STOP….In the Name of Love
STOP….In the Name of Love
One of the tools George Gurdjieff used to create the third state in his students was his ‘Stop’ exercise. Students would be engaged in various activities, and unannounced and without warning Gurdjieff would say “STOP”. At that point everyone who was within earshot had to immediately stop whatever activity they were engaged in, and hold their posture like living statues, until Gurdjieff released the exercise. Gurdjieff’s practice became the foundation of exercises in our school. You’ve seen them posted each week on this page.
As you probably already know one of the main purposes of an exercise is to interrupt an unconscious momentum. Many exercises focus on interrupting mechanical moving center habits and momentums. The moving center is the most visible of the four lower centers and occupies considerable space. We have an exercise to keep our feet flat on the floor while dining or at a meeting. Another, when closing doors to use the door-handle, rather than another part of our anatomy, such as the foot, elbow, knee, and yet another to use both knife and fork during mealtimes.
For many years, the Teacher gave the exercise to not eat the first bite of our food. It was an interruption for both the moving and instinctive centers. Whether it was a snack or full meal, the first bite was set aside. While we worked with this exercise, many students, when they sat down to dine with friends or family would offer their first bite to whomever was sitting beside them. This created many moments of light-hearted presence, especially at formal dining events with the Teacher when, perhaps we were not so familiar with the student sitting next us, we would share with them a morsel of food.
More interesting though is that after a decade or so working with this exercise, the Teacher recently rescinded it. His aim was to interrupt a moving-instinctive momentum, but like all ‘alarm clocks’, as Gurdjieff called exercises, it had become habitual and had lost the ability of interrupting mechanical habits. What is more curious is, at least for the next few months before the memory of the exercise fades, not working with this long-standing practice also brings presence to the beginning of a meal.
There are two other advantages that exercises provide. One is due to the interruption of an unconscious habit, it allows observation of the mechanics that perpetuate it. The other advantage, and probably the most valuable, is interrupting mechanical behaviour, in any, or all of the four lower centers, allows self-remembering to emerge.
One difference between Gurdjieff's exercises and those that the Teacher has developed is, the Teacher’s exercises are inconspicuous. Which is why the title of this post is ‘Stop….in the Name of Love’, because we know, don’t we, that the word ‘love’ means presence - inconspicuous and wordless.
Annunciation Triptych detail (c. 1434) Rogier van der Weyden
Musée du Louvre, Paris, France
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