Regarding the zoning out, it may be that a different ‘order’ of Time is being experienced or maybe there's a different kind of time that's more associated with 'Being' or something like that.
Maurice Nicoll said in his Psychological Commentaries On the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky Vol 3 page 1130:
At first I wasn’t sure whether my zoning out was just getting lost in my imagination (i.e. idle day dreaming) but within a very short time after doing the Prayer of the Soul (before going to bed) it became clear to me that the zoning out was something of a different order.
With ordinary daydreaming I would sometimes dissociate back into childhood events (and I still do this) that were traumatic and psychologically wounding and get lost in that experience, losing touch with what is happening now. Even though I was “there” in the past experience there was a loss of contact and presence, with what was happening now. I could not, when within the present moment of my experience, accurately and objectively “locate” the true reality of the past traumatic experience in its full intensity, only because when subjectively experiencing it I’d, by definition, be lost in it, and thus, lost to what was fully happening in the present moment. The past and present were separated.
In this case when it’s ordinary daydreaming in “ordinary” time, the present moment and the past were basically experienced on the same level of consciousness, in the sense that the present moment, that is, what happens to be happening right now, and my awareness (or lack thereof) of this present moment, was just as unconscious and mechanical as my re-living a past traumatic event that I would get lost into, and trapped within. It’s as if pieces of my soul essence had gotten trapped within my feelings of guilt, shame, doubt, loss of hope, despair that was brought about by those experiences in my life where trauma and deep emotional pain was experienced.
However, my review of these events can be so skewed, due to my own subjective interpretation of them, that I don’t really re-experience the real, actual event in an objective way (when dissociating into it) but it’s only an imaginary event in the past that is really being experienced, even though the event actually happened and there is real trauma associated with it. But my assessment of the actual event(s) are so subjective (due to the emotional trauma and my lack of understanding) that my awareness gets trapped into it, and my idle daydreaming, which is based on a low, automatic level of consciousness is what often leads me into this subjective trap from which I cannot escape due to the low level of my consciousness and lack of understanding of the true nature of the event and the underlying dynamics behind it.
When I begin to see that I was basically a sleeping machine within the context of these events and that the people associated with it were equally asleep and mechanical within the context of this event then it’s not only easier for me to forgive myself (actually that is never easy), but to forgive others as well.
What I find with the zoning out when doing the Prayer of the Soul is that it's not daydreaming in the sense spoken about above but its seeing events in my life (which includes traumatic events) from a higher perspective and, while zoned out (and in-between coming back to focusing on the prayer), something is going on within at another level that somehow (although I don’t really understand and am unconscious of it) that is slowly untangling the subjective emotional knot that's formed by my subjective interpretations of the event based on my personal narcissistic feelings and lack of willingness to understand the event objectively (which causes me to constantly and automatically to keep re-living it, kinda like banging my head against the wall only because it feels so good when I stop).
The process of zoning out and then coming back helps me to take back that soul part of myself that got trapped in the event from the emotional pain associated with it and which locked my consciousness into it and got trapped there. In the morning, after doing the prayer there is a feeling of emotional relief even though I may experience and re-live (when least expecting it) these painful experiences again during the day. But something, slowly, gets untangled from the events, some emotional part of it gets freed that trapped a part of my soul into the past and the event gets easier to witness and consciously “locate” even though there is still pain involved in the re-experiencing of it.
Maurice Nicoll said in his Psychological Commentaries On the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky Vol 3 page 1130:
At first I wasn’t sure whether my zoning out was just getting lost in my imagination (i.e. idle day dreaming) but within a very short time after doing the Prayer of the Soul (before going to bed) it became clear to me that the zoning out was something of a different order.
With ordinary daydreaming I would sometimes dissociate back into childhood events (and I still do this) that were traumatic and psychologically wounding and get lost in that experience, losing touch with what is happening now. Even though I was “there” in the past experience there was a loss of contact and presence, with what was happening now. I could not, when within the present moment of my experience, accurately and objectively “locate” the true reality of the past traumatic experience in its full intensity, only because when subjectively experiencing it I’d, by definition, be lost in it, and thus, lost to what was fully happening in the present moment. The past and present were separated.
In this case when it’s ordinary daydreaming in “ordinary” time, the present moment and the past were basically experienced on the same level of consciousness, in the sense that the present moment, that is, what happens to be happening right now, and my awareness (or lack thereof) of this present moment, was just as unconscious and mechanical as my re-living a past traumatic event that I would get lost into, and trapped within. It’s as if pieces of my soul essence had gotten trapped within my feelings of guilt, shame, doubt, loss of hope, despair that was brought about by those experiences in my life where trauma and deep emotional pain was experienced.
However, my review of these events can be so skewed, due to my own subjective interpretation of them, that I don’t really re-experience the real, actual event in an objective way (when dissociating into it) but it’s only an imaginary event in the past that is really being experienced, even though the event actually happened and there is real trauma associated with it. But my assessment of the actual event(s) are so subjective (due to the emotional trauma and my lack of understanding) that my awareness gets trapped into it, and my idle daydreaming, which is based on a low, automatic level of consciousness is what often leads me into this subjective trap from which I cannot escape due to the low level of my consciousness and lack of understanding of the true nature of the event and the underlying dynamics behind it.
When I begin to see that I was basically a sleeping machine within the context of these events and that the people associated with it were equally asleep and mechanical within the context of this event then it’s not only easier for me to forgive myself (actually that is never easy), but to forgive others as well.
What I find with the zoning out when doing the Prayer of the Soul is that it's not daydreaming in the sense spoken about above but its seeing events in my life (which includes traumatic events) from a higher perspective and, while zoned out (and in-between coming back to focusing on the prayer), something is going on within at another level that somehow (although I don’t really understand and am unconscious of it) that is slowly untangling the subjective emotional knot that's formed by my subjective interpretations of the event based on my personal narcissistic feelings and lack of willingness to understand the event objectively (which causes me to constantly and automatically to keep re-living it, kinda like banging my head against the wall only because it feels so good when I stop).
The process of zoning out and then coming back helps me to take back that soul part of myself that got trapped in the event from the emotional pain associated with it and which locked my consciousness into it and got trapped there. In the morning, after doing the prayer there is a feeling of emotional relief even though I may experience and re-live (when least expecting it) these painful experiences again during the day. But something, slowly, gets untangled from the events, some emotional part of it gets freed that trapped a part of my soul into the past and the event gets easier to witness and consciously “locate” even though there is still pain involved in the re-experiencing of it.
