July 20, 2023
Principle 7. Immediate Action. Fourth Week.
If you pursue an end, you enchain yourself. If everything you do is realized as an end in itself, you liberate yourself.
Last time: Equilibrium
This Time: Reveries
Sometimes meditation requires you to sit down and close your eyes — but that’s less than half the story.
You can transform your daily life into a profound meditation, and path of awakening, and liberation.
Here’s a few things to consider this week. Besides the opportunity to participate in the weekly experiences, our next meeting will be a chance for an interchange about your thoughts, insights, examples, and questions.
You’ll receive a reminder the day before the meeting. We hope you can join us.
This Week:
Previously we concentrated on the general structure and scope of this principle. We then turned to how we applied or could have applied it in the past, and in the present. This week we will focus on its possible impact on future situations and choices.
So often our relation to the future is one of either trepidation or pursuit. And perhaps fear of the future is in reality a kind of pursuit, the pursuit of the opposite of what I fear. So what is it I fear in the future? What is it I pursue? We all understand that there is a way to move through the world, without fleeing or enchainment to ends. But can we make it the centre of our way of life?
General Considerations and Personal Reflections:
Here are some personal reflections. I offer them in the spirit of dialogue and exchange, and look forward to hearing your thoughts about, and experiences with, this principle.
At our last meeting a very interesting theme came up, being in theme, or if you prefer being in your centre, or... well the names vary (and as discussed some are perhaps less mis-leading than others). Here are some further thoughts on that subject.
Sleep and Awakening.
“Only rarely do I perceive reality in a new way, and it is then that I realize that what I normally see resembles sleep or semi-sleep… … There is a real way of being awake, and it has led me to meditate profoundly on all that has been said so far. It has, moreover, opened the door for me to discover the meaning go all that exists.”
Inner Look, Chapter VI
Step 1. The theory of reverie becomes more than a theory.
Have you tried to act from your centre, neither lost outside nor inside yourself, paying attention — without strain but gently focus on what is going on? I think you may very quickly discover, as I have, that stray images, ideas, internal dialogue, all kinds of “internal contents” bubble up interfering with your balance. An uninvited thought, or image, initiates a chain of associations that takes my attention, and soon I’m lost in full blown day dreams, or totally absorbed in unfolding events. Let us call those images (with the underlying climates and tensions which they translate) “reveries”.
A Quick Review:
In Hot Pursuit of the Veggie Burger
If I study these reveries, as Silo taught us (see Self-liberation by Luis Amman), I discover that some are just passing images. We call these situational, or secondary reveries, because they compensate a temporary situation. For example, I’m hungry and an image arises to compensate the situation — in my case perhaps I find myself thinking of a veggie-burger (à chacun son goût) and jump to my feet to go out and find one. In this way resolving the sensations of hunger.
On the other hand, observation and study reveals that there are images that are more persistent and not so easily resolved. These are the primary reveries, and they often continue more or less unchanged over years, or even decades. Though unnoticed these images nonetheless drive my behaviour (which is a function of the image in general). Like secondary reveries they also attempt to compensate a system of climates and tensions but more complex and permanent ones. Sadly, they often don’t do this successfully. For example, consider a case that is more intriguing than that of my veggie-burger.
Sensations —> Reveries (Images) —> Actions (Behaviours)
Imagine a small child, who for the usual reasons, develops a feeling, a mood, or climate, of isolation. The images that arise to compensate that loneliness will certainly change over time. The reveries of a 5-year-old are not the same as a 15 year old — even though the climate they compensate might be. In this case the child imagines themselves surrounded by friends and “defeating” the kids that (they feel) make fun of them. As the child grows the scenarios become more sophisticated. Those images, of being surrounded by many people and basking in their admiration, for that child — now a young adult — might point perhaps to a career in politics, or as a social influencer. It’s easy to understand how they might become enchained to that end. After all, they have invested a lot of time and energy in this pursuit. If they loses this big election, no doubt they’ll be very unhappy. And if they win? We understand that what is being pursued (political office) is not what is really desired (to feel loved and accepted,). So, for reasons that might not be clear to them even winning will be a hollow victory and a disappointment.
It’s a sad tale. But somehow it’s the story of all of us. But it’s not totally sad. Not at all — I got my veggie-burger!
Free Bonus: Some Practical Advice and A Link to an Old Joke.
This is important. When it comes to “attention” (and so many other very interesting things) you don’t want to try too hard, or not hard enough. It takes experience to develop the adequate “touch”. Hold firmly but not tightly.
As for the old joke mentioned above, you’ll find it at the end of this letter:
https://www.dzuckerbrot.com/correspondence/attention
Consider:
But this objectification of others necessarily dehumanizes me as well, and so I justify this situation by claiming that it is the consequence of “Passion,” “God,” “A Cause,” “Natural Inequity,” “Fate,” “Society,” and so forth.
Silo— The Human Landscape
Worth Repeating:
The Principle of Immediate Action reminds us that we should learn to benefit from all the intermediate steps or situations that lead to our goals.
Coming Up:
Next week we’ll begin with principle 8, Comprehended Action. It says:
“You Will Make Your Conflicts Disappear When You Understand Them In Their Ultimate Root, Not When You Want To Resolve Them.”
Note:
These notes have been posted on Facebook and sent to our email list, and, on my website www.dzuckerbrot.com
Stay Tuned.
PS.
Last week I posted this picture of a billboard reading “Means to an End”. It seemed fitting because I found
myself reflecting on the phrase in the middle part of this principle. I mean the part that says “… is realized as an end in itself…”. As I repeated “end in itself” over and over I no longer recognized the words, I was neither sure what it meant, nor if it was a phrase people used. Thinking about situations where I wasn’t treating situations (or sad to admit, treating people) as ends in themselves but as means to an end, helped me to dig deeper into the registers.
