This is from the meeting of Wednesday 7 May 1986

Annabelle:  I have been totally lacking in any line of work, so I took a line this week to try not to be agitated or impatient with my son; to see my problem, to relate that to a single plan. Every day, I tried to get a wish, connected with some plan, such as trying to relax my face, and I did find that there was a sense of continuity for about three days. I’m finding it hard now, I’m drifting off. I guess I have to just try and relax again, and start again, I’m getting into a gloomy thing again. I’m not practical. I just thought I’d bring that just to record something.

Mr Adie:   Yes. What you need to do is to be quite quiet and then try and think very clearly, because there must be many adjacent connected grounds for which you could have some similar plan for three or four days; not only with your son, but with all sorts of things at different times, different people. Keep it going. If for three days you have an aim, it makes all the difference in the world. You have heaps of material, but it means that you have to be quiet and get a relatively balanced state, and then try and bring into that state what you need to try and remember. You’ll find it’ll come if you’re patient, but we don’t really think. This is what our preparation is for, really, to get quiet and then to get a better part of our mind receives impressions which we could study and work with. It’s your possibility. What you said is clear. From that very thing, you could go on, broaden it. No one else can do it for you.

Jeremiah:   I find that I’m really relying on the weekend works to remind me, and that in the interim, I drift with just a phantom line, habitual idea that I-

Mr Adie:   What you need to do is to cut off a certain section of your time. You lead a fairly regular life because you have that kind of a job. You need to allocate a certain time quite inflexibly. You could do it; do not let other things interfere with you for that set period. Cut the telephone off. Make a plan and then do what I was saying to Annabelle: get into a suitable state, give consideration, think what you need. I have so much material. Then you would find that the weekend work helps you very much with, it wouldn’t expire. It doesn’t need to expire in two or three days.

This is part of the preparation. This is what preparation is for, so that I can think, so that I can exercise some discrimination in my inner attitude. If I can’t do that, what on earth am I going to do with external things? You’re lost at once. We have to be strong enough to be free. We’re so indoctrinated. We were like the young Russians that got free from their awful government of compulsion, and then they couldn’t stand it. They were free but went back because they hadn’t the wherewithal, to make some order for themselves. So, they went back. That’s after the war.  We’re always like that, where always planning to return to the familiar.

Jeremiah   The past few mornings, I really thought I’d try and come to something, but it seems like I’ve lost that tradition, or I’ve never had it properly. I was really stumped.

Mr Adie:   You have to wait patiently, preparing yourself. It will come. How did you think that the poet ever wrote the lines: “I waited for the Lord, He inclined unto me?” Just in that situation. I have to make place for what I need, and then sure enough, it will come. But I have to have the courage to be alone. It’s my work. I always want to flop. It takes courage and determination to be alone in that respect, to recognise that one’s only possibility really depends upon one’s own effort. All the material offered, and all the initial gifts can’t do anything without my own effort. Will. I want will above all things, being-ableness.