The Struggle Between Yes and No

The Struggle Between Yes and No

From our friend, Charles R.

The effort to introduce and prolong presence creates a struggle between ‘yes’, the desire, or first force, to engage consciousness, and the ‘no’ of mechanical habits of the lower self that prevents self-remembering.

Different levels of friction or perhaps we can say different degrees of pain, are a part of life on Planet Earth. We spend a good portion of our lives figuring out ways to lessen, or avoid altogether, the pain and difficulties that life thrusts upon us. Take a walk down the pain medication isle in any supermarket or pharmacy store and there’s plethora of pain-killers for almost every part of the human anatomy that’s subject to even the tiniest itch or irritation.

As we traverse through our lives, we encounter accidents, from spilled tea to broken bones. We also attract unexpected difficulties as part of the process of living our lives. Unrequited love, disputes with family or friends, unforgiving managers, dull employees, and so on.

There are denying forces in relation to an aim that we work to overcome - Henry’s post about creating a pond is an excellent example. The personal and professional aims and goals we set are all subject to the law of octaves. Intervals occur and we either bridge the intervals with an effort, or the octave descends in one way or another.

Q. What is the definition of a test?

A. An unexpected difficulty.

Q. What is the definition of a bravery.

A. A man looking for a test.

From ‘The Tales of Mulllah Nassrudin’

In a school each difficulty may be seen as a test. Not a test that we pass or fail, rather a test of being like gold applied to a touchstone. In a school, as well as the friction that we attract in our everyday lives, more effort than we usually make is needed to introduce and prolong presence. While we may have been used to grumbling and complaining, now we have taken upon ourselves the added effort of not expressing negative emotions, refraining from complaining or justifying our own or others’ weaknesses. As well as maintaining our existence before entering a school, third line efforts, that is, an effort for the school without a personal agenda is necessary to create friction. And just when it seem to become too much, the advice, more often than not we receive is to choose self-remembering over self-pity - even though we may be in pitiable circumstances.

Peter Ouspensky as much said that for a man to awaken, if difficulties did not exist, they would have to be invented. Without friction there’s no chance of escape from the lower self to higher centers. Friction is the fuel used for combustion into higher states.

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Image: Detail from the Madonna del Soccorso, Niccol Alunno, Galleria Colonna, Rome, 1471