Common steps and sub-activities
Tedious repetitive tasks
In this technique we use functions we have learnt that we can perform automatically.
In effect, we take a particular task – one that is repetitive and requires no intellectual input, no memory input and no learning and we perform it, over and over and over again.
Shelling peas, knitting [as long as the pattern is easy], any production line job, certain forms of dancing, treadmill walking, banging bones together, banging stones together, fingering the beads in a rosary or prayer beads – there are any number of activities that would count as being repetitive and ‘mindless’ in operation.
Even weeding seems to work for some, down on your hands and knees going along row after row of vegetables or flowers, and not thinking about anything.
Instead of thinking of these tasks as pointless and tedious, we perhaps should instead think of them as a possible way of getting in touch with the composer – a form of meditation. The very fact that they are mindless is the key – by removing any intellectual challenge, any use of memory other than the function itself, any use of desires or objectives, we have stilled the will – defeated the will into a sort of dormant state and in that state the composer can take over.
Sometimes the effects are involuntary I came across examples of people on assembly lines who had extraordinary hallucinations from the repetitive nature of the job they were doing. It was frightening for them, but if they had known, they might have looked on the experience with a more positive eye.
Observations
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- Gurdjieff - And De Hartmann - Songs of Sayyids and Dervishes
- Gurdjieff - Beelzebub's tales to his grandson - Schools and Caesarian section
- Gurdjieff - Beelzebub's tales to his grandson - The Brotherhood
- Gurdjieff - Beelzebub's tales to his grandson - Three brains
- Gurdjieff - De Hartmann Piano Music
- Gurdjieff - De Hartmann: Musiche e Danze Sacre 1di2
- Gurdjieff - Ouspensky learns about leaking energy
- Gurdjieff - Ouspensky learns about the destructive effect of negative emotions
- Gurdjieff - Sacred dance
- Gurdjieff - Sacred dances
- OBE from knitting
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - Commentary on Matthew 9:15
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - Taught in a dream by their guardian angels
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Adornment of the Spiritual marriage - For the Father incessantly begets his Son
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Adornment of the Spiritual marriage - God may touch a man from without and from within
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Adornment of the Spiritual marriage - The sun, moon and the four elements
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Adornment of the Spiritual marriage - Whosoever would know God would go mad
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Three Worlds
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - To be wounded by love is the sweetest feeling