09.29
Monasterio Nuestra Señora De Los Angeles / Monjas Dominicas
Mare de Deu del Roser, 2.
Sant Cugat (08174),
Barcelona.
Awake not long after five, rising at 06.15.
Morning sitting at 07.30. Already there is lotsa heat.
First personal meeting immediately after breakfast.
12.04 Meeting with Director Nunez at 10.30, covering an area of interests & possible future-arisings.
14.07 One of the practices of Mastery is to recognize the operations of Grace.
15.33 Guitar Craft was born whole, and continues growing.
A course on Raft Island this October has been added to my calendar…
Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists II Residential Preparation Retreat
All Saints Retreat Center, Gig Harbor, WA
Saturday October 24 – Saturday October 31, 2009
Directed by Robert Fripp
Arrivals: Saturday October 24, morning through afternoon, in time for opening evening meal.
Departures: Saturday October 31, noon.
This course is being offered as a response to a need regarding preparation for The Orchestra Of Crafty Guitarists Special Project that will take place in Argentina in March 2010, and is recommended for those:
1. considering taking part in the Special Project;
2. unable to attend the Special Project, but who wish to get a taste of how The Orchestra works and to contribute to the project through the preparation. This is also likely to be a springboard for an eventual Orchestra in North America.
It is available to those who have:
1. an established morning sitting practice;
2. attended at least one Guitar Craft course;
3. their application letter accepted.
The focus of the course, and one of the primary questions in the work of The Orchestra Of Crafty Guitarists, is this question:
How do we work with others, and specifically in the Guitar Circle?
17.54 The new Beaudoux is sweet…
This new model, the Guitar Craft Pro Series Seven, is the best I have played.
20.57 In response to an attendee of a Guitar Craft course here in Sant Cugat last year…
Crafty: I’ve been working with a Zen question ’What is the centre?’, which seemed to involve a burrowing backward and backward into the sense of ’self’, and there seemed to be a tension between that feeling and the ’observer’ construct. My interpretation of your answer was that the ’observer’ was there to limber up and strengthen the facility of attention in order to do tasks like this.
Self-observing, from one point of view, is an aspect of Assuming The Virtue (an early Guitar Craft exercise that emerged on a course in the Claymont Barn; and became the foundation of work in the Circle including, and notably, circulating). Self-observing assumes a characteristic of personal Mastery: not only do we have an awareness of our experiencing life: we have an awareness of that awareness. We adopt the practice, we construct an instrumentality of functioning / way of behaving, as if we are already capable of self-observing.
It’s useful to me to conceive of the Observer as tri-partite:
Observer;
Observing;
Observatory.
In JGB terminology this equates to the triad of function – being – will, all three of which are necessary for any action to take place
1. The observatory: the functional element is the behaviour of the instrument through which we observe, its senses & their habitual way of operating;
2. the observing (the quality of our perceiving / perceptions) is governed by our personal integrity / personal presence / intensity (Being);
3. the intentional element that commits ourselves to this undertaking (“Will”) might be called the Observer: that part of us which chooses, decides & commits the total sum of our parts to any particular course of action.
This gives us…
the intention / decision to observe;
the quality of observing;
the instrument/s of observation.
The instrumentality of observing (the Observatory) is an aspect of Personality: it is a body of trained skills & practices that incline / dispose us towards paying-attention; eg by hearing, listening, looking, sensing, smelling, touching.
We pay attention to our immediate external environment via the senses; and our internal environment: sensing the life within the body while noticing our responses & reactions to incoming sensory data, and impressions (which are rather more than merely sensory data).
So, we pay attention to the Outside, the Inside & how-they-meet.
The quality of our observing is governed by the quality of our volitional attention;
the quality of our attention is governed by the quality / degree of our Being;
the degree of our Being is governed by our personal integrity, or personal harmony, or degree to which our different “instruments” are able to work together: sometimes this is described as our capacity to bear suffering.
All fine words so far! The fundamental practice here is the division of attention.
In JGB’s scheme of energies, there is this equivalence…
Conscious - Observer;
Sensitive - Observing;
Automatic - Observatory.
Four qualities of observing:
Seeing
Watching Observing
Looking
In terms of energies, this is…
Creative
Sensitive Conscious
Automatic
A creative insight, a Point of Seeing, is direct, immediate, instantaneous. There is always a creative element in a Point of Seeing: I was looking – and then I saw! It connects us to nature / essence of What Is Seen. This should not be surprising, as we are already connected! Something like…
We
I Thou
me
You will also note that Observing seems to have moved up a level, from Sensitive to Conscious, and the Observer has disappeared:
Sensitive - Observing;
Conscious - Observing.
… and wonder how this has happened. The quick answer is, the Triad & the Tetrad answer different questions. But where the observing is conscious…
Creative - Observer;
Conscious - Observing;
Sensitive - Observatory
… this would be the triad of Genius.
NL: … ’why can’t I stay mindful all the time?’. What we think of as consciousness is necessarily short-lived and fleeting. It’s not meant to be held on to. It is a ’touching and letting go’ rather like steering a boat by gentle adjustments of the rudder, then letting it follow its course, but attentively. Mindfulness is a touch, not a grip.
Approaching this from the viewpoint of energy, if we have enough energy of consciousness we might be bale to stay mindful more of the time; cf:
1. a woman to Mr. Gurdjieff: Mr. Gurdjieff, I was conscious for 40 minutes.
Mr. G: Not possible. Not even for Mother of God.
2. JGB, answering a question on Cosmic Consciousness, at the end of a talk in Sherborne House & while walking out the door, commented: I go in & out.
Another approach to this: to be conscious all the time is probably a waste of the limited amount of conscious energy available to us. We need to be conscious only when we need to be conscious. For most of our activities, being awake - a relaxed, engaged condition with volitional attention available to us in the moment - is not only already an achievement, but enough for most of our everyday functioning.
One way we recognize the presence of consciousness is that we see connections – immediately. Before, we knew all the parts. Then, we see the whole, the relationship between the parts, and the relationship of the parts to the whole. There is a directness & immediacy in seeing the connections. In a sense, consciousness is the energy of understanding. Awareness is local; understanding is global.
NB often, what we think of as consciousness, is probably what in JGB terminology is sensitivity. I wake up, have an awareness of my presence, and shout out: I am conscious! Actually, there is an awareness of my presence. Consciousness is being aware of being aware of my presence.
Crafty: I’ve been working with a Zen question ’What is the centre?’, which seemed to involve a burrowing backward and backward into the sense of ’self’, and there seemed to be a tension between that feeling and the ’observer’ construct. My interpretation of your answer was that the ’observer’ was there to limber up and strengthen the facility of attention in order to do tasks like this.
Then I had a kind of flip. It seems now that the ’centre’ is the world itself. The sense of self, which I’d tried and failed to penetrate, isn’t the centre, it’s on the periphery, and it’s not always there.
RF: Six views of the Centre:
We have our Centre.
The Centre opens Itself to us.
The Centre is present within an intentional group / undertaking, and each member of the group / undertaking has access to it.
The Centre is vested in a member of the group by the other members.
The Centre has doorways in specific geographic locations.
The Centre is everywhere.
If you asked me to put my attention in my Centre, there is a specific location within the body where I go; I have heard this place described as star core essence.
Crafty: I met a Zen teacher… who used to make fun of new Zen students who would put down their teacup into the saucer painfully slowly while staring at it, trying to be mindful. That’s not it at all.
This is comparable to Guitar Craft Face, a kind of I am remembering myself and it is all very serious. Self-remembering (as with all practices), when properly undertaken, has a lightness around it. Serious, yes; solemn, no.
Crafty: Does what I’m saying chime with you? And is this the same as the Gurdjieff concept of ’self-remembering’?
The textbook formulation of the three necessary foundation-practices are:
Self-sensing;
Self-observing;
Self-remembering.
Self-sensing is holding part of the attention within the body, and being aware of the subtle presence of organic life within it; while also attending to whatever else we happen to be doing. That is, we keep part of our attention free from being sucked into our functional activities. The importance of this is difficult to exaggerate. To put it plainly, is this is beyond us, we’re not quite really here. This practice requires of us a division of attention.
Self-observing: (above) observing our observing; perceiving our perceptions.
Self-remembering: I have come across different approaches to this. One approach is: to integrate & harmonise the different parts of us, ie “making a whole”.
I prefer the notion of holding the aim. Our aim is “in the future”, an aspect of Creative Time; as if the future reaches back & draws us towards it. This is our destiny curve. Creative Future is not apart from Creative Past & Creative Present: more, all within the creative Present Moment. Something like, our life as a whole event, rather than a series of causes & effects. Our life as a series of causes & effects is also the case: this is the line of our fate.
For me, in holding the aim, I have a stronger sense that the aim is holding me.
But, in an everyday way, how to hold to our aim & to honour our commitment to it? This relates to JGB’s notion of hyparxis or ableness-to-be. A key practice here is practising decision-making (in Guitar Craft sometimes referred to as The Job Of The Day) where a decision, once taken, is honoured – and must be honoured without fail. This is a practice I have now been undertaking for 35 years. It is the key.
So, more fine words, but also with exercises & practices to bring them within our personal & practical experience.
Your practice is Zen. Each way has its own terminology, practices & exercises, and an exact translation between them is difficult: the ways are all fingers pointing to the moon. No doubt, when we’re on the moon, we can have another quality of conversation entirely!
Until then, there are different ways of going to Blandford from Wimborne: we begin in the same place & end up in the same place, the topography is very similar; but the road maps seem to diverge in places.
Well, that’s the best I can do today. Apologies for taking so long to reply: the vicissitudes of my professional life are difficult to exaggerate.
22.09 A catching-up with Director Nunez.
Night views I…
II...
23.07 To settle.
Monasterio Nuestra Señora De Los Angeles / Monjas Dominicas
Mare de Deu del Roser, 2.
Sant Cugat (08174),
Barcelona.
Awake not long after five, rising at 06.15.
Morning sitting at 07.30. Already there is lotsa heat.
First personal meeting immediately after breakfast.
12.04 Meeting with Director Nunez at 10.30, covering an area of interests & possible future-arisings.
14.07 One of the practices of Mastery is to recognize the operations of Grace.
15.33 Guitar Craft was born whole, and continues growing.
A course on Raft Island this October has been added to my calendar…
Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists II Residential Preparation Retreat
All Saints Retreat Center, Gig Harbor, WA
Saturday October 24 – Saturday October 31, 2009
Directed by Robert Fripp
Arrivals: Saturday October 24, morning through afternoon, in time for opening evening meal.
Departures: Saturday October 31, noon.
This course is being offered as a response to a need regarding preparation for The Orchestra Of Crafty Guitarists Special Project that will take place in Argentina in March 2010, and is recommended for those:
1. considering taking part in the Special Project;
2. unable to attend the Special Project, but who wish to get a taste of how The Orchestra works and to contribute to the project through the preparation. This is also likely to be a springboard for an eventual Orchestra in North America.
It is available to those who have:
1. an established morning sitting practice;
2. attended at least one Guitar Craft course;
3. their application letter accepted.
The focus of the course, and one of the primary questions in the work of The Orchestra Of Crafty Guitarists, is this question:
How do we work with others, and specifically in the Guitar Circle?
17.54 The new Beaudoux is sweet…
This new model, the Guitar Craft Pro Series Seven, is the best I have played.
20.57 In response to an attendee of a Guitar Craft course here in Sant Cugat last year…
Crafty: I’ve been working with a Zen question ’What is the centre?’, which seemed to involve a burrowing backward and backward into the sense of ’self’, and there seemed to be a tension between that feeling and the ’observer’ construct. My interpretation of your answer was that the ’observer’ was there to limber up and strengthen the facility of attention in order to do tasks like this.
Self-observing, from one point of view, is an aspect of Assuming The Virtue (an early Guitar Craft exercise that emerged on a course in the Claymont Barn; and became the foundation of work in the Circle including, and notably, circulating). Self-observing assumes a characteristic of personal Mastery: not only do we have an awareness of our experiencing life: we have an awareness of that awareness. We adopt the practice, we construct an instrumentality of functioning / way of behaving, as if we are already capable of self-observing.
It’s useful to me to conceive of the Observer as tri-partite:
Observer;
Observing;
Observatory.
In JGB terminology this equates to the triad of function – being – will, all three of which are necessary for any action to take place
1. The observatory: the functional element is the behaviour of the instrument through which we observe, its senses & their habitual way of operating;
2. the observing (the quality of our perceiving / perceptions) is governed by our personal integrity / personal presence / intensity (Being);
3. the intentional element that commits ourselves to this undertaking (“Will”) might be called the Observer: that part of us which chooses, decides & commits the total sum of our parts to any particular course of action.
This gives us…
the intention / decision to observe;
the quality of observing;
the instrument/s of observation.
The instrumentality of observing (the Observatory) is an aspect of Personality: it is a body of trained skills & practices that incline / dispose us towards paying-attention; eg by hearing, listening, looking, sensing, smelling, touching.
We pay attention to our immediate external environment via the senses; and our internal environment: sensing the life within the body while noticing our responses & reactions to incoming sensory data, and impressions (which are rather more than merely sensory data).
So, we pay attention to the Outside, the Inside & how-they-meet.
The quality of our observing is governed by the quality of our volitional attention;
the quality of our attention is governed by the quality / degree of our Being;
the degree of our Being is governed by our personal integrity, or personal harmony, or degree to which our different “instruments” are able to work together: sometimes this is described as our capacity to bear suffering.
All fine words so far! The fundamental practice here is the division of attention.
In JGB’s scheme of energies, there is this equivalence…
Conscious - Observer;
Sensitive - Observing;
Automatic - Observatory.
Four qualities of observing:
Seeing
Watching Observing
Looking
In terms of energies, this is…
Creative
Sensitive Conscious
Automatic
A creative insight, a Point of Seeing, is direct, immediate, instantaneous. There is always a creative element in a Point of Seeing: I was looking – and then I saw! It connects us to nature / essence of What Is Seen. This should not be surprising, as we are already connected! Something like…
We
I Thou
me
You will also note that Observing seems to have moved up a level, from Sensitive to Conscious, and the Observer has disappeared:
Sensitive - Observing;
Conscious - Observing.
… and wonder how this has happened. The quick answer is, the Triad & the Tetrad answer different questions. But where the observing is conscious…
Creative - Observer;
Conscious - Observing;
Sensitive - Observatory
… this would be the triad of Genius.
NL: … ’why can’t I stay mindful all the time?’. What we think of as consciousness is necessarily short-lived and fleeting. It’s not meant to be held on to. It is a ’touching and letting go’ rather like steering a boat by gentle adjustments of the rudder, then letting it follow its course, but attentively. Mindfulness is a touch, not a grip.
Approaching this from the viewpoint of energy, if we have enough energy of consciousness we might be bale to stay mindful more of the time; cf:
1. a woman to Mr. Gurdjieff: Mr. Gurdjieff, I was conscious for 40 minutes.
Mr. G: Not possible. Not even for Mother of God.
2. JGB, answering a question on Cosmic Consciousness, at the end of a talk in Sherborne House & while walking out the door, commented: I go in & out.
Another approach to this: to be conscious all the time is probably a waste of the limited amount of conscious energy available to us. We need to be conscious only when we need to be conscious. For most of our activities, being awake - a relaxed, engaged condition with volitional attention available to us in the moment - is not only already an achievement, but enough for most of our everyday functioning.
One way we recognize the presence of consciousness is that we see connections – immediately. Before, we knew all the parts. Then, we see the whole, the relationship between the parts, and the relationship of the parts to the whole. There is a directness & immediacy in seeing the connections. In a sense, consciousness is the energy of understanding. Awareness is local; understanding is global.
NB often, what we think of as consciousness, is probably what in JGB terminology is sensitivity. I wake up, have an awareness of my presence, and shout out: I am conscious! Actually, there is an awareness of my presence. Consciousness is being aware of being aware of my presence.
Crafty: I’ve been working with a Zen question ’What is the centre?’, which seemed to involve a burrowing backward and backward into the sense of ’self’, and there seemed to be a tension between that feeling and the ’observer’ construct. My interpretation of your answer was that the ’observer’ was there to limber up and strengthen the facility of attention in order to do tasks like this.
Then I had a kind of flip. It seems now that the ’centre’ is the world itself. The sense of self, which I’d tried and failed to penetrate, isn’t the centre, it’s on the periphery, and it’s not always there.
RF: Six views of the Centre:
We have our Centre.
The Centre opens Itself to us.
The Centre is present within an intentional group / undertaking, and each member of the group / undertaking has access to it.
The Centre is vested in a member of the group by the other members.
The Centre has doorways in specific geographic locations.
The Centre is everywhere.
If you asked me to put my attention in my Centre, there is a specific location within the body where I go; I have heard this place described as star core essence.
Crafty: I met a Zen teacher… who used to make fun of new Zen students who would put down their teacup into the saucer painfully slowly while staring at it, trying to be mindful. That’s not it at all.
This is comparable to Guitar Craft Face, a kind of I am remembering myself and it is all very serious. Self-remembering (as with all practices), when properly undertaken, has a lightness around it. Serious, yes; solemn, no.
Crafty: Does what I’m saying chime with you? And is this the same as the Gurdjieff concept of ’self-remembering’?
The textbook formulation of the three necessary foundation-practices are:
Self-sensing;
Self-observing;
Self-remembering.
Self-sensing is holding part of the attention within the body, and being aware of the subtle presence of organic life within it; while also attending to whatever else we happen to be doing. That is, we keep part of our attention free from being sucked into our functional activities. The importance of this is difficult to exaggerate. To put it plainly, is this is beyond us, we’re not quite really here. This practice requires of us a division of attention.
Self-observing: (above) observing our observing; perceiving our perceptions.
Self-remembering: I have come across different approaches to this. One approach is: to integrate & harmonise the different parts of us, ie “making a whole”.
I prefer the notion of holding the aim. Our aim is “in the future”, an aspect of Creative Time; as if the future reaches back & draws us towards it. This is our destiny curve. Creative Future is not apart from Creative Past & Creative Present: more, all within the creative Present Moment. Something like, our life as a whole event, rather than a series of causes & effects. Our life as a series of causes & effects is also the case: this is the line of our fate.
For me, in holding the aim, I have a stronger sense that the aim is holding me.
But, in an everyday way, how to hold to our aim & to honour our commitment to it? This relates to JGB’s notion of hyparxis or ableness-to-be. A key practice here is practising decision-making (in Guitar Craft sometimes referred to as The Job Of The Day) where a decision, once taken, is honoured – and must be honoured without fail. This is a practice I have now been undertaking for 35 years. It is the key.
So, more fine words, but also with exercises & practices to bring them within our personal & practical experience.
Your practice is Zen. Each way has its own terminology, practices & exercises, and an exact translation between them is difficult: the ways are all fingers pointing to the moon. No doubt, when we’re on the moon, we can have another quality of conversation entirely!
Until then, there are different ways of going to Blandford from Wimborne: we begin in the same place & end up in the same place, the topography is very similar; but the road maps seem to diverge in places.
Well, that’s the best I can do today. Apologies for taking so long to reply: the vicissitudes of my professional life are difficult to exaggerate.
22.09 A catching-up with Director Nunez.
Night views I…
II...
23.07 To settle.
