Category Archives: Transcripts
Dying Before Death
I’ll tell you very honestly, even if it might sound pretentious, but for several weeks now, I’ve had the feeling that I can die…
Anger, a transformative force
When it’s a negative emotion, anger is clearly an identity trait. But it can be both. One can also be angry without creating separation;
Pretension, a core mecanism of identity
(to M.) Among the identity mechanisms on the list, is there one that particularly speaks to you?
Maybe pride, vanity.
Does arrogance speak to you as well?…
Humble and Free
(To L.) There is great inertia in you regarding all forms of verbal expression, writing, and communication. And it leads to inconsistencies when you write to me. For example, five weeks before the last meeting, you emailed me saying you probably wouldn’t come. How could you know, five weeks in advance, that you couldn’t come? This puzzles me and I don’t know what’s behind it…
Hypocrisy
What leads someone to be hypocritical, and how do you recognize hypocrisy?
If you have encountered this in your life, please share examples indicating what led you to act that way.
What leads to hypocrisy is self-interest, when someone wants to get something from someone else…
Impulse of the heart and self-interest
How can I improve my ability to respond to life according to the impulses of my heart, without being exploited by the personal interests of others?
To begin with, I have several questions:…
Good (healthy) conscience – Bad (unhealthy) conscience
I would like to delve deeper into the "good conscience and bad conscience."
This question surprised me at first because I didn’t see it on an existential level but rather on a moral level (and religions are full of edicts of good and bad conscience). Especially with the adjectives "good" and "bad," for me that implied a judgment and didn’t fit with an existential understanding …
Impatience
I would like to talk about the subject: patience-impatience-overpatience.
Impatience, I know it well. In front of the computer, when things don’t go as I want, it drives me crazy. On certain things, I amvery impatient. On the other hand with diets, I was overpatient…
Read more...Which thoughts to trash?
What thoughts need to be immediately thrown in the trash (or dismissed) when they arise?
Trash thoughts: all labels that are supposed to "define" a person, whether negative or positive. I replace them with an open and benevolent gaze…
The dynamics of Real life
How do you know that you are in the dynamic of Real life?
How do you know that you are not?
I know I’m in this dynamic when I feel an underlying sense of gratitude, for no apparent reason (like a continuous bass in a piece of music). In ‘response’, I’m sometimes given a fluidity, an ease in external events, resulting in joy and lightness, but this isn’t necessary to perceive this sound…
Time and intuition
How do you experience subjective time?
Does time seem shorter objectively than you thought, or longer? Or does the perception of time passing play no role?
The three brains
A human being has 3 centers (or brains): intellectual, physical/instinctive and emotional. In the ideal (permanent absence of identity mechanisms) each of the brains functions independently. One of the main features of identity is to create great confusion by switching from one to the other, and by allowing one of the brains to activate itself for something that can only be accomplished by another, creating a real cerebral hullabaloo…
Injustice
We haven’t talked about injustice yet, it’s one of the subjects we can go into here…
It’s played out in everyday life, with all the little injustices that we suffer and that we also make others suffer in our lives.
Sacrifice
What is sacrifice for you?
“Surrender.”
For me, sacrifice is mostly sacrificing unnecessary suffering.
To dare the unknown.
Anticipation
The subject we are going to discuss now is anticipation.
I can tell you a "secret": I’m not bored. In moments when nothing happens, my brain works in anticipation;
Listening and obedience 2
This morning, L., M. and I talked about a half-dead tree. L. mentioned the idea of cutting it down, but as this tree is at the neighbor’s, I said that we should not cut it down, but simply remove the ivy that is blocking it. And actually M. went to cut it down. M. I’d be interested to know what you heard, what you didn’t hear and why?
Read more...Listening and Obedience
I’d like to talk about listening. I’ve noticed that there are two listenings. Often, we think we’re listening, but in fact it’s the personality that listens without really listening, because at the same time we anticipate what we’re going to say to the other person; so we’re not in total listening.
I’ve often noticed that I say things to people, and I have the impression that it comes in through one ear and out through the other, because there’s often no follow-up. However, I have not observed any rejection of what I have asked for. With A. it happened to me several times, do you remember? I asked you to do something, and you didn’t do it.
Anger
Chats with Jeff Wises (1998)
We talked about vocation and essential value. When you follow the process as you practice it, do you discover your own purpose? Yes, that’s it. Can this purpose be put into words? Yes, it must be put into words. Then, when it unfolds over months and years, it can no longer be verbalized (too complex). …
Read more...Dialogues with Jeff Wises (1999)
How well did this process work for your past workshop participants? Have many people reached the state that they wanted to realize, or does it take a long time of practicing to do that?
To blame someone
How do you manage a situation in yourself where "blaming someone " emerges?
Recently I experienced an unpleasant situation with someone…
Shame, remorse
Shame/remorse (without guilt feeling) is a door to access the higher emotional center.
I consider it as important as the welcoming of necessary suffering and body consciousness…
Blind spots
Please share here your observations on shadow areas (or blind spots).
It seems to me that the exact vocabulary in French to translate "blind spot" is blind spot rather than shadow area.
Gratitude
I realized that we never really addressed the issue of gratitude, of what it is deeply.
Personal interest
What is personal interest?
Personal-interest does not take into account the context and consequences for others:…
To be in tune with oneself
How do you know you’re in tune with yourself?
How do you know you’re not?
When I am in tune with myself there is no doubt, no trace, I do not reverse my decision.
Love and intimate relationships
What is the difference between true love and false love in intimate relationships? More precisely, what is it like to be authentically in love with another person?
I feel true love as something of the nature of destiny…
Banality
Constraints
During our life we encounter all sorts of constraints and obstacles, minor and major ones. How to deal with them, how can they serve us in the context of work on ourselves?
These are things to be lived,…
The survivor
I think the moment has come to analyze/review what happened to you since you got to know the diagnostics that your liver is severely damaged. In chronological order,…
False steps to avoid when working on oneself.
In working on oneself, what are the missteps to avoid?
A pitfall that appears from time to time is the desire for permanence, the "once and for all,"
Simplicity
I would like to talk about simplicity. What are you inspired to say about simplicity in our work?
I’d say it’s removing all the excess.
And in what context?
Opportunities
I’d like to talk about seizing opportunities in the sense that it can remove a large package at once, whole sections of superfluous identity mecanisms.
How does one recognize such an opportunity?
Dark night of the soul
I would like to propose the subject "dark night of the soul." (Dreariness can be part of it).
I don’t know if it’s really what I’m experience now: at the moment I have the impression of feeling cut off from life, an impression of solitude and exile, where god seems to be so far away,…
The lack
N, do you have something to share?
The feeling of lack has always been an engine for looking for something, and I recently realized that I wanted to get rid of that feeling of lack. But I wonder if that’s correct, and I think it’s not.
Do you feel the lack physically?
Yes, and emotionally…
The Essence of the Teaching
What is this teaching for each of you?
This teaching leads to the total acceptance of life, to surrender to life. On this path, different tools are used, such as self-observation and the discovery of the mechanisms that trap ourselves. Body consciousness is a big piece, as well as welcoming useful suffering.
For me, it…
Courage
Let us talk about courage, it is an important aspect. Cowardice has already been mentioned as an aspect of identity. How is it necessary to have courage when following such a teaching? Trusting life, or an instructor, requires courage. A lot indeed!
It takes courage to not resist, to accept the necessary suffering, whatever it…
When commitment flickers
There are times when commitment weakens and that is when you have to be very careful. When you fall asleep, you don’t realize it, and if you don’t keep in the background the idea that you had committed yourself at one point, if you forget that too, then the forgetting becomes serious, sometimes even total…
Commitment
I’d like to talk about commitment. What does it mean for everyone here to be committed? And how did it happened for you: did it happen gradually, by decision, by intuition, is it a concretization of something?
For A., for example, this was not planned. As you said in your testimony: "I came to please…
Koan, definitions
What is a koan?
A proposition, ungraspable by the mind, that can propel the listener into nothingness.
A statement, often posed as a kind of riddle, that can only be answered by breaking through the conditioned mind.
The koan is ungraspable to binary logic, it speaks to intuitive knowledge. It is like a blade which…
Permanence versus Impermanence
(To N.) Do you manage to stay centered?
Not always.
And what happens when you’re not centered?
There are tensions and fears that arise.
What is the essential fear?
The essential fear is to be unloved, it seems to me.
What could I do to make you feel unloved?
For example, you could tell me…
Habits and Reassembly after waking up
This morning when I woke up, I called myself "good for nothing." I was not welcoming the necessary suffering, on the contrary I even added a little. It’s rare now that I tell myself so. Yesterday, however, I felt good.
It happens when you focus on well-being. The problem is not your well-being, but the…
Reliability
To think that what I do can have consequences for the other, it is part of the body consciousness.
Is it not external consideration?
No, external consideration arises in the moment. When I move something, when I take a tool, for example, what consequences can it have for the other? If he needs this tool…
It’s life that decides
"Let life decide, it’s life that decides."
These sentences (which refer to the existential level) were spoken from time to time at our meetings, and an interesting question was raised: how do we know that "it’s life which decides"?
When I feel that "life decides," it is associated with acceptance, trust, relaxation. If I am…
Contingencies
We have already spoken of the intervals encountered in the octave. It is now known that in any project there will be intervals, hence obstacles to be crossed. But there are also other obstacles that are not intervals. They are unpredictable forces that you cannot control: the car that breaks down, for example.
It can be…
Intervals – 2
We continue with intervals.
If I was to have in mind all of the actions involved in an activity before starting it, could I avoid running into blocks in the E-F intervals? Would I be able to complete the task straight through to the end?
The E-F is inevitable, and we must not try to…
Intervals – 1
Everyone is familiar with octaves in musical compositions. According to Gurdjieff and Pythagoras, they represent a universal law of harmony. Each note in the scale corresponds to harmonious action. The caveat to this law is that in the projects and endeavors we take on, we must be able to correctly manage the issues that can…
To take care
Yesterday, I was passing walnut oil on the green table, and someone saw me doing that: “Well, we feed the plastic now?” Well, yes, plastic needs to be fed. Passing the oil, I really felt that it was a good thing for the plastic table! There is a notion of caring, not to do that…
Bad faith
What to do when one has to deal with someone who expresses bad faith (in the sense of intentional deceit)?
I see two cases: one case involves someone with whom we are not really emotionally or functionally involved with. The other case is with someone we may be close to or have an ongoing relationship…
To step into the other one’s moccasins
A smooth running of the emotional center equals absence of inner considering, presence of the external considering with a peculiarity in the external considering: we can also put ourselves in the skin of other.
We already touched it a little with the "symbiosis" topic and more specifically, when we spoke of thinking of the consequences…
Symbiosis
I invite everyone to write about the relationship between: symbiosis – everything is equally important – non-separation.
A relational symbiosis is characterized by a high degree of attention and vigilance in all the interactions one engages in, with the other person.
This creates a sensitivity to all aspects of what is going on and also…
On the relation with the teacher
During a small meeting at the end of one of our meetings when most had already left we spoke about me as “normal human being” and me as teacher.
I said that there is no difference for me and if it is a subject it belongs to those for whom it is an interrogation to…
Real and false detachment
I have questions about detachment: if I decide to “not care” about outer events at all, I tend to enter a space of detachment, where perceptions are not judged upon, and I feel “at home” with myself. Although it intuitively feels right, I still hesitate or feel ambivalent: it is as if I shut myself…
On humility
I took a little break while I was at work, and my mouse clicks brought me to this quote from Rodney Collin, which I thought I should share with all of you:
“True humility is connected with giving up the luxury of worrying about ourselves. It makes no difference whether it is in the form…
Hope
I observed today that I have been living in a subtle prison of hope. Instead of proactively engaging life, I hide in a hope for life. It now feels like a cheap replacement for genuine trust in life and myself. If anyone has any insights or experience with “hope” I would appreciate to hear them.…
Perfectionism versus doing things conciensciously
What is the difference between perfectionism and conscientiousness?
Perfectionism seems to me, to be oriented to the result, with tension and inner consideration. Doing conscientiously is doing with awareness of maintaining the quality of movement till the end, regardless of the looks of others. Doing things conscientiously means doing what must be done to feed…
Sincerity
Stephen Jourdain said: “never lie to yourself”, I would like to understand what it means really. Each time L. refers to sincerity, I’m wondering what she is talking about. And you, what does it mean to you?
It speaks to me thus: lying to oneself is a mental gesture, a particular sort of buffer, it…
The impersonal
Someone used the term “impersonal”. Can we talk about that more?
When I’m in body consciousness, there is a structure called G., but there is nobody inside. It’s like a shadow.
As in an envelope? There’s nothing in it?
Not nothing, but 99% vacuum. Another way of saying this is that at some point, I’m…
The real and the false life
When I was a little girl I would live existential breakthroughs and afterwards they were gone again. There is a saying that goes: “to give is giving. To take it back, is stealing.” I told myself that it was not enough to receive these existential gifts only to have them taken away again. With the…
Existential breakthrough
Tell us about your existential breakthrough, when you were 19 years old.
I was in the Marines, we were out for a drink, on our way there was a fountain in the middle of the walkway. The normal thing to do would be to walk around it. However, I thought I would do a funny…
Transmission
Let’s talk about transmission. One can distinguish between transmission of skills and transmission in this teaching but basically they are quite similar.
Exercise: Transmission of competence Transmission has two sides: the instructor who has the knowledge and the apprentice who wants to acquire it. 1. The instructor – when alone doing what he will convey…
Daring to question oneself
Context: this exchange concerns mainly a person recently arrived in the group to whom the meeting was one of the first. The sharings of this person are marked with G. at the start line.
How was this meeting for you?
G. It helped me understand certain things like the concept of body consciousness. And also…
Personal interest and desires
Let’s talk about self-interest. How do we define it?
This is closely linked with body consciousness and fear. The first thing is that when I’m in personal interest, I feel a contraction, I lose body consciousness and it is often related to fear, especially the fear of missing something.
We cannot judge self-interest through behavior,…
Compassion and love
As far as I remember, we never talked about compassion. So I invite you to share your comprehension of compassion.
My guess is compassion involves a very pure emotional center. At an intellectual level I always liked Osho’s poetic and visual metaphor (my memory of what I read at least) that love was an eternally…
About fear
What is the absence of fear?
If I act without fear, there is personal responsibility, no self-interest and lack of internal considering.
What is the link between self-interest and fear?
If there is no self-interest and internal considering, I don’t see how I can be afraid.
What came to me is: relaxing and lack of…
Detachment or indifference?
How can one know that what one is living is detachment or indifference?
It seems to me essential to correctly understand this notion because I don’t think I can really be in external considering otherwise. I don’t have the impression of having a sort of internal alarm that indicates to me that in this case…
External considering, continued
External considering (e.c.) is putting the other at the same level as myself. This goes back to the idea that all is equally important. And that means doing it without inner considering, that is without reading thoughts, without judgment or prejudice, and overall without the “what will he think about me if I do this…
External considering
Body consciousness and divided attention are prerequisites for external considering. I feel that some are using it wrongly or they are making a concept out of it. But this is not a concept, it is a gesture.
Living teaching
What is this teaching, for you?
Not his definition, but how do you live the teaching personally?
Necessary suffering and unnecessary suffering
Vigilance is indispensable to avoid unnecessary suffering. When you’re in body consciousness, you feel immediately when you’re about to go into unnecessary suffering because it creates tension in the body. I’m not talking about muscle tension, it is something more subtle.
Each time you welcome a necessary suffering, there is a transformation process and it…
Welcoming necessary suffering and crystalisation
If I should summarize the teaching in some words, I would say this: it is simple, when you feel a tension coming from identity, you welcome the necessary suffering and you wait that life proposes you something which crystallizes.
The “welcome necessary suffering” is the practice that I consider most important in our work. If…
Wait and see versus procrastination
What is the difference between “wait and see” and procrastination?
For me procrastination is to push to the back burner (for personal comfort or a personality leak) that which needs to be done right now, when “wait and see” would be not to rush things or provoke something, but to instead watch for a legitimate…
Procrastination – 2
I was really good at procrastinating. And it blew up in my face!
Is it completely over now?
Let’s say that I have it on leash. But there are things I don’t do right away.
Yes, but it’s not necessarily from procrastination…
Procrastination – 1
Not procrastinating allows us to welcome our destiny at each moment, going with (and not against) the dynamics of what everyday life imposes on us.
Have you seen in yourself the reasons for your procrastination?
“I am” and self-remembering
If you are in body consciousness, you can feel "I am". But it is no longer the I am of identity. It is a dis-identified "I am".
Divided attention
Divided attention is when we share (or divide) the attention with 50% on body consciousness, and 50% on the visual and the auditory world around us.…
Body consciousness – 2
For years, you didn’t know what body consciousness was, did you? Not exactly, I knew what it was but I was not able to live it, and it was not like it is now. And what’s different now? I think now I’m more into welcoming. For me, the main obstacle was self-pity. What made you …
Read more...Body conciousness – 1
Body consciousness is the ABC’s of the work. Without this, we cannot do the rest.
How do you know when you are in body consciousness?
I know mainly when i’m not in the body consciousness.
And how do you know that you’re not in?