This is the third extract from this meeting:

Rick:  I haven’t been able to formulate a plan or a line of work. In fact, the first five days of the week have gone by in a dream where I haven’t worked at all.

Mr Adie:   No, you can’t go on for this next session like this. If you continue like this over the session, you can’t be in the group. I’m sorry. There’s no place. If you bring nothing, you’re not entitled to share in what we have. This is a conclave, not a coffee shop. You can’t just sit and listen. You have to take part or not enter. You realise that? You see the fairness of it? You have to help the work. The work has to help you. If you can’t help, then you can’t be in it. People get carried for a time because of a general impulse, at a general level, where there’s a certain amount of energy. We can’t go sustaining you indefinitely if you produce nothing, which is the case. So you must produce something. Now you must take it to heart and then examine how you’re going. You’ve got all the information.

Nicholas:   I have been helped by what everyone has said. I have been trying to do this exercise, which you’ve suggested, to include my body in my thinking. But I haven’t been successful; my thinking is so haphazard. There’s no intent in it. If I have to think some problem out, it develops into a conversation in words.

Mr Adie:   Yes, but you see how useful it is. You divide yourself between this problem and yourself. It gives you yourself – to a certain – extent, so long as you face the problem. How do you think? You can’t do more than put yourself in front of the problem and then notice how your mind works.

Nicholas:   And then it jumps around.

Mr Adie:  Well, alright, but then notice how it jumps. Be present to what takes place. Presently, out of that jumping around, you will discern a path leading somewhere which you’d forgotten about. You will see a possibility.

What have you got to operate with other than your own thought? You’ve got the only set of tools in the world, it is all you’ve got. If my set of tools is no good, I won’t be able to do anything. But they are good tools: you have proved that. The only thing to do is to use the tools you’ve got.

Nicholas:   You said that the preparation relates to thinking.

Mr Adie:   Yes, it’s a preparation so that I’m able to think. I need to think. That’s the only thing that makes me different from an animal.

Nick:   I’m trying to stop thought in my preparation.

Mr Adie:   That’s the ordinary sort of thought, but there is other kind of thought, of a different quality. Thought that has some presence in it, not thought which just rambles. This was the trouble with my thoughts: I am not in them. They just ramble away. I am not exercising any control of my thoughts at all. It all just moulders along.

Nicholas:   Another thing you said is that I need courage to be by myself.

Mr Adie:   A lot of courage to be on one’s own, not to be supported by all the dreams one has had. All the dreams, and the appearance of thoughts. Takes courage, certainly. What’s going to happen at the end? You’ll be on your own, won’t you? You ever thought of it? Some do. If I am alone sometimes, I could see that every relation after that was a gift of life.

I need acceptable thoughts, but most of them are very unacceptable, automatic thoughts. They all end in a tangle and a dissatisfaction, concern and a worry and attention, and guilty conscience above all. That says a lot. Don’t worry about how it isn’t good for you and all this rubbish. Be present to it. Be impartial. Try to assess it. You’re entitled to that, surely? Don’t interfere with it. Try and make the confrontation.

Kerry:   Mr Adie, I’ve been trying to make a plan after the preparation in the morning, to try and be more present to myself, to thinking. I’ve been trying to make times in the day when I’m going to be meeting people. One of the things that I’ve noticed is that I’m more just trying to be there rather than trying to use the work to make that situation better.

Mr Adie:   Yes, I need to have a more clear idea of how I’m going to use it. Try to fulfil that reason when you’re there.

Kerry:   I’ve been making the appointment to try and make that a better time for me rather than using that time.

Mr Adie:   This is, again, getting dangerously near personal psychology. I can’t have that. I have certain things that I want to see and understand and repair. I have query marks in my relation. And first of all, I want to be there in order to see what my relation is and verify it and make sure. And then perhaps decide that some sort of action is necessary in me.

Kerry:   The thing that I’ve seen most is that as soon as I get some degree of presence in myself, I get immediately taken by what’s going on.

Mr Adie:   How long do you expect this to last? The effort has to be renewed. If it lasts a breath, that’s a long time. If it lasts all of a breath and the whole of an exhalation, that’s quite a long time. But there are other breaths.

Try again, simply. Make it simple. Don’t make it too torturous or psychological. What is it with regard to this person you want to see? You chose it because of some idiocy or other.  This is what you want to see, and for that purpose, you need to be there.

Kerry:   I had a meeting with the principal of the college, and I need him to be very much –

Mr Adie:   Either you’re fearful or nervous or critical or something, and you see it is undesirable from your being state point of view. There’s no doubt about that, is there? Well, this is what you want to be present to. Now, are you? Is it what you thought it was? This is your work, very interesting work. You want to see what your relationship is. You might even be able to glimpse a real man if you look at him objectively, whatever his quality. There’s no picture of a real human relationship in what you talk about. Absolutely none. It could be two puppets meeting, human puppets.