Annabelle:   On Sunday I made a plan to try and be free and relax as I spoke. And as I was speaking, something in me became aware that my shoulders were rising and my voice was rising. My body made an adjustment and my voice changed, and I was more free. For the first time, I really saw how making a plan before something can affect it. I’d often made plans, but never really so clearly seen how it can change the event.

Mr Adie:   It’s true, but can you make it a little clearer? How did you manage this?

Annabelle:   Usually, I make a plan in relation to somebody that I’m going to be seeing, particularly when I think I have had some fictional or problem with them. Even if it’s gone well, I usually put it down to luck or not. I don’t really see that it had relation to my intention.

Mr Adie:   But in this case, on the Sunday?

Annabelle:   Although my mind wasn’t actually saying relax, it showed all this.

Mr Adie:   Here was a current going on. You were in the atmosphere of work. I mustn’t forget that this is a great chance, that if my attention I am gets diverted, I am helped put back again by others, by the circumstances, by the very reason I’m here, which in life is not so. Everything there is associated. It has associations for me and it’s ready to suck me out. The same can happen here, but on the other hand, there are a lot of associations here that are intentional.

The fact that you observed that your shoulders were raised, and lett them fall again, and becoming aware of the stomach, free to speak, is important. Of course, it will come up again when I’m tired and I don’t notice this. Also, listen to the actual intonation, the quality of the sound. Is it coming from some unreliable source? Or is it something creeping into me? I listen to how I’m speaking. If one plans, there are heaps of opportunity to listen to how I’m speaking. It’s easy enough to say, but to be there to do it is another thing. Usually what talks in me, what makes make plans and associates with people, has nothing of that about it at all. So, into this arena has to come this other element whereby I could hear how I’m talking or how even I begin to see how it is talking.

Solomon:   Following on from the weekend, today I wanted to, tonight, to try and bring something similar to what I left with on Sunday night. But through the day, I noticed that there was something there that really didn’t correspond at all to…

Mr Adie:   That is associated with the work? Associated but not corresponding?

Solomon:   No, no association at all to the work.

Mr Adie:   You mean no connection with the work?

Solomon:     I mean, the part of me that I saw didn’t bear any.

Mr Adie:   No. But you saw it. The part which saw – that could have relation to the work; the fact that you saw.

Solomon:   I was trying to stop every half hour to come back within myself. And I was studying at the time and just to try and keep a little bit for myself.

Mr Adie:   And so, you find you have something to bring. You have this account, this factual account of a possible failure, as you say. It isn’t a failure; it’s an observation of what’s taking place.

Gerard:   During this week, I’ve been trying to see how I am at my job.  I noticed how when I am at my job, there’s an enormous pressure, just driving me to keep going, finish this, do that.

Mr Adie:   This is an enormous pressure. It’s working through identification, experienced by identification. It’s the pressure of identification. It’s a compulsion.

Gerard:    It’s reminded me of watching a lion in a cage pacing up and down. That’s something that really just can’t keep still.

Mr Adie:   They usually do that before feeding time. But at other times, they’re very relaxed. An example of identification Mr Ouspensky used to give: a dog with a good bone. Nothing else exists at all. Both paws and a really large, juicy bone. Nothing else. His whole world. I want something, or I accept that I have to. Something wants something. So there’s a lion waiting for his dinner. I have to see it like that as a balance of forces and conditions and the nature. But where’s the question about it? It’d be very unreasonable for me to expect the lion not to be pacing up and down as his feeding time approaches. So, I have to let it, but not join in.

Gerard:   I’ve been trying to continue the exercise during the week. There was one moment on Monday afternoon, was during the first 10 minutes of that half hour. And I was absolutely amazed to find that I was there, and I knew I was inside, but at the same time, I was doing the job at the usual speed.

Mr Adie:   Yes, but you were there, as a result of your intention to use what you’d had. That’s by no means nothing. And you proved the condition by seeing it. Why not let it do its job? The more you are there, the more it will act, automatically and properly, in a way. This is all it has to do.

Gerard:   Yes. The failures continuing the exercise showed me was the length of time, sometimes, for which I’m completely identified, have gone for two or three hours without having any memory of it at all.

Mr Adie:   That’s right. But you don’t know how much below the surface you’ve been, and you don’t know how near to receiving an impression you’ve been. Can’t tell that. I may be a long way below the surface. Or I may be up here. The important thing is my general density and my central gravity. And I must allow for the total difference in my ordinary state, like I can have here. Otherwise, I shall make a bad mistake. I cannot expect to go into life exactly and do what is here. It’s very important to see that, otherwise something goes wrong, and I really need to understand it, and not interfere in the wrong way. To choose a moderate a task which I could fulfil, almost. Not much too big. I want to know how the machine works. If I know and if I find out, it’s going to work differently as I find it out. I mean, I can’t go along to the office on the basis that I’m not accepting to do the work at the office. So already I’m engaged in it. So, this is the circumstance.

So go on, repeat, repeat, repeat. Do the same tomorrow, but not exactly in the same way. Try and understand more when you make your resolve. This the time when I plan my moment. I have to be there then, as intelligent as I can. What’s the good of planning to carry a rock which is three times heavier than the car will carry?  But I’m doing that all the time. I wish it to be less naive, and more simple. I need to come to myself more, more deeply, and then make the exercise very small, precise; because if it’s carried out, the influence of something fulfilled is very strong, and in that influence, I receive all sorts of impressions that I would not otherwise get. I seem to have the idea that I could make my mind up and then for 10 minutes or half an hour work like that. But how? It doesn’t go like that quite. I wish to be there. It’s a great mystery. I acknowledge it.