Stella:    My question is along a similar line to Peter’s about the small movement. I was woken up out of physical sleep last night and I was extremely angry and I remembered the work and I was able to make that small movement and yet it felt so real, I didn’t know if it was imagination, the incredible force of my anger.

Mr Adie:   It’s very terrible.

Stella:   Ready to devour me, actually. I kept coming back to myself and didn’t fall right into it, but it stayed with me the night and all today. I felt very drained and –

Mr Adie:   But that’s silly, that’s wrong thinking. If you had a bad night or an incomplete night’s rest, of course one tends to feel tired. Well, you were near something but didn’t quite manage to open to it. Otherwise, what is it that made me furious? I shall only spoil my whole night instead of losing a minute or two. I’ve been working, “I’m so tired, I won’t leave it and go to sleep again, oh no. I shall never go to sleep anymore,” and all the rest of it goes on and on and on. So, I really waken myself up. Well, you see that I’m very near. I just couldn’t get through that gate. There’s an opening there, there’s a chance.

Be prepared now, have a resolution yourself. The wish that the next time something annoying happens to you, or that you don’t want, that would in the ordinary way make you pretty bad-tempered, that you will really try and let it go, be present to it. That’s the transformation of negative into positive emotion; and that tremendous force you speak of can then be yours for a second, not for very much longer because you won’t be there, and then what’s going to happen if you’ve got it? It’s very fair. The arrangements are very fair. If we learn to transform one specific quantity of energy, then we can have that, because having transformed it, we can look after it. But we want to go on and on, and thank heavens we can’t, otherwise we would destroy it, because a moment or two later we’ve exhausted our attention, we disappear, so what would happen if we had that force? Things are wonderfully arranged by law, and the law of accident is there too, and we still have the possibility of climbing out.

Stella:   Can I ask another question to do with the weekend work? I worked on criticism, and it woke me up during the morning and helped me. I felt more towards the people I was working for than I had ever felt. And I also thought of the words that you said to me the week before, or the fortnight before, that it should join me to the work.  What you had said, which at the time I was just feeling humiliated. I didn’t feel that until two weekends later. Then when I went to bring that at lunchtime, a great suspicion came over me: what was really bringing it?

Mr Adie:   Doubts.

Stella:   Yes. I didn’t bring it, and I still wasn’t clear by teatime what had happened within me.

Mr Adie:           Well, it would have been different then. We could have discussed it nearer but taking what you said, a doubt arose, and you have accepted the doubt. Now you may say, ‘Oh yes, anybody could say that.’ Not so easily, they couldn’t. I acknowledge this lie, I accepted it. And I lost everything, relatively. If I’d heard this, this lie, I’d recognise it. I wouldn’t have been taken by that. Do you follow me? Were you able to get the significance of what I’m trying to say?

Stella:   Yes.

Mr Adie:   I’m there and I accept these rubbishy lies. This is what’s terrifying, that I’m at the mercy of such material which is going to convert me from a possible sane individual into one absolutely insane. Don’t try and keep impressions out, but have a look at them as they present themselves. If I see something that I think is bad about myself, don’t try and avoid it, but be there to have a good look at it. There may be something of truth about it; probably is, but not everything. As proposed, it’s almost sure to be some lie, an excuse for something else, because the part of me, which is automatic, subject to working by attraction only, is available to any chance gullible set of associations in my physical goings-on, in my feelings, my energy and so on.

That’s the machine I begin to want to control. As an animal without a mind, it would be free of all that. As an animal with a mind but without the connexion that we are seeking, it’s in a terrible situation because the mind distorts and copies all the ridiculous rubbish that it’s heard since it was born. That’s our position. But it’s the moment, it’s each moment. Don’t forget that power of being woken up, recognising, remembering my wish not to be expressing my negative emotion and yet going on. Don’t forget it. Use it. The value of seeing some really frightening bad thing about myself is if I remember it, I can use it. Everybody will have to see their bad things, don’t worry. Until you do, you are not through. It’s just wasted time. So, the sooner one sees the bad things, the automatic, the compulsory, the slavishness, the better for us. So don’t even wish not to see them. Settle to be there. Settle to be there. You agree?

Stella:   Yes.