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For the Week of August 4 - 10: Transforming Practices: Eating

Source: Retroplanet 

You prepared a body for me.
- Hebrews 10:5

"First Being-Obligolnian-Striving: To have in our ordinary being-existence everything satisfying and really necessary for our planetary body."
- G. I. Gurdjieff, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, p 386

This week we turn our focus on eating as the fifth exploration in our summer series of "transforming practices." Eating is very much a part of Work – in fact, Gurdjieff noted it as part of the first striving. In our spiritual journey is there any real difference between getting mental food and bodily food? J. G. Bennett asks: "Don't they play a similar part, that is, taking into us materials that will enable us to Work, enable us to be transformed? And if that is so, will breathing come into this or not? I think it does – I think that what characterizes this line [of Work] is this – our taking the initiative to secure what is needed for our existence and fulfilment. … When one eats consciously one is active towards one's food. The difference is an important one; something additional happens when we eat consciously as compared to when we eat passively and automatically. It's exceedingly hard to remember to do this, and this helps to verify to ourselves that this is a form of Work and it is an active Work. And if we looked at the whole thing of eating, including preparing food and eating it and being in a conscious state when we eat, then the whole of that is part of Work which satisfies the definition: actively to take in from the outside and make it our own" (The Sevenfold Work, pp. 54-55). 

Once again, we are confronted with the matter of attitude.
 

When One Eats Consciously

Like every living creature, we eat to live and draw on the lives of other beings to provide for our own life. This includes vegetarians. But unlike the plants and animals we can be conscious of the significance of eating. We can also abuse food by eating in a wrong way. Yet, the right relationship to food is not produced by excessive attention to diet. Rather, it comes through the practice of simple disciplines toward whatever it is we happen to be eating. 

In the early 1970's, Bennett gave a number of what he called "theme presentations" to his students which we have drawn on before. The following is excerpted from his very meaningful exploration of food, The Sherborne Theme Talks Series #4 – Food. We will draw heavily on it because of its relevance to our topic at hand and its profundity:

"Food is the key to the transformation of life; before anything can be eaten by man it must already have been transformed by life. It begins with the bare rocks of this earth, the waters of the sea and the air of the atmosphere; out of this our bodies are made and from the transformation of all this the finer energies of our experience are produced. But we cannot do it directly; put in front of a diet of rocks and water and air we are not able to maintain life. It is useful to look at a stone and a pool of water and to breathe the air and say to oneself, 'What could I do if there were nothing but that? Out of that my body is made, but can't make it, and I can't maintain it.' Only life can sustain life. … 

"Unceasingly we see around us the process of transformation which vegetation is producing in the world of life, thus maintaining this world. We also see and hear the animals on whose lives we depend for food. If we were something even near to normal beings, we would have a deep love and constant respect for everything that lives, and see our need for, and dependence upon everything that has gone to make us human beings. We have been lifted by the creative work of Nature to the point where we stand at the halfway house between the material and the spiritual, at the point of changeover in the ascent from matter to spirit. We are placed there by our nature and we are placed there because this kind of nature is needed. … All this, the limitless potential of a human being has been given to us. … 

"One indispensable link in this process is the transformation of food. I want you … when you eat, to remember this link: to have in you respect for the life which has given you life, and to be conscious that food is entering you for maintaining your existence; to experience the taste of the food and also to experience the way the body and psyche experience respond to food. Man requires a certain combination of foods. …

"Many of you have very wrong, self-centered attitudes towards food. You are solely concerned with your diet, your health, with vitamins and non-vitamins and so on. This is really a very egoistic attitude towards food. All food … can be assimilated by man, providing he himself is in the right state. This idea, that we have to watch over our diet and supplement it with this, or avoid that, is just egoism [if it is our sole concern]. This attitude cuts you off from food: you are thinking of yourself, not the food you are eating; if you eat food with the right inner state, all food [can be] nourishing and good. If a man eats in the right inner state and in the right way, he needs very little food, and what he eats is unimportant. 

"The right inner state towards food is consciousness, awareness of what is always prepared for us, what Nature has done for us."

Now, since Bennett's time, we know that there is such a thing as "bad food" and foods, though good for others are not good for my body. But he is making a point about attitude – a point that is always relevant.
 

A Conscious Eating Exercise

Mr. Bennett offers an exercise in his paper which he invites us to do as sincerely as possible:

"Whenever you eat, whether it is a single bit or whether it is a meal, whenever you put food into your mouth, with the first mouthful, the first entry of food into your body, be conscious of yourself, as in 'I and this food.' Everything happens at that moment: the digestive process of transformation begins at the moment when the food enters your mouth. But you must be present at that moment. You are to put it to yourselves that you are receiving a very honored guest. It is Life that is visiting you, that has come into your gates: this honored guest that has come to give you life and must be greeted at the threshold in this way. 

"Now, because this exercise has necessarily to be done in the presence of other people, I must remind you of one other thing about this kind of work. it is necessary that we should be able do work that has great significance for us inwardly, without its being in any way visible outwardly. That is to say, you must be able to do this exercise unperceived when you sit down to a meal and food is brought to you. If you sit down and gaze at the plate and prepare yourself for the moment of eating, then other people can say, 'Ha, ha, he's preparing himself!' If you ever see a man looking conscious, you can be sure there is something wrong with him.

"Once you have taken the first mouthful of food, there should be something separate in you that remembers to be in the right relationship to food. If I eat without a sense of gratitude to the beings that have given me life – the plants and the animals who have given their lives for me – then I am not as I should be. And I have to return this life a hundredfold; I am a field in which the grain, the seed of life, is planted; it is for me to return the harvest If I do that, then I am a good field, the seed is sown to the benefit of the seed. I mean by that, that if I transform the energy that I get from the food and fulfill my cosmic duty, not only do I save myself but I also save the food that I eat. There is a tradition that man is the heaven for food; that is, when food is eaten by man it is transformed and reaches its own highest potential. So, it is not degrading for man to eat food, nor does he destroy or harm animal or vegetable food by eating it, provided that he does it consciously. …

"If we are aware of the immense work done by Nature to bring this food to that level of consciousness that makes it suitable for us to eat, we can then think what wasting it means. … We should say to ourselves that there is something unnatural and false in us if we are not conscious of the significance of our daily food … [and its] whole cosmic purpose. 

"Everything depends on everything else. … the great difference between us and all other forms of existence is that we have the possibility of doing this consciously: that is what it means to be human. … Man should taste and experience and remember and pray and worship as he eats. … In eating we should experience this sacred impulse of gratitude and thanksgiving. … You should remember the significance of food: by remembering this you will look at things in the right way and come towards an understanding, painful understanding, of love." 

A Word from G. I. Gurdjieff

Stories abound about Mr. Gurdjieff's "feasts," his "salad" recipe and his ability to procure vast quantities of exotic food even during times of war and food rationing and then prepare and serve meals in hotels, against their rules. He wrote his books in cafes, had them read at dinners. All the while, however, he was observing and sometimes instructing the people present.

"Often we wondered," writes Kathryn Hulme [one of the "Women of The Rope"], "why he [Mr. Gurdjieff] insisted on truths we believed we had heard before, or on ways of conduct we thought we had always followed … until we pondered his advice and realized we had done the exact opposite all our lives.

"'When you do a thing,' he said once, 'do it with the whole self. One thing at a time. Now I sit here and I eat. For me nothing exists in the world except this food, this table. I eat with the whole attention. So you must do – in everything. … Everything has its time. To be able to do one thing at a time … this is a property of Man, not man in quotation marks'" (Undiscovered Country: A Spiritual Adventure, p. 91).
 

Homework

  • Continue with the practice of inner-stop. During this time of inner stillness, observe your thoughts, feelings, sensations, your breath, posture and, this week, your ways of preparing, presenting, eating food. Uncritically observe too how you may use food to self-calm –knowing that it is a form of sleep. 

  • This week, remember the link to bring food to you: respect the life which has given you life, be conscious that food is entering you for maintaining your existence – in fact, your and the world's transformation. Try Bennett's exercise as a form of Self-remembering: be conscious of yourself, as in "I and this food." 

  • What did you discover this week about your relationship with food and eating? Did anything change? What do you wish to remember and embody?
     

August Practice: Swimming

August is a good time to submerge yourself in the miracle that is water. Whether you dip, float, dive, plunge, jump, wade, or splash, do play with the gift of water and remind yourself of its life giving, thirst quenching, renewing powers. Water has a unique way of energetically calming our nervous system. Perhaps it's the ions in the air around a body of water, or simply the fact that our bodies are comprised of 60% water, and we feel connected to and with water in literally a visceral way. Try entering into a body of water every week this month. See what you discover about yourself. Notice how your body feels in the water and then as you dry off after being in the water. What do you discover about yourself through this practice?
 

Attend The Journey School Thursday Class Tonight: All are encouraged and welcome to attend tonight's class for a review of these teachings and, importantly, to produce a container of beings seeking to be more conscious and whose efforts assist one another:  7:00 pm Central Time via Zoom only.

  1. Click on this link and Zoom should open automatically on your laptop or tablet: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9961019778?pwd=aVFLZVQwNGZSNkQ4TDRTUW9yU1Ywdz09, or

  2. Open Zoom, click on Join Meeting and enter this meeting ID: 996-101-9778, passcode: CCH
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