Today’s Reasoning Process

2015-01-21

I was struck by something from our reading the other day where Bennett responds to a question about patterns, because it calls into question some of the things that I have been saying about when and where we can use this process of reasoning. Here is the exchange:

Student: How do you know when a pattern is emerging, whether it is right to let it happen or try and change it? I really get lost in this.

JG Bennett: You know according to your own state. If you are in a subjective state you cannot have reliable indications because your state will perhaps even make you see white as black and black as white.

Therefore, when it appears that something is revealing itself, it is really important to set about getting oneself as completely as possible into an objective state. If you really wish to be able to make an impartial judgment about whether something is right or not, you must be prepared to devote a certain amount of time to it. It may take you an hour. You have to put the whole thing out of your mind and concern yourself only with your own state. Supposing I had to do that, I would go and make my ablutions, sit down and do an exercise. I would certainly find that I would be tending to think about the particular thing, but I would go on until I realized that I am calmed down and no longer thinking about it. Then I would start the exercise or do a zikr.* When I know that I am free from subjective feelings, it usually happens that the whole thing shows itself quite clearly. I need not worry about self-will. One must not expect to be in the right place just because one wants to be; it does not come in that way. One has to be ready. People who work a great deal and regularly on themselves still need to prepare themselves to get into an objective state when they wish to make an impartial judgment.

I decided to make an experiment with this today, and began by just sitting in a meditative posture on the deck. But I then realized that I was just sitting, without much of a subjective state to work against. Right on cue, my partner came out and said a couple of things to me that I interpreted as intending to interrupt my sitting. I responded by coming out of the sitting and saying “You just can’t take it, can you?”

What followed was the usual exchange between egos ending with her saying, “You’ve been doing this since yesterday. Why don’t you look at that?” At that point I said, “OK, I will.”

So now, thanks to our "exchange",  I really had a good subjective state going, and really needed to calm down and strive toward a more objective state. In line with our task of working with the process of reasoning, we’ll call this [My Situation].

[My reasoning process] After sitting for a bit, I suddenly saw that one of the things she said in our exchange was right. That I should not have judged her by saying, “You just can’t take it, can you?”  After a few more minutes I saw that her comment about “You’ve been doing this since yesterday.” also had merit in the sense that “our inability to talk” (the underlying theme for the whole exchange) has been a source of discontent in me for a long time.

Just as suddenly I saw my own contribution to our inability to really talk. This led to a realization that a shift (transformation) in me would allow us to be able to talk in the way that I had wanted for so long.

I was surprised when I realized that an even deeper level of transformation on my part would obviate (completely get rid of) this assumed need I had for talking about our issues.

Somewhere along the line I realized that an octave was in play here, and I began to wonder how it was all going to unfold.

The next step was an echo of the first step when I saw the damage created both internally and externally by any process of judging. (“Judge not, lest ye be judged.” – the Sermon on the Mount)

I was waiting for the next step when another non-verbal ‘irritation’ occurred, and I saw the whole pattern trying to play itself out once again. This time I had a real choice, [the outcome of the reasoning process] and I just started to laugh at myself for initially being suckered into a negative response in the first place.

This led to the ‘final’ step [What I learned, realized, etc.] of seeing the intelligence of the whole meta-theater event.

The whole octave of the reasoning process could be described as follows:

• Do – Realizing that my comment was out of place.
• Re – Seeing that not only yesterday, but for a long time, this inability to talk has been eating at me.
• Mi – Realizing, not for the first time, but in a more substantial way, my own contribution to not being able to talk.
• SHOCK—leading to the realization at Fa of…
• Fa – Seeing that my need for this kind of talk was really my own subjective invention.
• Sol – Seeing once again the destructive effects of judging. (a higher harmonic of the initial do)
• La – Understanding that this kind of exchange is just one pattern in a larger system of patterns.
• Si – Experiencing the immediate presence of higher intelligence in revealing all of this through ‘play’.

And there you have it. Today’s reasoning process.