Denise:  I feel that I found something in myself on Sunday when I brought my observation to you, with what you said to me about the experience of the posture. I realised straight away that I didn’t have that. But I was in a lower state and, this happens to me a lot, I have the experience and then I spent, and it’s gone over in the mind, and the person that brings it is not the experiencer, the one who experienced at the moment. It’s a low state that brings something of high quality, which spoils it.

Mr Adie:   I have to speak from my presence at the moment. I need to be aware of my presence. That’s very critical. Otherwise, I create confusion in myself because I bring something which doesn’t really correspond. I bring something fixed and set, but I don’t really remember it properly. And there’s nothing fixed in our work. It can’t be. So I’m glad you’ve seen that. That’s very important. It opens up a higher level of work. I then really start to try and speak from my presence. Is it possible without observing what one is, one’s state? I have to bear responsibility for my state.

Nestor:   There is a great gap between my understanding of the ideas of the work which are expressed here; but the reality does not permit me to understand them in the same way later on. You have brought forward an idea of the necessity of accepting negative emotions. And it was very …

Mr Adie:   Well, it depends how and what. I have to accept the truth. I can’t deny that much of the time I’m coloured with negative things. I can’t deny that. But I’ve said how careful one’s got to be of this word “acceptance.” How do I deny? How do I deny them? Do I deny them by turning and fighting them? Or do I deny them by just not giving them any force?

So, where’s the acceptance? The word only has a meaning to a certain point in a movement. I accept it because I see a need. But I don’t need to accept. They don’t exist anymore. I don’t feed them. If I fight them, I feed them. I’m talking about trying to directly deal with my feeling. I cannot manipulate my feeling, not directly. I cannot create that feeling separately. It has to arise in me as a result of my total and posture and my connectedness. I think of somebody, I may want to feel forgiving, but how can I? Unless my thought corresponds and I have attention, and I’m balanced, and then what is possible, suitable can arise.

Conscience comes into it. So, the question of acceptance or non-acceptance can have two aspects.

Formatory mind will get into a muddle, can never work it out. It tells me that things are unacceptable, that if I accept them, I’m just a dog. This is rubbish. I have to accept the fact that that is how they are. This I can’t deny. So how do I go about it? I know they’re very crafty and they justify and say, “Oh, well, it isn’t fair, and it would be quite stupid of me …” All this argument is accepting them; so, I don’t have anything to do with them. Perhaps it sounds passive, but it’s anything but passive. Put yourself in front of a hungry lion and then tell yourself it’s not there. It’s not very easy.

Nestor:   True. What I’ve been trying to do, I’ve been trying to avoid becoming engaged and convinced about all that. I’ve been trying just to see, and this is how it is. That’s what I’ve been trying to do.

Mr Adie:   Yes, this is very difficult and very advanced because and interconnects even with what Denise was saying. I have to have my presence there while I look, then the emphasis must be on my presence. If I forget the presence, I slip into it, and start becoming involved in the instrument.

Nestor:   Yes. This I want to avoid.

Mr Adie:   Yes. But sometimes I can and sometimes I can’t. If passion has arisen and it has a momentum to it, maybe it’s too strong, maybe I have to turn away. And when I balance myself by the aid of my thought, I turn back again into the middle ground where this arose. I get negative and I do something bad to someone else. Then the thought, all this muddle, arises – negative and so on. I turn away, maybe at night or the next day, and try and dispense with this feeling by really looking at the facts of getting my thought right. And as I think of the other person, I can’t help it. I think of my unjustified attitude. Gradually my feeling changes. With that feeling change, then I can go and try –

Nestor:   Again?

Mr Adie:   Yes. I have to watch because that only has to be rudely rebutted, and back will come the old thing. So there’s this ebb and flow all the time. Surely everybody, every really adult person, not just young, has been absolutely choked with a situation where they couldn’t take it and where they wanted to take it. They’ve been absolutely choked with their righteous indignation and yet having an impulse to reconcile it.

So, this is the difference. I have to know this, what I can do, what is right and what is not possible. It speaks of an immediacy and intelligence which must relate to the present circumstance. So, it’s subjective circumstances.

Nestor:   This is what I think it My understanding of the situation is on a very everyday basis, I think. What you’ve said now is a different way of approaching it, a different way of looking at it, whereas my situation is always there, and I’m seeking my answers there.

Mr Adie:   One thing that isn’t there is myself. But whatDenise said, to begin with, it’s very much to the point and everything has been said.