Chapter 1, Awakening The Machine
Posted: January 28th, 2010 | Author: Teresa Dietze | Filed under: UncategorizedSound File of Chapter 1:
Awakening the Machine
Feel free to leave comments on the chapter, below.
“To know others is wisdom. To know yourself is enlightenment.” Lao Tsu
If you missed the first TeleCourse meeting click the link below. This call was our first–somewhat awkward–attempt to switch from internet-TV-only mode to a hybrid with telephone participants. It does contain useful information for beginning to get into The Work.
As you read each chapter, please note down any questions that come up, to ask during the next group call.
Sharing your experiences will make the course a richer experience for everyone.
This comment, from Silverdale (from the Justin TV log during the course) is a wonderful summary of the first exercise: “The objective is to have the non-phenomenal part of ourself observe the physical part as it passes through the day.”
Here are some of the activities class members will observe themselves doing during the week as they do the exercise:
I can watch myself when i’m cooking
Making tea in the morning
Brushing my teeth
Driving the same route to work
Doing laundry
I choose to perform this weeks exercise by head brain observation of placing my tshirt on, 1st thing in the morning.
Feeding the animals.
Loading and unloading the dish washer
My human biological apparatus (HBM) is sitting at the key board. What keeps me balanced in this posture as the head turns to look at the book PWOS? Can I sense the impulse to reach for the book or does the hand move before I notice the impluse to reach for the book? Re-reading this my right hand rest on my face and starts to scratch before I sense the impulse to scratch. Interesting what initiated that movement? (“Most of the machines’s activities, the machine performs in secret from us.” -PWOS
O.K, I’m not very skillful in this kind of observation. I look back at the text “Beginning with the observation of the machine’s posture as a whole”, what does that mean “posture as a whole”? Here’s the complete sentence: “Beginning with the observtion of the machine’s posture as a whole, as if studying a statue – focusing first on the hands, mask, torso, arms and legs, try to see the activities of the machine as a whole.” I’m going to take 4 minutes to see if I can observe the machines’s posture as a whole. I even set my wrist watch alarm. Here goes….
I repeated this AM the 4 minutes of sitting down to see if I could observe the “macine’s posture as a whole unit”.
After 4 minutes of letting my awareness settle to the level of bodily felt sensation, there was some contact with the posture as a whole but it was not very stable. If I used too much force trying to focus on the hands, mask, torso, arms and legs rather than just relaxing into it; I found I lost contact with the posture as a whole. Then when someone talked to me about how fat their dog was getting, and other activities of the machine overwhelmed any sense of my posture as a whole.
I’ve been noticing the INTERFACE between The Machine and my Being/”Non-Phenomenal Self.” The WAY I perceive is changing as a result of intensive Work.
One of the many ways this shows up is having an almost-strange experience of being in my home. I am seeing objects that I was ignoring, and relating to them differently. For example, food in the freezer that I would like to use up, or things I want to give away now.
My ability to know what I am feeling–directly by feel instead of surmising based on sensations and reactions–is increasing significantly.
dfg and teresa
I am one of the listeners. I am downloading the audios. Just so you know the audience is +1.
Sleep is like an unrecoverable hole in time. I suddenly wake up and find I do not know what happened during the past 50 metres of my walk, and how I got here where i am now. The point/moment of the wake-up is a good time to sense what the sleep is and what its components might be.
“That our time in the HBM (which can serve as our work partner and) which we could be using for our possible evolution slips away very quickly and, once lost, cannot be regained.” -from PWOS; I inserted the part in ( ).
This is true of each day as well. How is it that I don’t take five minutes to do a simple exercise and make a few notes on it for myself and others? What happens to me is I fall into the HBM’s idea that nothing seems to be happening….or nothing is happening that is helpful or subtly the assumed message is “This doesn’t feel like it is doing any good for me” or “This is not doing what it is supposed to do” or “‘I’ must not be doing this right” or “This is not getting me where I want to go.”
Here is possibly a helpful quote from E J Gold: “In our beginning work, we will turn our first attention toward the body, with its mental, emotional and motor apparatuses, which when taken as a whole, is called in this system (of teaching), the human biological machine (HBM).” p 18 The Human Biological Machine as a Transformational Apparatus 1991 edition
Also this quote from E J: Whole body attention (awareness) is the platform upon the observer is established. (from memory)
Now one more quote from E J: “Presence is the only discernable ‘something’ which is nonphenomenal.” p20 The Invocation of Presence
Obsevation of the moving activities of the machine with the ordinary attention of the head brain is the very first exercise. What is it like in my experience to try the exercise to “Lift the attention from its ordinary fixation on the associative flow of passing thoughts and internal dialogue and place it strictly upon the moving activities of the machine”? What happens when I put my ordinary head brain attention on the outer physical movements of the machine? Most of the movements escape me. But every once in a while I catch one. It is an odd thing to notice that 99% of these movements escape my being aware of them. That just doesn’t seem to be possibe yet it happens to me again and again. It makes we want to laugh with wonder about what is going on here. What kind of spooky thing is this HBM? Is it really true that most of the movements of the body, the machine perfoms in secret from me and does not need to engage my attention or awareness? Yet, the movements do just keep going on in huge numbers as I go about my day and every once in a while I see one after it starts and before it ends. Elusive little creatures.
Today while sitting down I did a little reading then started to get up and found I could not see very well…then I realized some-body or some machine had taken off my glasses. Where was I when the machine took off my glasses? Nesting in the head I suppose because I had absolutely no memory of taking off the glasses and didn’t know where they were. Turns out the glasses were within arms length. If the kind of energy that allows awareness of the machine’s posture as a whole had been inhabiting the body with its mental, emotional and moving apparatuses (HBM), wouldn’t I have immediately known when the glasses were taken off and where they were placed? It is as if we have received a transplate into a HBM and we are rejecting the transplant. (I remember E J asking on a tape once, “How much do you want to reject life”?) What allows this subtle energy of presence not be dissipated and what allows it to accumulate?
CORRECTION: The second quote in the 4th comment should read:
Whole body attention (awareness) is the platform on which the observer is established.
Mike I LOVE your comment #5 !
You are so eloquent about the spookiness of realizing how asleep and out of control we are, and how elusive the task before us.
Now if I could only hear the comment in your wonderful accent . . .
PWOS “Relaxation and tension must become voluntary for any serious observation of the machine.”
Can we experiment with making various kinds of tensions voluntary?