Do-ing

 

Do-ing / Document 4

May 2000

 

Edited & dedicated

to Uzi

in commemoration

of his 27th birthday

October 18, 2000

 

Something happened here over 25 years ago. I'm glad that it comes up now because I know it's something I want to speak to you about. It's not such a long story, but there was a lot to it.

I had horses on the property – I ended-off with three horses. Why did I have horses? The question of 'doing' comes up again – and that's the issue.

I'm tackling the subject backwards now from the last association I had. I found myself in the Galilee; just out of Jerusalem. All of a sudden I realize that people have horses around here. Something in my insides just jumped, because from the time I was 'this high' I was running to stables wherever I could find them, to ride horses. I hadn't been on a horse in maybe ten years – forgot all about it. So, within a very short time, I bought Barak. And Barak was 'barak' (lightning). A big strong white stallion that had been used in herding cows – running up and down the hills of the wadi. Strong horse. This wasn't the kind of horse I rode when I was young; this horse was no joke. Had to keep the reigns tight, not hard but tight, because if he saw a female, at a distance of ½ km, he was off and flying. He wasn't castrated as they often do with male horses – so you had to 'feel' him, before he jumped, because once he got going there was no stopping him.

Barak was tied-up outside one day, and somehow got loose. That's part of a small drama that I'll give you a bit of.

The people from whom I bought this building had given shelter to a soldier who had run away from the Golan during the Yom Kippur war. One of the things that he left behind was his Uzi sub-machine gun. That eventually got me into jail, because I found the gun and didn't report it. A few nights, yeah, in jail!

I had kept the gun in one place and the bullets in another – a little caution. You learn how to control things in life, a little bit, eh? You know, if you have a gun, you keep the bullets in one place and the gun in another, just to avoid an accident. And, when you're riding Barak, you keep your hands firmly on the reins!

The only time I handled that gun was the day Barak broke loose. I took the Uzi, loaded it, and went out looking for him. I thought that if he got wild, he could become a danger to children. I don't know, I was ready to shoot him! I didn't have to. Don't remember how exactly, but we got him back home.

I think it's in the Sermon on the Mount: 'If your right eye offends you, pluck it out and throw it away – better that you lose one part of yourself, than the whole of you is cast to hell.' That's something to meditate on. It sounds rather dramatic – you can visualize someone ripping their physical eye out of their head. Now, as I repeat it, I realize: eye – 'eye' is the 'manner' (read: attitude) in which you 'take' something. It's symbolic, obviously.

We could write a book on 'The Uzi sub-machine gun' and all surrounding events. How it built up, and how the police had me down as the biggest drug dealer in the country, probably – with the Uzi to protect myself. And how the 'politics' within the police was seen later. I got out of it because the chief of police of the Galilee was a family friend of people I was doing music with. We wanted to record in London, but the police were holding my passport. The file was closed on the word of one man, even though, locally, they thought they had caught a big criminal.

 

What's the first criminal name that comes to mind?

Natalie : Dillinger.

Alan : Dillinger. What about Meir Lansky? He was an American Jew – business manager for the Mafia. Who else?

Na'ama : Vanunu.

Alan: Ah, that's something – you never really thought about that. It shows you how propaganda works, how brainwashing works – if you don't think for yourself. You know who Vanunu is?

Na'ama : I remember a few details . . .

Alan : Doesn't matter, I'll tell you. First of all he was convicted of doing something 'against the State'. He gave information and photographs to a British newspaper about the Dimona Atomic Research Center where he worked. Israel never admitted to having A-bombs – and he let the 'world' know they had an atomic bomb program. I think he converted to Christianity, maybe in jail or before. I don't know whether he did right or wrong, good or bad, but he was an 'idealist', so called – he wasn't a criminal in the usual sense of the word.

Natalie : He didn't do it for money, he did it because he was a pacifist.

Alan : Yeah, he was a pacifist. There was a big story around that. There are many 'facts' in ourselves, but we never really get to think an issue through.

 

Back to my story. The thing I wanted to talk to you about has to do with the question of 'doing'. Horses that are not kept on a sandy beach or in the desert, have to be 'shod'. Horseshoes are put on the bottom of their hoofs which are made of material that grows, as our finger-nails do. As the hoofs continue to grow, you have to trim the feet and change the shoes, every month. You can leave them longer, but as the hoof grows it begins to push the shoes off. It may take a good few months before they would actually drop off, but best to shoe them every month. You take off the shoe, trim the foot, and nail the shoe back on again.

All this is just leading up to the 'essence' of what I want to say. I ended-off learning how to shoe horses myself. That was quite an experience, working with a few 'remarkable men', in Rosh Pina, Acco and Oklahoma.

Before I learnt to shoe horses, the man who sold me Barak would come and perform the operation. It's not an easy job, especially with a horse like Barak. You have to be bloody careful, because that was a strong horse. Horses can kick, for instance, especially when working on their hind legs. You have to know how to handle them, to pick the leg up in the right way, how to bend the foot back so that they can't kick, and hold it. You have to work very gently so you don't excite the horse – which is not a simple thing when you're knocking nails into the foot. You want to put shoes on them so that they won't hurt their feet – but they don't know that. They'd prefer to be left alone.

This is still not the point I'm trying to make, but it's coming close. One month, the 'horse-shoer' didn't arrive. A week went by, two weeks. And I'm a very practical person. I didn't consider it too much, but when I saw him next time, I said: "We're supposed to do this once a month." He kind of gave me a strange look, but said nothing. Later, I realized – he didn't have to do that at all. He didn't owe me anything. But he came month after month to shoe the horse. And here I am saying to him: "Yeah, but you are two weeks late." Get the point? It didn't even occur to me at the time.

There's an expression in English: 'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.' Why do people look at a horse in the mouth? Do you know? You can tell its age. If someone's trying to sell you a horse and you are told it's three years old; if you know how to look, you can tell if that's true. I don't know how to read a horse's mouth. Maybe I do, come to think of it, but not in that sense. But the expression stands: 'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.' Someone brings you a gift – be a little gracious. The horse was not a gift, but the 'extra service' sure was.

One time, before or after this episode I can't recall, this man was shoeing Barak and at one point he says: "I hate doing this!" Not exactly in that tone of voice – 'I hate doing this' – it was almost as if he wasn't speaking to me, he was just saying it. That's something for reflection, eh? If he hated it – why was he 'doing' it?

Now, I find myself sitting here, editing one of the 'Documents'. And I'm going through it for a second time, and I know I'll have to go through it three or four more times, at least. And as I'm doing this, something inside, and I don't even want to say it to myself, but – I hate doing this!

I don't want to exaggerate, but I've got a list of ten other things 'in work'. One of them goes back fifteen years, another one goes back eleven years. 'The Joy of Dis-illusion-ment' and 'How To Get Out and Stay Out' are being laid-out again in a new format. Then we've got the three hundred cards that are being cut down to fifty – for a new pack.

When I say this, I feel ashamed inside. And I can't even put my finger on why. I don't know if it's the right word, although it's a good word – 'shame'. It's not guilt. Guilt is something stupid. Shame can have a real depth to it.

I don't know, was it similar with my friend when he was shoeing the horse? He said: "I hate it!" Did he know, when he was doing it, if it would, ultimately, have any real benefit? But how could he know? There he was, sweating over this monster of a horse – shoeing for 'someone else'. He didn't 'like' to do it, and he didn't have to do it. I won't guess at his motivation, but whatever it was he couldn't know what the end 'benefit' would be. So much energy into doing such a 'stupid thing' – for what?

So, that's one possible 'shame'. The other possible shame is, like saying, without thinking about it, around this editing, the feeling of – 'what is wrong with me?' This is beautiful work – not less than shoeing a horse – it really is a beautiful thing to do. So if one thinks it's so nice and so good, I mean, why doesn't it go easy? Maybe, there's something wrong with me.

Shame and guilt, are so close – they should be looked at. What exactly is it that gives one those kind of feelings? Nobody likes to feel shame, nobody likes to feel guilt – but we have to be more objective as to what exactly they are. If you just push it aside, it's still there – you're leaking energy and you're hiding. If you look at it, you may say: "I don't know exactly what it is – but I know it's there." Or, you might say: "Oh, I know why the shame is: I'm using 'God's given energy' to do something, and I have no idea whether or not it will even prove useful."

When you look at an issue more deeply, you are using more of your intelligence. Yeah – you're doing the best that you know at the moment – you can never know, for sure, what the results will be.

Uzi was asking me yesterday – it was bothering him very much – "What does it mean: 'Don't work for results'?" The Work says: 'Don't work for results, work for the sake of the Work.' I tried to give him an angle on it – you can't 'explain' it. But this is really pretty much what we're talking about now. Maybe he'll read this and get closer to an answer – some 'comforting' few words.

Which brings to mind the saying, or the question: 'What's the difference between a question and an answer?' And the answer to that question is: 'a question can be asked at anytime.' That's the difference. A question can be asked anytime – answers are subject to other 'delicacies', so to speak.

 

I intend to die a natural death. I thought we maybe had a self-fulfilling prophesy two nights ago. When I fell to the ground, the energy went pffft. Like someone stepped on a balloon, and I was the balloon. It was all very quick, it was very peaceful. There was a moment of thought: 'Ah, this could be it – and just after talking about it!'

I keep talking about death, it's my favorite subject. There's nothing more important in the bloody world. Until you live with death, you don't know what life is. What does it mean: 'live with death'? You must have a mature relationship to that reality. It's one of the only two certainties that a person has – and ignores it. There are two things we know for sure: one, we were born, and two, we are going to die – the body anyways. There is not another bloody thought in your head that you can't attach a question-mark to. Until these two facts are a 'living reality', whatever is in-between birth and death has no real context – everything is subject to attack by the 'universe of devilish imagination'.

So, there, the secret is out: why all this recurring talk on death. It's amazing the reaction that the average person has to the subject. It's considered morbid. 'Morbid' and 'death', in linguistics, somehow get related. Morbid is terrible, it's like black – the most horrible thing. That's the biggest mistake a man makes. Death is the best thing that happens to us – if we're ready. Because it's really a birth. People should get excited with the thought of death – to be prepared for it.

We're in the womb here – and we're busy poking our elbows in everybody's eye and everyone's poking their elbows in our eye and we're all making a big fuss. We just can't relax quietly and be ready for the birth. We want to be 'somebody' in the womb – the womb of Mother Earth.

Now, okay, that might merely sound poetic, or maybe have the feeling of truth in it. But the least a person could do is to take the bullshit fear out of it. Death is inevitable. Stupid to be fearful and turn it into a horror, and fog-up your whole psyche.

The implications of the Death issue are so wide, but I'm not speaking of it for that reason alone. I'm inclined to rub that 'dirty word' into peoples' faces, until they get used to the smell. It doesn't smell like anything else on earth – but you can live with it. It's really not like a bad smell, it's just that it's so different. And by talking like this, I tell you, I put myself in the firing-line. There are people ready to kill me around this issue – as if I invented it!

My close friend, Manny Cohen, killed himself. I know a few people said: "You could have stopped it, should not have let that happen." That he had tried to kill himself three times before, they didn't know. I mean, they've got no facts. Who thinks with 'facts'? The strange part about it is, he tried three times before, and it didn't work. It's not so easy to kill yourself. Life and death are really not in human hands. That starts to sound a little bit 'mystical'. Well, the whole business is mystical. Never mind, everyone likes to think that they are very practical.

Some years ago I went off a wet road in Vermont at close to 200 kph – in an open sports car. Rolled-over four times! The car was completely 'totaled'. But it landed on its wheels. I got a little bruise on my left side and the girl beside me was 'untouched'. It should have killed both of us, four times over. Dinur went off a road, here, near Safed. The car flipped and took quite a beating – she only got a little bruised and scratched. Someone slips in their bathroom, knocks their head, and they're dead. I'm not sure of the statistics, but they've been quoted: more people die, of accidents, in their own bathroom, than anywhere else.

How ignorant we become about who we are, where we are, and what human life is, when we don't consider 'death' because of blind fear.

A child was born in this house and died in its first week. It seems nobody understands that a certain percentage of new-borns die. The Head of Social Services at Safed Hospital says around 4% don't make it. With all their special equipment. Nobody knows about these things? It would be very useful to understand facts such as these – we would have a much more graceful and grateful relationship to existence for making us, at least, physically okay. The fact is that we don't know much about who is being born, with what, or into what. We would like to have silk sheets on our bed!

All this is very general, it's also extremely personal, and it's also universal. Open yourself up and don't take it too personally. Something hurts? Spread it out – it's reality. Something you saw, or wondered about, or are not happy about, or you want to think about, whatever. Just open it up and realize that whatever you are dealing with is probably being experienced by a million other people at this very moment. If you understand more about yourself, you've just understood more about a million other people. I don't like this statistical analysis so much – but just to spread it out. Then whatever you learn, if it's real, you've learnt it for eternity. You are learning about this whole thing called 'humanity' – which is incredibly important!

We're so used to pettiness. Petty thoughts, petty feeling and petty concerns have turned us into cheap little pettinesses. But we need not be that. How the imagination, that wants us to be so wonderful, actually turns us into something so small.

 

Another angle on this question of 'doing'.

Man cannot 'do', in his usual state – it's a complete illusion. He doesn't do – 'it' does. A person might see that and say: "Well, no wonder I don't have such a high regard for myself. I don't know what I'm doing, I really don't have control over it. So, I don't  really feel very proud."

Now, let's say a person had a more thoughtful background and was able to understand some of what is written here. Look – there are three major elements in 'doing', relative to a 'conscious being'.

1) Why are you doing it.

2) What are you doing.

3) What 'state' are you in when you are doing it.

You'll have to think that over because it might seem strange. But just to be aware of the factors. Not to get into any guilt, but really to go one step deeper in yourself, where the issue becomes 'awareness'!

Expanded consciousness and awareness are very close considerations. What do you think they will call this past century? 'The Age of the Computer?' It was really the beginning of a unique openness – 'The Age of  Expanded Consciousness.'

Timothy Leary was a co-discoverer of LSD. He along with Richard Alpert – two professors of psychology. Richard Alpert eventually went to the East and became Baba Ram Dass.

Oh, there was so much going on, that it's almost impossible to talk about it anymore. I have the feeling that this kind of material is going to be of use, maybe, some years down the road. To whom, I don't know. When people look back – what a shift took place this century!

Richard Alpert – a few words about him. Millions read his book: 'Be Here Now.' Anyone not seen that? It was a large blue, soft-covered book, with brown pages. I think he put it together with some people out in California. Millions saw it – it was 'shocking' in its day.

You know how I bumped into him? I was around thirty years old. I'm sitting in my Montreal penthouse apartment, nice one, simple one. The radio is on, it's in the middle of a work day but somehow I'm in the apartment; sunny day. It was the beginning of FM and they used to play music, music, music. No advertisements yet – they were introducing the public to the new media. Suddenly I became aware that I'm listening, and there's a voice talking. I didn't know who, but they're talking and talking and I'm listening. A few minutes go by – it's interesting, yeah. It turns out that it's this Baba Ram Dass (Richard Alpert). He's talking about his trip to India, his relationship with his teacher, and how he reached him.

He returned to America. His teacher had told him: 'For you – don't open Ashram.' Something like: 'don't get into that.' Baba Ram Dass said: 'Thank God, I didn't want to spend the rest of my life being a hotel keeper.' So he went on the 'talking circuit'. He was moving around the world a lot – had a large following.

He was also 'gay'. In his talks, he would talk about that, and some people around him would say: 'Don't you know . . . maybe best not to.' They couldn't tolerate him talking about it. I don't know, maybe if he wasn't vegetarian, they wouldn't want him to talk about that either.

We touch this 'angle' a bit here, but . . . it doesn't matter. 'It doesn't matter? What do you mean?' 'Yeah . . . but you have to live in this society!'                           

But, what really matters? This is what we have to get to. We have to separate what really makes a difference from what doesn't. If something matters, what exactly does it affect? What difference does it make! What someone likes or doesn't like? What difference does it make relative to this question of 'doing'? It's the issue of 'awareness'. Not guilt, not pride – just awareness.

 

The following seems like a different thought, although it's very connected.

'Others' are illusion.

The Reality Is Unity.

'Acting on behalf of others'

is, basically, an expansion

of awareness!

What is Reality? There are so many ideas around. To some of them you say: 'Yes, that's true, and it's right, and I would like to . . .' etc. But, now, we need one answer – one answer for everything! It doesn't do you any good to go on figuring, figuring, figuring. We are living in a 'One Dynamic Unity' – everything is inter-active. Those 'separations' that we are struggling with, have no meaning in themselves.

We talked before about so called 'sexual orientation'. I don't even like the term – it has so much to do with conditioning and mood and god-knows what else. We have a friend who used to go to the hospital when he was a kid, to take care of his mother who was totally paralyzed. That went on for years. He used to go there and help feed her and wash her. But, just from the 'sexual' point of view, can you imagine? Here is this kid washing his mother, a female 'dead' body, for years. I mean, if he doesn't have a certain kind of strange feeling when he sees a female body, it would be surprising. I'm not saying that has anything to do with anything in particular, but god knows. Women are difficult for him, let's put it that way. That's acknowledged, difficult  for him.

The point of this whole thing is the question of what really matters and what doesn't. One person may have a hang-up there, and another person is hung-up elsewhere. What matters is: can we 'join-up' and be a healthy part of the Unity – or are we going to end off as a dry leaf that falls off the tree? Are we going to be 'used' – or become useless? That's the issue!

Within all our tricks and games at this level, no one seems to care – everything is forgotten and lost in a flash!

What becomes clear in these radical days, is that One thing is needed. Just One Rule: 'ACT ON BEHALF OF OTHERS.' If you act – act on behalf of others!

But there are no 'others'. It's all You, it's all Us, it's all God, it's all One. Those are just words, but at more subtle energy levels, it's a reality to be known. At the physical, sensual level it is not 'seen' and so we have this gross sense of where and what we are. If that sensual part can relax and just vibrate in its correct band of energy, with earth, with air, with this level of reality, then more subtle aspects of our being can be realized.

That's why if you have this kind of sex or that kind of sex, or this kind of shit or that kind of shit, or get a kick out of having blue nails rather than red nails – it only matters in so far as it affects the basic vibration of your being. At the limited sensual level that you're messing around at, it's one or another degree of hysteria, all the time. If you could just 'sit' with what you are, and what you have, it could balance itself out.

But of course we were born into very corrupt and twisted circumstances. So 'peace' has to be worked for. We have to 'work' – in order to get normal again. We have to work in order to reach at least as much normality as a dog or a cat, or a lion, or an ant. First of all, to be able to BE. To get back to that which exists independently of our thoughts and judgments.

Look what Hagit walked into! How did she get here? Has it something to do with a why and a what? Maybe she just came to pick someone up. But: 'your level of being attracts your life.' Your why and your what and where 'you' are – attracts what comes to you.

'Act on behalf of others' is tricky – the Work is indirect. 'Second line of Work' is work with others in the Work. But at the essential level, at the soul level, at the spirit level – it's all One. There is no-one to work with but yourself!

If you live from essence, you become aware of 'something' that most people are not seeing. You know the difference between your 'being', on the one side, and everything else on the other. You can meet another human that is, say, acting from hysteria – but you know! You know your own 'false-selfs', so you know that behind the false-self in everyone is that 'something'. To love it in another person, to see it, or to seek it out. When you find it, you realize that 'something' is always the 'same-thing'. There is only One – that's YOU in there!

It's no accident (an expression), that religions have not been so successful with all their well-stocked libraries. It's not an issue of words. The more compassionately, the more openly, the less judgmental, the more helpfully you relate to other people – the more you see. And at the depth of that seeing, you recognize the 'seer'. You begin to see that the 'seen' and the 'seer' are the same thing. And that's what we call Love. That's connection. God is Love – the Whole Thing, at its core, is Love. You want to be part of Love? Then you have to be 'connected'!

It's not an intellectual issue. If you're going to act – act on behalf of others! That's radical. But our disconnection with the Universe is also radical. You need something radical, to correct a radical error.

'Death' – can you face the issue maturely? Some people might call that courage. It's not courage, it's just simple intelligence.

If this makes sense to you, then it must be obvious that it's different from what you've been doing your whole life. You've been trying to take care of your sweet little self – like everybody does. Nicoll writes about it someplace: 'Wait until you wake up to the fact, that all you've been doing all your life is just trying to get your own way!'

If a person really saw that, they'd say, "Yeah, but you know . . . that's not what I really want. Yes, I want the 'comfortable', why not, I like it, nice, I want that 'love affair', nice. But what I really want, is what I remember when I remember. Because if I don't remember, I'm doing a whole lot of things that I 'want' – but they don't essentially make very much difference."

 

Na'ama and Natalie have been painting the upper-room. Not only did I paint there more than once, but when I found it, it was nothing but a shed, it was all just walls. So, girls, be careful before getting too proud. I don't know how many men worked to put up that shed years ago; how much effort, how much material and rocks that had to be dragged from where. But since I came into the picture, three rooms were constructed, a floor was laid, a roof built and a balcony was fenced in. Stephen and maybe five people, once or twice each year, have been sand-papering and varnishing the outside wood – two or three weeks work, just to keep it from rotting.

You see, all this didn't just pop-out of nowhere. Someone had to consider why and what – and then be there to do it.

But you know, one could look back and almost 'see' whoever participated. Some are dead and gone. If they valued what they were doing, in some way they would be very thankful to you for keeping it alive. And you can also be thankful for their efforts. It was not done for the usual comfort and safety reasons. 'Christians' raised the money in Italy for this pilgrims hospital in the Galilee. And the people that worked on it? They had to eat. I guess some got paid – or maybe were given olives. But it wasn't done by people who were out for luxury. It was being done for 'good health', so to speak. It wasn't done for 'me' and 'mine' – it was done for the larger 'us'. It has a different taste to it. I hate words, they're so bullshitted around.

Awareness is the issue – awareness. The wider your awareness, the more you participate in the Reality of the Unity. The moment you slip into your pettiness, you've just turned into a little devil.

So much. I'm not feeling so good because it's so much. So, I bring myself back to the two of you doing the painting. You don't think I know what kind of struggle Natalie had to go through? Is she used to that kind of work? It's not such a simple thing for a 'lady from Switzerland' to be doing. There is also the struggle in her between what she smells, feels and values in these circumstances, and her habitual parts. She left her own country, she left her family – she's very 'independent'. It's a bigger move from Switzerland to here, than it is from Jaffa. You really say, 'bye, bye'. Here she's got a feeling that she could be part of 'something' – she can feel the energy. And on the other side, she's still got these 'plugs' into Switzerland and her father, and some guilt around that – there is that part of her. She grew up in a society that encompassed the whole bloody world. And she's still not quite sure if she's a little girl or whether she's a woman. Now, she's painting a room, in the middle of god-knows where, making an effort. That's hardly a total analysis of the situation – there must be more to it.

And then you, Na'ama. There is so much from the past; and now there's the issue of individual effort. It got talked about here and there in the writings. I know you're working it 'inside'. The struggle – that's as much as we can say – the struggle. I was going to say 'immense' but that's too much food for pride. Life and death. You either position yourself, or you fall off the mountain. That goes for everybody, but because you're 'high enough already', you have to be most careful. It's sometimes what is referred to as 'Jihad'. So, I know that's going on with you – there's not many words one could put to it. If we had to write a psychodrama to be produced on stage, we would arrange a lot of voices talking from the background.

But again, that's not the issue. The issue is awareness. To be aware of the why at a deeper level, and the what, and your 'degree of presence'. I don't see how a person can really do that without relating it to a Work vocabulary. You really do have a challenge, because you have the Work Ideas. You have also been catching up on what others have done in the past. So you've got quite a few different voices there. I hope you can remember, and I believe you do, the difference between 'all that' – and Work.

Work is effort – active, present. And Work works best from a deep degree of peace and Self-Remembering.

I said it was about 25 years ago that the horses were one of the issues here. Then I thought to myself – I must be roughly twenty-five years older than you. If we all have a relatively normal life-span, you're going to be on the face of this earth for some twenty-five years after I'm gone. So, if you're doing anything useful and real, and not just sporadically here and there, then, as they say dramatically, 'when I'm dead and gone', you'll be standing in your own solid, peaceful and functioning place – on your feet.

There is an 'obligation' that Gurdjieff talked about; something to the effect that one should be: 'repairing the past and preparing the future'. Not preparing the future in the 'normal' sense, with a pension and a dozen grandchildren – but getting to a place of humility and maturity as rapidly as possible.

You want to prepare the future? 'If you don't change today – tomorrow will  be exactly the same!'

It's almost impossible to talk about most things these days. Words are limited and 'talk' is very slow – one word after another word, after another word. It takes so much time. Insights do come, and if we're in a calm place, they're clear. If we're in an 'excited' place, they're not clear. But, we don't struggle there – we just go back to calm. Without calm, you don't know what you're hearing or thinking, and you don't know what to believe or what's connected with what. You can't really do anything there but calm down and let your own system and the Larger System co-operate.

The combinations are very subtle. It requires our 'Being' – our being normal, our being relaxed, our being not vain or proud, not guilty, not manipulative, not suspicious – open to the HIGHER.

If you are doing something for the 'right' reason, which is the why, and the 'right' thing which is the what, and if you are 'present', then you should be getting a taste of a new reality – that you can remember. And when you're doing something less productive, you can stop.

This is why I talk now – because there's so much of the old still turning inside you. Every once in a while you have a moment of 'being' in something totally different. If the 'speedy-mind' and the god-knows-what of yesterday and tomorrow block that out, then the whole thing could end off useless. I mean forgotten.

People have worked in this building, sometimes very efficiently and productively, but got carried away without realizing it – in 'self-importance'. They 'liked' it too much. Not like the man who was shoeing the horses.

I'm not using her particularly as an example of something wrong, but the time was when Nitza, alone, in two days, could paint the whole place. She could go whoosh, whoosh. Possibly, when she was busy painting, she thought she was in love. She was 'in love', but maybe not in the largest sense of the word. But even in a smaller sense of the word – that's a lot of energy.

What's important, is to be conscious of yourself. That means conscious of your motivations at all levels. All of this could be totally impossible and ridiculous to talk about, unless someone had basic Work Ideas.

 

The Work is not just a lot more words thrown at this 'generalized issue' called the 'spiritual'. It has very specific intentions and is very 'tight' in covering the dangers and known pit-falls. It's deceptively simple – because it's talking Truth. One of the signs of hearing the Truth, is that when you hear it you have the feeling that you always knew it. That's a good thing to recognize – but it's also a good thing to watch that you don't go to sleep in. The Truth is very simple – but staying with it is not simple. We've been conditioned in a totally other direction.

It takes something totally comprehensive to cut through the cold reality of the 'normal' level we're living at. I've had this image in the past: the 'Work' being like an ice-cutter that's used in the Arctic. They break a path through the thick ice – a V shaped-plow in the front of the boat. It is engineered in such a way that no matter where the ice hits, it cuts through. It doesn't collapse if something, say, hits from the side. Whatever the conditions, it can break-through. And that's how precise the Work is – it can 'cut through' under all and any circumstances.

It has been said that the people who can work are the people who have 'magnetic center'. You've heard about that. Magnetic center is indicated by 'something' in you that recognizes 'B' influences – that which originates from a HIGHER LEVEL.

When people meet the Work – it takes over from magnetic center. Now I think of you, Na'ama, in particular. Your 'magnetic center' wasn't fed with many 'B' influences. Recently you've been making up for that – from the Bible and Koran to Hazrat Inayat Khan, Idris Shah and Meher Baba – lots of 'B' influences. Oh, there are so many aspects to it. Conscious ('C') influences are immediate, they are now. But in order to be able to be receptive to the now, to be 'in' the now, requires Work. We don't rely on stimulation from 'inspirational material'.

The Work language is the Blueprint for the 'ice-cutter'. It's precise. It doesn't rely on a bit of 'wood' from India and a bit of 'iron' from Russia and a little 'gold' from Tibet. It's something that's totally integrated – made of its own clearly defined material.

The Work doesn't need, say, the Gospels. When a person understands enough, they can recognize the Truth as expressed in different traditions. "Oh yeah, the Jews, the Hindus, say the same thing." It doesn't really matter. The Work isn't so much about 'what it says' – it's how you can make functional what it says. It doesn't tell you whether you should eat meat or not. It says: 'you can do whatever you want – so long as you remember-yourself'. That's radical – no ifs, ands or buts!

So the effort that goes on in the room now allows this conversation, for instance. And that might be useful. Remember you're going to have many years ahead of you, without the prospect of all the imaginary things that you 'could have had' in your younger years. Now is the time to fortify your 'being' – let your strength and intelligence reach a point where you become 'connected'.

Now, the more you remember-yourself, the more 'Work-memory' comes to be at your disposal. There you can move forwards, backwards or to the side, working this incredible 'magic machine' called THE WORK.

Magic, or miracle are very close notions. The Work defines 'miracles' as: 'Higher Law acting in a lower realm.' The Work definitely comes from the Higher. And if it can penetrate this massive corruption that mankind has created – that's no small miracle. So it wouldn't be a mistake to call the Work a 'magic machine' without getting into some kind of 'hocus pocus'. It's magic and it's also pure science!