Part One

Annikin:   Mr Adie, on the way to the Work tonight, I had a real realisation of how I’ve been working in the wrong way. I’ve been attempting in the morning to have a better state, but in my planning, I’ve been too general, and the result is I’ve become exhausted because I’ve been working at doing rather than being. I thought at first that I was working right and that I was setting tasks to do, but I think I’ve just become very mechanical in the morning.

Mr Adie:   Could you give an example, please?

Annikin:   Well, this morning I did my preparation and my aim was—

Mr Adie:   What happened?

Annikin:   Well, what happened was that I attempted to satisfy everyone’s needs.

Mr Adie:   Where were you at the particular moment?

Annikin:   The particular moment was when I was singing to Kerry and I was breastfeeding Daniel. And Pierre wanted his breakfast, and I lost all my wish to be loving, and became a bitch.

Mr Adie:   Yes, but want to understand that. I think you want to examine very carefully your ideas of being loving and what is good and marvellous. And now you got to be a bit austere with yourself and not sorry for yourself. It is a perfect illustration. What a lovely picture, the mother singing to the baby, and the husband wants some toast. It is almost too ideal. It’s ten times worse than the lorry breaking down [the previous question]. And really, some of my ideas have that degree of absurdity about them, but I followed them, and it’s without profit.

If you see, and I think you do, we all have these beautiful ideas without the slightest idea of what they depend on and how, in a way, I’m afraid, idiotic they are. It’s a good thing that we don’t realise how idiotic until the time comes when we can laugh at them. Then there’s a chance. So that really should be your line of work, examining your beautiful ideas, not scoffing at them, because if you want to write them off, that’ll be a lost opportunity.

We can make mock of them for a moment, but certainly not total mockery, because you’ve got to sift through them. There’s gold there, but there’s a lot of saccharine on top of it, not genuine sweetness. Otherwise, you’ll have a dream about a ruthless person, you know, sweeping out the Augean caves and all the rest: noble, devastating, honest. You’ve got to be small and practical. Don’t forget the work is occasionally called the way of sly man. You remember I said how offended I got when I first heard that description? Very soon after Helen and I entered the work together, it was one day described as the way of the sly man. I thought, well, this isn’t quite satisfactory. There is something odious about this. It rather dents the picture. There’s nothing noble about it. But it became apparent that if one was fencing with the devil, you had to be a bit more sly than the devil, otherwise he was going to get you,.

So, I’m not going to lose all my ideals by being very careful about accepting all my own values, revalue all my values as to what is sensible and what is beautiful. You can apply it in all sorts of ways, apply it in your discourses, in your teaching others to be beautiful and calm and peaceful, if you ever try that. Think about it, really take it. That should be your line. I think it’d be the best line possible. Chief difficulty— for once, I think it’s clear. How wonderful to be an idealist in one dream, and how very expensive unless I see that it is a dream. Look what rubbish many of the poets talk, but there’s something of the poet in them. It wants sorting out the good from the bad.

Part Two

We all have ideals in us, some of them are just dreams, but some of them are images which are related to something with a reality about it. We have a work to sort one from the other. As Mr Adie said at the end of this exchange, sometimes a dream is just rubbishy poetry – but before I dismiss it there may be something to learn from it. To take a personal example, sometimes I have noticed an idea in a song, and something in me likes that particular concept, and identifies with it. But at some other level, I know that the rest of the song is of a poorer quality. However, I am loathe to admit it, especially when talking to other people. In such cases, there is at least three interesting questions: what was it I liked; why do I resist acknowledging that the whole is not of the same level; and what in me becomes aggressive? Surely part of the answer to the last is that I am, deep down, aware that I am being partial – not impartial.