For full citations of items referenced, see Introduction and Bibliography.
Continuing from the last post, Can One Will Health?, as reflections on Maurice Nicoll's advice on willing one's life, we have an excursion into looking at an aspect of the functioning of some of the "psychic energies,"1 or "Hydrogens" H48, H24 and H12, in the ongoing study of the transformation of food.
Regarding a negative state, such as fear, or any other mechanical reaction to an event, Nicoll says there are two ways of dealing with it - non-identification or willing what is feared.2 For example, he says,
There are two ways of dealing with events, once you become conscious of their mechanical action on you. One is to try to separate from their power by not identifying—for you are under the power of what you identify with. The other way is to will them.3
This may seem somewhat paradoxical, as if one is to do one of two quite different things - either to separate internally from the event or go with the event. But maybe these two possibilities of action are of mutual benefit, and not exclusive. Nicoll's advice on inner activity and outer passivity helps to clarify this aspect of non-identifying:
Towards very many events one has to learn to be passive—i.e., not react at all, not do anything. But to be passive demands a great inner activity of consciousness, to prevent any mechanical reaction taking place when the event, coming in as a mechanical impression, touches the purely associative machinery of mind and feeling which we mistakenly take as ourselves.4
For the alternative possibility of willing what you have to do, he says, for example, the following:
. . . a great amount of fear comes from hoping something won't happen. Now try to will what you have to do. Often Mr. O. [Ouspensky] gave examples of this kind . . . The general idea was that if some event is inevitable you can do two things, either try to separate by non-identifying, or will it, and go with it.5
Yet, one cannot hope to non-identify without also willing.
To attempt to do this Work—such as the practising of non-identifying—without willing the Work cannot give any result. Will starts from affection. Will, if you come to think of it, is love.6
To not identify allows separation of oneself from one's state.
Whatever you say 'I' to, you take as being you and with that you are identified. You make it the same as you. Whatever you make the same as you, you make one with yourself. This is identifying. The process is not deliberate. It happens automatically and instantaneously. It is bound to happen automatically and instantaneously to everyone who takes everything that goes on within him or her as himself or herself. This mystery is not realized.7
However paradoxical non-identifying with something versus willing that same thing may appear, separation and uniting appear frequently in various guises in this teaching,8 not to mention alchemical traditions and others. Whether these are sequential stages here, or to be done in tandem, or alternately, or simply as a particular inner event dictates, is another question.
Given the occurrence of a negative emotion, Orage, in his essay, The Control of Temper, advises simply observing one's bodily manifestations:
Observe and notice, as a matter of personal and scientific curiosity, how your body manifests this, that or the other black mood.9
And Orage's saying, "I have a body,"10 is also a help for separating from the identification with the body that is our common lot in modern life, in the absence of specific countermeasures such as this.
Relaxation of body and mind also help in the freeing of oneself from identifications. Instructions on the practice of intentional relaxation are part and parcel of the preparation for any of any exercise derived from Gurdjieff, and various descriptions are given in the literature.11 The fundamental practice of sensing the body also enables relaxation, as one gets to know the body and its muscles in a more organic way. With increasing freedom from tensions, which themselves usually reflect negative or passive states, in the present or in one's history, and which are connected with various illusions and self-protections of the wrongly domineering part, sometimes called personality, such non-identification is enabled. In this separation from identification with the body, the ground is prepared for a real connection with the body - a connection that was previously lacking in the state of identification. And this separation, for example, given the prior presence of a negative state, now makes it possible for a uniting of forces through the application of will, where such was not possible before.