My
information about the “sensing exercise” comes from sources that are “ancient”
for me, i.e., going back decades...
Robert de Ropp explained this exercise in an
appendix to his “Master Game”. Ouspensky and de Salzmann mentioned it. J.G. Bennett described this and others, and so have many other people in the
Gurdjieff tradition. The Master himself
gave an account of it in Chapter 7 of the First Book of “All and Everything”, when
Beelzebub was instructing his grandson Hassein on how to prepare himself for
the future: “…at your age, it is indispensably necessary that every day, at
sunrise, while watching the reflection of its splendour, you bring about a
contact between your consciousness and the various unconscious parts of your
general presence… Try to make this state last and to convince the unconscious
parts – as if they were conscious– ”...not to “…hinder your general
functioning....”, after which he went on to enumerate the consequences of
this.
Now
unless you have some kind of guru or teacher, the individual seeker has to look
after him or herself, and be reasonable. There are so many “opinions” about one
thing and another, relating to eating, drinking, breathing, sleeping, waking,
believing, thinking and offering yet more opinions, that it behoves the smart
student to do all the necessary research, and then forget everything and start
afresh. Find out for yourself. We’re supposed to be doing things to make
ourselves more conscious, more in the present, more aligned with reality,
not more dependent on others. So as long as you don’t jump off a
building, or play Russian roulette, or blindly enter a sect, you’ll be fine... Just go your own way and discover. Listen to all, but get real data only from people
who are tried and tested Masters, with real knowledge. And even then, test it
out for yourself.
My
sensing exercise, or “I”-Placement exercise, placing Awareness into 27 parts of
the body successively and then bringing awareness of the body in its totality, has
served me pretty well until now. It’s 25-28 minutes of pure concentration. It’s
a challenge to remain awake. It’s a way to move energies around and experience
sometimes powerful results. But it’s just a preparatory job, much like
something for a child as “immature” as little Hassein. So, inspired by a new
exercise which I have not done yet, but plan to do (the Isha Kriya from Sadhguru, a truly living source of wisdom today, and highly active in social
media), I changed one little adjective to an definite article in the mental
phrases that I use for my exercise. That means that instead of saying “I am in my
right eye”, I made the change to “I am in the right eye”, thereby modifying
the whole mindset of “proper English usage” and copying the Spanish, French and
Germans and others, who use reflexive pronouns and definite articles with verbs
indicating things they do to their bodies. Paraphrasing them, it’s like saying:
“washing myself the hands”, “taking off the shoes for myself”, or
“combing (for myself) the hair”, which all sound funny in English, but
are realities in other languages, in which speakers strangely choose not to
identify so much with their body parts and personal items, using “the” most
of the time instead of “my”, “your” or “ours”.
This
made me laugh a little, and it sounds strange, but it did the necessary trick.
Suddenly the exercise became a little more objective. I was not identifying so
much with “my” body and “its” parts anymore. It refuelled my attention and
awareness. It was like hovering over a meadow like a drone, dropping my
awareness into different sections of the field as if I were a farmer sowing
seeds, and hoping for a good crop!
So
that’s part of the game, master game or otherwise, of making up and modifying your
own exercise as you go along, keeping attention riveted and preparing the field
of the body for higher experiences, if possible.
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