Coherence: The Secret Science of The Work? Practical Fourth Way Guide?

[Richs]

I do not know about others, but I am usually skeptical of people who appear to have positive emotions all the time. That could be because I am far away from such a state and so subjective. More objectively, I would ask what the person is doing with all these positive emotions? Behavior is usually a good first level indicator of what is going on.

I agree that I would think that someone who was always nothing but 'happy go lucky' and never felt anything else would bother me too.

I think that the C's quote "you may only have positive emotions if you wish" may be in some way misunderstood.

It appears there are actually two distinct types of emotion. The first is the 'impure' or 'tainted' emotions which probably emanate from the Lower Emotional Center and are things we feel like envy, hate, greed, etc.

The second are the 'pure' emotions which are not 'tainted' by the lower, base emotional input and probably emanate from the Higher Emotional Center.

IF we receive input of emotional content from the Higher Emotional Center and these are not tainted by the concerns and inputs from the Lower Emotional Center and utilize these emotions as 'input' to our mentality they can 'inform' us further about the world around us than by simply using our Intellectual Center alone with the other inputs it receives from all over.

This does not mean that things just don't bother you. I cry over sad things and rejoice over happy things, and sometimes cry for joy. But, I do think that if one is utilizing their emotions properly there is a subtle, but different 'feel' to life. At least, that has been my experience.

So, it seems to me that if we are using these 'pure' emotions as an input source, rather than being controlled by our base emotions, and if our Higher Centers are integrated and balanced we may be able to regard these emotional inputs as 'positive' because they are an invaluable information source which allows us to see and understand the world around us more clearly.

I can tell you that when I was first introduced some time ago about the concept of Centers I was a bit confused, and tended to think that the Upper and Lower were actually separate entities. Over some time I have come to think that this is not literally true and that it is actually how they are used, how they function, that makes the difference. I may be wrong here but this is the way I personally understand it.

A difficulty in the Work is that there does not seem to be terminology which describes what goes on 'within us' so clearly and accurately that we can understand things which do not actually have a physical embodiment we can point to and say "there is such and such Center".

I hope my thoughts have been helpful.

 

[beetlemaniac]

Just some comments with regards to Fourth Way as transmitted by Gurdjieff and comparing it to Watkins' work.

When thinking about breathing exercises in general, I do not get consistent results from applying them in daily life. The state of the body seems to dictate whether the desired state or HRV can be reached or not. Another factor is also my lack of discipline or lack of form/technique, which generally tends to stray away from optimal with time and as inertia sets in. Also, something irked me about the comment G gave in one of his lectures about breathing exercises. I found this on my search:
[...]

Very interesting! Thank you very much for bringing up Gurdjieffs statements about breathing, I wasn't aware of them. So basically Gurdjieff says that when you are not fully aware of or bodily systems and how they interact, that controlled breathing can do more demage then anything else?

Maybe it is because if you get your HRV into coherent state, all the other bodily systems are forced to entrain (or swing) to that signal, even if your other systems are not properly tuned or working well, which sort of makes a mess?

What I noticed while I tried to do the rythmic breathing skill, is that, yes after a while something really changes physiologically, but the more I try to control it over time, then in the times I'm not doing it, I seem to sort of crash down energetically and my solar plexus area feels under pressure. I guess it has something to do with the fact that my system is basically a mess, that can not handle such strong signals.

What I seemed to notice though, is that, I seemed to get more aware on how chaotic my breathing and heart beat gets in different situations.

So I guess it is better to be cautious about controlling your breathing to bring it to a default mode, especially if your system is a mess!

Watkins says that in order to get to the stage of "complete coherence" it is not enough to just focus on one aspect like the awarness of the physical body and its systems. Watkins explains in the video below, starting at 10:50, that control over your breath and thus your heart is just one way of many ways how to become aware of your bodily reactions:

[...[

So when I understand it right, Watkins sees that skill just as one of many ways to get to an awarness of how our bodily systems react at any given moment and where it stems from (from a bodily signal, an emotion, a feeeling or a thought: or a mix of several aspects) and not the end or goal in itself.

Hi Pashalis, about the breathing exercises -- what you have written above have mostly been my concerns as well. It's curious how doing EE is one of the (crucial) steps get the body and mind, or the being to a more coherent state, if you will. The issues that people seem to face with EE is usually related to overwhelming reactions from their physiology, usually related to an upwelling of blocked emotions. It can be hard to complete a whole session of EE for first-timers. And what are these blocked emotions? I guess they are the buffers or "armoring" as Wilhelm Reich termed it. This keeps us locked in certain patterns of behavior which, taken together, form the false personality. But the picture is not yet complete, since it's not just in the body, but also in the brain that this false personality manifests itself. There are techniques to help people with issues such as addictions which work on the neural level rather than the body level. For example the 4 steps program by Jeffrey Schwartz (_http://hope4ocd.com/foursteps.php) helps with this (Relabel, Reattribute, Refocus, Revalue). This helps engage the prefrontal cortex in an effort to rewire the brain.

What I'm trying to get at is that there is a form of coherence that the C's call "connecting/balancing chakras" that we can hope to achieve and maintain in our lives through the methods and knowledge that have been generously made available here. I am reading Jeanne de Salzmann's book On Reality of Being where she mentions something similar as well, and she calls it "Presence". The book is really very slow reading, as the concepts that she alludes to are esoteric, with her own intimate style of communicating them. I will get back to it today.

This is a related excerpt from a session (16 July 2009):

Q: (L) I guess you'll have to watch those first two videos over and over again. (A***) We'll figure them out easily enough. (L) Alright peoples, are we done? Or are you guys so enthused that we just take a break? (Break) (L) So basically, we can recapitulate by saying that people need to learn to breathe. Breathing can change things in their physiology. And also they need to use the breathing to get themselves into a meditative state, or a state where they can do the bioenergetic breathing, which then helps them to release karmic and current life programs and issues and get a cleansing. Once they've started to become cleansed, then they are able to - and this is supposed to be interspersed with, as I understand it - continuous input of data and information. They did say that you use this to deal with reality. This meditating and breathing is not an escape, this is a healing. Meanwhile, you're supposed to at the same time - throughout the day - you're supposed to be paying close attention to reality and not falling into illusion. Okay, so we've got that part of the program. And then once these people begin to clear out their traumas and their programs and get free of illusions and so forth, that means that they are then better able to use facing reality and thinking with a hammer to connect their chakras. And that, I assume, means connecting to their higher intellectual center and higher emotional center. Of course, you connect the emotional center first and then the intellect comes in also. So, in other words, they become kind of like connected with themselves in the future so to say. Am I on track so far?

A: Yes. But we would like to point that all "souled" individuals are members of a fragmented 6D soul/being. When they begin to connect with their future/higher centers, this implies a natural connecting with the other members of their soul group.

 

[beetlemaniac]

This passage from the Alexander Lowen website explains further that right breathing involves first dissolving the tensions in the body that restrict expression of emotion. Breathing exercises per se do not help enough if the body is constantly bracing against emotion. It's a kind of Catch-22 situation where you can't breathe well, but the only way out of it is to breathe better. So maybe the awareness of the muscular contractions keeping our emotions at bay (and we have so many muscle that do this, so we are spoilt for choice!) while doing the pipe breathing can help. Using creative methods of vagal stimulation, such as sighing, humming, singing, and voluntarily contracting certain muscles such as the abdominals can help ameliorate pent up tension in the body as well. However, none of these techniques can replace the EE's structured breathing exercise. The issue with EE is it needs dedication and time, it's not a quick fix.

http://alexanderlowenfoundation.com/breathing.html

But most of us are aware of the importance of breathing. And bioenergetics doesn’t concentrate heavily on breathing exercises. If we ask you to be conscious of your breathing, it is only to help you become able to breathe easily and deeply naturally, without being conscious of it. Our focus is on helping you sense and release the tensions that prevent you from breathing naturally. Breathing is not normally something we should be that conscious of. An animal or a young child breathes correctly and needs neither instruction nor help to do this. Adults, however, tend to have disturbed breathing patterns because of chronic muscular tensions that distort and limit their breathing. These tensions are the result of emotional conflicts that have developed in the course of their growing up.

Breathing exercises help somewhat, but they do nothing to reduce the tensions and restore natural breathing patterns. One has to understand these natural breathing patterns and know why they become disturbed, and one has to learn how to release the tensions that disrupt the natural breathing pattern.

The pattern of relaxed breathing (when one is not in a state of great exertion or strong emotion) is downward and outward in inspiration (inhaling air). The diaphragm contracts and descends, allowing the lungs to expand downward as they inflate. This is the direction of least resistance for the expansion of the lungs. The abdomen enlarges through an outward movement of the wall to make room for the downward movement of the lungs. The contraction of the diaphragm also raises the lower ribs, which motion is assisted by the contraction of the intercostal muscles (those connecting one rib to another). The chest also expands outward in this process, but relaxed breathing is predominantly abdominal rather than thoracic (chest) breathing. In such breathing one takes in a maximum amount of air for the minimum effort.

Healthy breathing is a total body action; all the muscles of the body are involved to some degree. This is especially true of the deep pelvic muscles that rotate the pelvis slightly backward and downward during inspiration to enlarge the belly and then rotate it forward and upward to decrease the abdominal cavity during expiration. This forward movement of the pelvis is aided by a contraction of the abdominal muscles. Expiration, however, is mostly a passive process best exemplified by a sigh.

 

[Ollie]

I do not know about others, but I am usually skeptical of people who appear to have positive emotions all the time. That could be because I am far away from such a state and so subjective. More objectively, I would ask what the person is doing with all these positive emotions? Behavior is usually a good first level indicator of what is going on.

I agree that I would think that someone who was always nothing but 'happy go lucky' and never felt anything else would bother me too.

Whilst I agree, there may be another perspective on this.

Societal influences are numerous … Culturally we are a society that promotes and rewards those individuals who blunt their emotions. Being “calm, cool and collected” is a positive value in our culture. … however, the difference to how we think we should feel about a situation or an event in our lives (conscious emotion) and what we really feel (of the unconscious emotion) becomes psychogentric.

I think that the C's quote "you may only have positive emotions if you wish" may be in some way misunderstood.

It appears there are actually two distinct types of emotion. The first is the 'impure' or 'tainted' emotions which probably emanate from the Lower Emotional Center and are things we feel like envy, hate, greed, etc.

The second are the 'pure' emotions which are not 'tainted' by the lower, base emotional input and probably emanate from the Higher Emotional Center.

In terms of emotions, particularly those that are either conscious or unconscious, there are many causes and types:

The psychologist Ross Buck distinguishes between three levels of emotional response, which he calls Emotion I, Emotion II and Emotion III, classified according to the degree in which we are conscious of them.

Emotion III is the subjective experience from within oneself. It is how we feel. In the experience of Emotion III there is no conscious awareness of an emotional state, such as anger, joy or fear [ie, both positive and negative] and its accompanying bodily sensations.

Emotion II comprises our emotional our emotional displays as seen by others, with or without our awareness. It is signalled through body language - … - often outside the awareness of the participants. … Our expressions of Emotion II are what most affect other people, regardless of our attention.

Emotion I comprises the physiological changes triggered by emotional stimuli, such as the nervous system discharges, hormonal output and immune changes that make up the flight-or-fight reaction in response to threat. These responses are not under conscious control, and they cannot be directly observed from the outside. They cannot be directly observed from the outside. They may occur in the absence of subjective awareness or of emotional expression.

… The issues that people seem to face with EE is usually related to overwhelming reactions from their physiology, usually related to an upwelling of blocked emotions. It can be hard to complete a whole session of EE for first-timers. And what are these blocked emotions? …

For an explanation, you may find this interesting:

… the unconscious mind is the site of repressed and suppressed emotions. It is where the reservoir of rage lurks. …

… three potential sources for this rage in the unconscious. In each person the quantity from each will vary:

1. Stresses and strains of everyday life.
2. The residue of anger from infancy and childhood [eg, sadness and emotional pain].
3. Internal conflict (self-imposed pressure – the clash of the id and the superego; it also comes from perfectionism and goodism traits).

This may help, or not.