Efficiency Kills Third Eye

Efficiency Kills Third Eye

After I awoke this morning, I laid in bed wondering about how to approach the subject of habits and tendencies. Thoughts about New Year’s resolutions came to mind and oftentimes in the past I would set aims to help me become aware of the sleep-inducing habits in each of the four lower centers: instinctive, moving, intellectual, and emotional centers. This morning was different.

Every grown-up … consists wholly of habits, although he is often unaware of it and even denies having any habits at all. All three centers are filled with habits and a man can never know himself until he has studied all his habits. — P.D. Ouspensky

I remembered a story told when Gurdjieff was teaching about how one center’s habit can have a corresponding effect on another center. Ouspensky relates Gurdjieff saying “… let us suppose that he is accustomed to smoking cigarettes while he is thinking—this is a moving habit. He decides to think in a new way. He begins to smoke a cigarette and thinks in the old way without noticing it. The habitual movement of lighting a cigarette has turned his thoughts round to the old tune.”

As I lay in bed, I thought to myself, what could I change to disconnect from my old way of thinking and bring in fresh awareness and ideas when I get up to write my post. To that end, I rolled out of bed and began with a “simple” moving centered aim to reach for things with my left hand. I began with a left-handed awkward grab for my slippers; slipped my left hand through the armhole of my robe first before my dominant right hand; and I let my left hand dominate and wrestle with tying the belt of my robe. I opened and closed the bathroom door; spooned coffee grounds into the filter; poured the cream and wiped the dishes dry reversing the habit of doing all these things with my right hand.

You have the new man, whether you are male or female. The new man is a conscious man; the old man is an unconscious man, so we try to stay away from his old unconscious habits. — The Teacher

If my left-handed experiment changed my old thinking into a more creative and intentional activity of new thought, I let you be the judge. What I lost in efficiency I gained in self-awareness, self-observation, and a nudge toward a higher state of consciousness. Each time my right hand tried to dominate, I was reminded that my aim to be more present while using my left hand was more important than the comfort of using the habits of my machine, ingrained in me over the course of 60+ years. What I know is that I have been more aware of myself and have had more presence while writing this post.

There is no greater habit to establish than being present, and it is a conscious habit. In our school, we are creating a permanent tendency to consciously evolve. — The Teacher

Throughout the process of this little essay, I have continued to use only my left hand to control the mouse: cutting and pasting, clicking and dragging, highlighting, scrolling, and right clicking. I could feel my right hand continually trying to figure out how to undermine my aim by using the keyboard arrow keys rather than the awkward movement of my left hand navigating the mouse. I encourage you to try this practice for a short period of time – a day might be too long. Being out of patterns – changing one small habit – brings me into a place of essence – a time when everything was new and a habit of efficiency had not yet put me to sleep.

Efficiency kills third eye. — The Teacher

Beginning with very small changes in habits based upon self-observation, is the first step to eventually struggling against the bigger obstacles: identification, imagination, and the non-expression of negative emotions. If I set an aim that is too large and unachievable, I can be sure that the lower self is behind the scenes casting its vote for failure and comfort – sleep rather than consciousness. Rainer Maria Rilke writes in his early journals about beginnings, “Begin what? I begin. I have already thus begun a thousand lives.”

Besides being a very good method for self-observation, the struggle against expressing unpleasant emotions has at the same time another significance. It is one of the few directions in which a man can change himself or his habits without creating other undesirable habits. Therefore self-observation and self-study must, from the first, be accompanied by the struggle against the expression of unpleasant emotions. — P.D. Ouspensky

The undesirable habits and energy leaks of expressing negativity, identification, and imagination (uncontrolled mind activity, such as daydreaming) are areas of essential Work; these must be studied, resisted, and undertaken at the outset because of their power to displace presence.

There is a huge tendency to lay aside presence for imagination. — The Teacher

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