Exercises Part III

[Russell Smith]

STEWARD

This is when a man awakes, but in order to awaken a man has to do some preparatory work, to get the machine ready for awakening. So we call these exercises, exercises for the preparation and development of Steward.

* = important ** = most important exercises for Steward

**1. INTENTIONAL OBSERVATION -The Fourth Way, Pages 43 & 54, Chapters II & III:
Or as we like to call it PICK A CENTER. It starts with “intentional observation.” It is not just to observe yourself but to pick a center and observe that center, to bring all your attention to either movement, emotion, or sensing.

Intentionally develop that center, knowing, as we have already learned, that nature is not going to do it for us, reason has already destroyed all the things that would have made us observe.

The roads are all paved, the dangerous animals are all gone, so there’s no need to observe; unless we understand the model and see why we lost our conscience.

Now we can intentionally say there are no saber tooth tigers, but I can pretend there are, and I can listen for them and I can watch for them. I can be aware, I can use that center, I can bring in intentional observation to that one center and develop it even though there is no need to, there is no danger. So that’s the key. Intentionally observe a center.

Intentionally make emotions their highest, see all the meaning in the things. Intentionally try and hear every sound, smell every smell. Intentionally see what takes place with the movement, try and walk with stealth, try and walk so you don’t make a noise.

You are bringing attention to those centers.

Intentional observation.

Very important, because we cannot make the journey without enough cards and this is the exercise that trains the parts that have become lazy. Because life does not demand that they work.

After we finish todays chapter; when you open the door to go upstairs to your room, PICK A CENTER. Either Instinctive, Moving, or Emotion and make that center work with full attention. Then when you come downstairs, again, PICK A CENTER. Every time you head upstairs or come downstairs, PICK A CENTER. Make it work with incredible attention.

When you pick the Instinctive Center, make it hear every sound, make it see every movement, make it smell every odor, make it taste the scents in the air, and sense the wind and cloths touching your skin. RED ALERT.

When you pick the Moving Center, make every movement be seen and acknowledged, your balance, the movements required to climb the stairs, everything. You will probably have to slow down your movements to see them and to bring full attention to them. Often when students open the door to come downstairs, they try to do it with such stealth and so quietly that Cheetah, our dog, who usually lays on the front porch, does not hear them coming. DEFCON 1.

When you pick the Emotional Center, try to feel the meaning of everything, what does a doorknob mean? What does it mean to have stairs that allow you descend gradually and not have to jump off the upstairs porch? What does it mean to have grass? What does it mean to have a driveway? What do trees mean? What does all the life you see mean? Cheetah wags her tail when she sees you, what does that mean?

One student said, “I am not sure what you mean to see the meaning of things.” I said, “OK, do not use the bathroom for 30 days. Go do your business outside behind a tree. Wipe yourself with a leaf. Do that for 30 days and when I let you start using the bathroom again, I bet you hug the commode! A seat to sit on! Soft toilet paper on a roll to use! A door you can close and lock when you are in that vulnerable posture.” I bet you understand what a bathroom means then.

So, suck the meaning out of things. Feel them. Hey, you may even tear a bit, when you do. In life, PICK A CENTER whenever you walk to your car or from your car. There are many great opportunities to exercise the higher parts of centers. Polish the Queens… make them function. We need them if we wish to wake up. We can survive in life with just the Jacks, but if we want higher things, we need the Queens and Kings. So, this exercise, PICK A CENTER, is critical to you becoming what you have the right to become.

2. ASSIMILATION OF AIR (food) – All and Everything/Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, Page 1054, Chapter Beelzebub in America (last page):
“Assimilation of food.” Again, it is just a little blurb from Gurdjieff that says there is a special room they go to where they take in both foods. Hey, we never do that! I never try and take in air. When I read that I said, “Huh, okay, I am going to see if I can eat my meal and be aware that I am breathing.” (demonstrates full inhale and exhale) Okay that is not so hard, but I have to have an attention there that keeps saying, “I am taking in air. Air is another food.” And when I did this, things changed a little bit. There was a consciousness, there was an awareness that wasn’t there before when I was just shoving the food into my mouth as fast as I could. Now at least I am aware there is another food. And it probably helps the assimilation of the first food as well.

An exercise to go with this one that might help in remembering to breathe when you eat is called the slow eating exercise. And the way you do this is you sit down at your meal, let’s say, at breakfast, and you load something on your fork and you pick it up and you look at it, and you say what Gurdjieff said, out of Beelzebub’s, “So and so and so I must, do not eat until I bust.” (explode)

Say that to yourself as you are looking at your bite of food, or at your piece of toast. “So and so and so I must, do not eat until I bust, G.I. Gurdjieff.” I always say G.I Gurdjieff at the end of it because it is his quote.

I pick up my fork and I load on my “eggs”. And I look at the eggs and I say to myself, “So and so and so I must, do not eat until I bust, G. I. Gurdjieff.” Then I eat that mouthful of eggs. I make sure I put my fork down. Because if I don’t put my fork down what I am doing is loading the next piece and I am getting ready, as soon as there is any room in my mouth, to stick it in there. I am not going to do that this time. I am going to eat slowly. I am going to put my fork down and I am going to finish that piece I put in my mouth until it is gone. And so I chew it up, eat those eggs, a couple of pieces are there still, I swallow those, clean out the mouth with my tongue, and get the rest of the eggs gone. Okay, that bit, that bite, is gone. Okay, now I pick up my fork, and I load up a piece of “sausage”. And I look at the sausage and I say, “So and so and so I must, do not eat until I bust, G.I. Gurdjieff.” Then I eat it. I put my fork down. I eat my piece of sausage, and I don’t allow myself to start loading my fork and get ready for the next one until I have all the bits and pieces of the sausage gone. Now I pick up a piece of toast and I look at the piece of toast and I say, “So and so and so I must, do not eat until I bust, G.I. Gurdjieff.” And I take a bite of toast, put it down; and I finish that piece of toast until it is gone out of my mouth. And I pick up my coffee and look at it and say, “So and so and so I must, do not eat until I bust, G.I. Gurdjieff.” Take a sip; put the cup down; and I finish my coffee, swallow my coffee. Then I pick up my fork again and I cut off some more eggs and I pick up the eggs and I look at the eggs and then I go, “So and so and so I must, do not eat until I bust, G. I. Gurdjieff.”

Now I guarantee, you are going to get about half done with your meal and you are going to be full. You are going to go, “I am not even hungry anymore, I only ate half of this.”

Good, maybe you could stand to lose a few pounds!

But we eat by ritual. We eat like a shoveling contest of how fast we can get it on the utensil and to get just enough room in the mouth to put some more in. “Get some more food in the mouth.” We never stop with one forkful because we have always more food and stuff going in there (the mouth).

Stop that. Do this exercise at least maybe once a week. Then you will be very aware of air, because you are not caught in this constant ritual of loading your fork, getting it ready to stuff in your mouth, then loading more food…before you are even finished eating the current bite.

*3. “I AM” – Life is real only then, when “I am”, Pages 132-135, Chapter Fifth Talk:
This exercise needs a star placed with it. It is a very important exercise. You have read about it, but we probably do it a little bit different, so I will give you the flow of the I AM exercise that we do.

In an I AM exercise a person says the word “I” silently to themselves as they inhale, and the word “AM” as they exhale.

So, in order to do this exercise, find a comfortable place where you can sit still, and then decide the breath on which you are going to start.

Let’s begin….

I am sitting there saying, “OK, I am going to do an I AM exercise and I am going to begin on the next breath.

OK, ready, here I go… I silently say to myself “I” on the inhale, and “AM” on the exhale”. Then I stop and ask myself, “How much of me was present?” Was I just saying two words, or did I feel a sense of presence in myself from saying them? A sense of me. A sense of my existence. I then say, “OK, well, that’s a start!” Then I choose another breath, and again silently say to myself, “I” on the inhale, and “AM” on the exhale.

My aim is to make the second “I AM” greater than the first “I AM”.

I continue saying “I AM” on chosen breaths, and after each one I tell myself, “That’s better, but that’s not all of me yet. That’s just the beginning. That is not all of me, but it’s a start.” So, I do a third one, “I” on the inhale and “AM” on the exhale, and I again say, “That, too, was not all of me… but it was better.” Then I do a fourth one, with even more tenacity, trying to get more of me involved.

Maybe it takes 7 or 8 breaths of this nature, and all of a sudden on the “8th” breath, when I say “I” on the inhale and “AM” on the exhale, I feel a change in my body. And there is an assemblage of presence in me; and I go, “OK that is the beginning. That is finally starting to be my “I AM”. OK, let me see how big I can make it.”

I start by looking at my left foot, and asking, “Is the “I AM” taking place in my left foot?” And my left foot looks back at me and says, “Me? I’m supposed to do this. You want me to do this? I’m supposed to do this too?” “Yes! I want you, my left foot, to be present in the I AM”. And so on the next breath when I say, “I AM”, I again have the calmness and stillness in my body, but now, I also feel it in my left foot! My left foot is in my awareness. It was not in my awareness before. But it is now.

And then I start to look at other parts of my body as well, and ask, “OK, how many of you can we get involved? Let’s get ALL of you involved. Let’s make the next “I AM” bigger and better… with even more of you involved.” And, I continue, until I get as much of me as I can participating in these two words: “I” and “AM”.

We all learned we have an instinctive center – that senses; a moving center – that carries us along in life; and, an emotional center – that sees meaning in the world. Understanding that, we try to get each center to individually participate in the “I AM” exercise.

“OK, instinctive center, you’re first.” On the next “I AM” I want everything to fire in my senses. I want every nerve to respond and say, “We are here.” And I do several “I AMs” in this way, trying to get the instinctive center to acknowledge its presence.

After achieving this, I stop performing the “I AMs” with my instinctive center… and move to my moving center. Since I’m not moving, I will use the stillness of my body to indicate that my moving center is participating in the exercise. I hold my body in stillness as I say, “I AM”. By my stillness, my moving center is saying “I AM”. It says, “I am here doing it with you. I am still!” It’s like I’m a statue, frozen like a rock. Nothing is moving. And I do several “I AMs” in this frozen state.

Next, I move to my emotional center and try to FEEL my “I AMs”. I do this by acknowledging that I am the only species on the face of the earth that can say “I AM”. There are 75 million species of living creatures, and none of them know that they are here, except for me! Nature has been creating life for 5 billion years, evolving up to humankind – who is the only species that KNOWS they are here. I hopefully will complete the journey in 80 years. That is, become fully self-conscious, and acquire all that a human is destined to acquire. What an obligation! That means something. I feel it. And now, there is an emotion in me, of this idea: that I am the only species that knows of its existence; and what it means. So, I do emotional “I AMs” that are full of meaning.

Then, after I complete the emotional “I AMs”, I do all three centers together. I sense. I feel. I still my body. Again, all three centers together. I want everybody. I want the whole chorus. And I do that for several breaths, until… I am zinging.

Finally, I always like to finish my “I AM’s” with what I call a “building I AM”. Where I just say “I” with little sips of air. I just say “I” with sips of air. Just say “I” with sips of air. And, every time I say “I”, something builds. Something gets bigger. And bigger. And bigger. And bigger. And there comes a moment when I know it is time to say “AM”, because I have built up so much of the “I” in me I am simply not able to build it up anymore.

And then I exhale and say, “AM”. And usually something goes “whoosh” down through my body. My whole body tingles.

I took in little teeny sips of air and built my “I”. Little “I’s” gathered until they got so big, I could not take in anymore. And I was compelled to say, “AM”, and “Whoosh!”.

This is a very important exercise. Take a breath and say “I” on the inhale and “AM” on the exhale. Always say, “That’s not it yet.” Then do it again. Make the next one better.

You can do this. You can make the next one bigger. After that one, say “Better, but that’s not it yet”. Then do another one, make it better. Do another one, make it better. Do another one, make it better. Make each one better than the last. Try to do each one with more of you. Straighten your posture. Change something. Make the next one better. There will come a moment, maybe the 7th, 8th, 9th, or 10th breath, when the assemblage of your “I AM” starts and you feel some conscience, some presence, in your whole body. Then, look at your left foot to see if it is there too. Make it happen there as well. Then get other parts of your body to participate.
Use your instinctive center to do it. Use your moving center’s stillness to participate. Use your emotional center to recognize the value of what it means to be the only creature on the face of the earth that knows you are here. The obligation that puts you under! Then, do them all together.

Finally, end up with one that just builds the “I”. Just “I”, “I”, “I”, “I”, “I”, “I”, “I”, “I”, “I”, as you sip in air. Oh my! Time to say “AM” … and …. Whoosh!

Stop and for a few moments feel the presence of yourself.

*WHERE AM I AT ON A SCALE FROM 1 TO 10? – RAS 1983:
This is an extra exercise I want to insert here.

This exercise is very powerful. It allows you to almost instantly raise your state. It is a simple exercise, but the results are very profound. At various moments during your day, you ask yourself, “Where am I on a scale from 1 to 10?” 1 being your worst state and 10 being your best state. “Where am I on a scale from 1 to 10?” That’s it. All you have to do is just ask yourself. Where am I on a scale from 1 to 10?

Try it now. Where are you at right now? If I asked you, right now, to give me a number of where you are on a scale from 1 to 10, what would you say? Remembering that 1 was your worst moment of consciousness and unity… and 10 was your best, where would you say you are, right now? Here, right now. Where are you? What number?

At this point, the numbers are meaningless. They just give us a place to start. So pick one. Let us say that you picked 6, just for a number. You are at a 6, which is an okay number. Now, here is the important question: What can you do to get to 7? That’s it! Now that you have identified that you are at a 6, what can you do to get to a 7? Simple!

Perhaps you can change your posture and get to a 7. Perhaps, envisioning the smile on the face of your child will get you to a 7. Or, perhaps, remembering a moment from your Objective Prayer, will get you to a 7. Something… will get you to a 7. And, surprisingly, most people find that to go from a 6 to a 7 takes only a matter of seconds!

Wow, really? You can get to a 7 in less than 20 seconds… just by remembering the smile on your child’s face. Yes. Amazing!

Are you at a 7 yet? I am sure you are. Congratulations.

So now, the question becomes. Do you stop at 7 or do you try for 8? Look through your memories and find a memory that will, again, change your state. One that will bring you to an 8. Or use your imagination to do it. Imagine that the love of your life says that they love you too, and that they will marry you. That may do it.

Wow! Are you an 8 yet? I bet you are. Good. That one took less than a minute. Okay, let’s not stop there. Let’s try for 9. Is that possible? Can you conjure up another thought? That is, remember your graduation, change your posture, or hold some image that will take you to a 9. I think you probably can. And, I am sure you can do it in less than 2-½ minutes.

And, you do.

Okay, now that you made it to a 9, do you stop there… or do you try for a 10? If you can make 9 in less than 2-½ minutes, how long will it take to make 10? Is it even possible to make 10? And, if you do, is it possible to make 11? Maybe, if you had the right thought, it would change your 9 into a 10.

For me, whenever I get to a high number, and am not sure if I can find a thought that will raise me further, I imagine that the most supreme being in the Universe, if there is one, has just stopped what they are doing, and turned their attention to the earth, because they heard that someone was trying to reach 10, and they just want to see if they will make it. That thought works for me. Find one that works for you. If you can perceive such a thought, it will probably take you to a 10. And, surprisingly, it will only take a few minutes.

Perhaps you will find that every thought you need, will be found in the Objective Prayer exercise (the 7th Steward exercise), because your Objective Prayer is a series of ideas that are designed to raise your state… no matter what state you are in.

If I am at a 4, I say, “I am a 4”, and then I start my objective prayer, and it accelerates me from a 4 to a 5, to a 6, to a 7. The makeup of those thoughts changes my state. And, by recalling them, I have a proven way to always move up. Just 2-½ minutes to change my state from an 8 to a 9. Just 2 ½ minutes…not a lifetime! So, why would I ever live at a 6 or a 7 again, when I know that I can go from a 6 to a 7 in less than 20 seconds, or from a 7 to an 8 in less than a minute, or from an 8 to a 9 in less than 2-½ minutes.

Sometimes you may find yourself at a 3 or 4 – due to life circumstances – but there ought to be a way to move from a 3 or 4 to a 5, and then from a 5 to a 6… Just as there was a way to move from a 6 to a 7… and beyond. Because of that, I am sure you will find something that will get you from a 3 to a 4 to a 5 as well – no matter how discombobulated you are. There will be something that you can do to change your state.

If we just remember this and often look at ourselves throughout the day, and ask, “Okay, where am I collectively in my state of consciousness. Where am I on a scale from 1 to 10?

Okay, I am feeling pretty good. I am at a 7… Now, what am I going to do to get to an 8? I know…. I will change my posture or remember a special moment. I will do something.” Maybe it takes 20 seconds or 30 seconds for me to change my state. It will most likely be relatively quick. It will not take a long time. It will not take a week. I will not have to sit in a lotus position for 2 days to do it. I simply have to calm myself, gather myself, and think of something. It is easy to remember something which raises my state. Changes me. Changes my chemistry.

That is how it works.

Fortunately, if I have the moments of my Objective Prayer memorized, I can, at any time – no matter where I am in myself – stop and ask myself, “Where am I on a scale from 1 to 10?” And, when I do, I can use my Objective Prayer to take me right to the top…. Maybe, even past my old 10.

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