Esoterica > The Work

Must not be doing it right

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Menna:
External Consideration. If an event happens or someone says something that I don't like sometimes I hold my tongue because I know that if I speak up or say something or point out another persons faults or what I didnt like about what they did it will hurt their feelings. I feel good in the moment when I spare them the hurt but then later when I go home I think about what has happened and then an emotion builds in me that makes it harder to think the event or what the person said clogs my mind. I then examin what happened and why that person did what they did and what could that mean? why did they do this? and so on. It is worse with the person or people closest to me. I don't want to hurt them so I wont react or say what I feel but then later on when I am alone I think about what happened. Ask myself why would they say or do that if they are thinking about or are considering me. My mind starts to obsess and ask questions. Can I live with this person? or be with that person if they are going to continue to make decisions like this or talk that way to me?

Any advice on how to better use this practice   

 

Hildegarda:
it is hard to give general advice on this practice, because clearly there is a particular incident that's bothering you.  If you would like to describe the situation, people may be able to offer you specific feedback. 

Endymion:
Here's a short quote from Gurdjieff on the subject of external considering (taken from In Search of the Miraculous).


--- Quote from: Gurdjieff ---External considering [...] is adaptation towards people, to their understanding, to their requirements. By considering externally a man does that which makes life easy for other people and himself. External considering requires a knowledge of men, an understanding of their tastes, habits, and prejudices. At the same time external considering requires a great power over oneself, a great control over oneself. Very often a man desires sincerely to express or somehow or other show to another man what he really thinks of him or feels about him. And if he is a weak man he will of course give way to this desire and afterwards justify himself and say that he did not want to lie, did not want to pretend, he wanted to be sincere.
--- End quote ---

I think that you may be describing a process of external considering turning into internal considering. At the beginning of your post you write:


--- Quote from: Menna --- If an event happens or someone says something that I don't like sometimes I hold my tongue because I know that if I speak up or say something or point out another persons faults or what I didnt like about what they did it will hurt their feelings.
--- End quote ---

Holding your tongue is external considering, OSIT, since you realise that your reaction to the other's behaviour is just that – your reaction, and of course is mechanical in nature. Hurting their feelings would not be making ' life easy for other people and himself', as Gurdjieff says. Then later in the post you write:


--- Quote from: Menna --- later on when I am alone I think about what happened. Ask myself why would they say or do that if they are thinking about or are considering me. My mind starts to obsess and ask questions. Can I live with this person? or be with that person if they are going to continue to make decisions like this or talk that way to me?
--- End quote ---

These thoughts, when you are alone after the event, are internal considering – self-importance, or so I think. They are all about you. Unless the other person is involved in the Work it is unlikely that they practice external considering in the way that we talk here about it. And it appears to me that your own desire to have the other person consider you, in the manner to which your self-importance makes you feel entitled, is what triggers these obsessive thoughts. Would it be possible to step back a little from your emotional and mental reactions and observe them in yourself as an automatic process that steals your energy?

A little more from Gurdjieff:


--- Quote from: Gurdjieff ---But if a man really remembers himself he understands that another man is a machine just as he is himself. And then he will enter into his position, he will put himself in his place, and he will be really able to understand and feel what another man thinks and feels.
--- End quote ---

OromNom:
I'm many 'haunted' by these some questions, sometimes I cannot define them (much less verbalize), but reading them in this forum makes them clear to me, makes clear to define what is going on inside me.
I think it comes down to real-time self-remembering, paying attention to whether or not one is being/acting mechanical, in auto-pilot so to say or if one is attentive to the inner processes and acting accordingly to that same focus of attention. Be it in social situations or at home alone with our own thoughts.

Menna:
"These thoughts, when you are alone after the event, are internal considering – self-importance, or so I think. They are all about you. Unless the other person is involved in the Work it is unlikely that they practice external considering in the way that we talk here about it. And it appears to me that your own desire to have the other person consider you, in the manner to which your self-importance makes you feel entitled, is what triggers these obsessive thoughts. Would it be possible to step back a little from your emotional and mental reactions and observe them in yourself as an automatic process that steals your energy?"

Yes yes that is it. I do notice these feelings and thoughts I catch myself day dreaming about these thoughts as well. I am able to catch myself but it comes back. I know that it is not productive thought and it does leave me tired. I do recognize my inner consideration - I don't want to recognize it I want it to not happen. I feel that if I can do away with or get a better handle on internal considering then that will be a big step in the work for me.

Hildegarda - example.

Lets say that my partner promissed me that they wouldn't have another sip of an alcoholic drink. They are good on this promise for a few months I don’t see it when it is just me and my partner there is no drinking. But when my partner has their friends over she says to me (in front of her friends)...I am going to have a drink and then does...At the time I want to say "No way you made a promise to me. i sacrifice so much for you and our relationship I keep my promises and now that your friends are around you want to go against me to do something with them break a promise." This is what I want to say but that is confrontation and puts my partner down in front of her friends." So instead I take a breath and say "do what you want" Then later if Im in bed or daydreaming the situation comes back in my mind and I say how could she do that why would she do this is this always going to happen. I wouldn’t do something I promised her that I wouldn’t do just bc my friends are around I also look at the person that disrespected me or did something I didn't like. If it is a stranger of an acquaintance then I don’t care but if it is someone close who I have respected and been giving to then i feel like I am being taken advantage of ." If I feel I am being taken advantage of or disrespected then internal consideration pops up.                                   

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