quills

and gets bigger. The soul is a porcupine,

made strong by stick-beating.

So a prophet’s soul is especially afflicted,

because it has to become so powerful.

A hide is soaked in tanning liquor and becomes leather.

If the tanner did not rub in the acid,

the hide would get foul-smelling and rotten.

The soul is a newly skinned hide, bloody and gross.

Work on it with manual discipline,

and the bitter tanning acid of grief,

and you’ll become lovely, and very strong.

If you can’t do this work yourself, don’t worry.

You don’t even have to make a decision,

one way or another. The Friend, who knows

a lot more than you do, will bring difficulties,

and grief, and sickness,

as medicine, as happiness,

as the essence of the moment when you’re beaten,

when you hear Checkmate, and can finally say,

with Hallaj’s voice,

I trust you to kill me.

------------------

Exercise for the Day:

When the bell rings, collect yourself, using a few conscious breathes to relax if you need to. If you are feeling negative about something, choose that negativity to work with. Otherwise, choose something you are habitually negative about. Look for a way to use that negativity for your work.