Radical Presence via the Gurdjieff Meditation "Plus"

From my forthcoming book:
LOVE, LUST & ENLIGHTENMENT

Day Seven: Enlightenment as being
“In Your Body”
The Gurdjieff Meditation Plus….

Here’s how to enjoy being more awake in your day: be present to your arms and legs.

And spine

All day.

Get out of your head and come to your senses.

Get out of those words in your noggin and sense your feet and toes, as far away from your head as you can get and still be in your body. Sense your spine holding them all together.

The party of being human.

The “five lines” that a child often draws when they first draw people: a head, a line down from the head. Two legs off the bottom of that line. Two arms up higher off the line.

Sense the five lines of you.

This is why people like yoga: it kind of makes a game of the various shapes you can put the lines in.

This is why the Gurdjieff meditation “plus” is so useful: Wherever you are you are in some “shape.”

What is it?

What is it now?

The “plus” is because the Gurdjieff meditation as the standard and amazing practice is both arms and both legs, and “meditation” days are painting houses, and building decks and digging ponds, as chances to practice being “in” the arms and legs.

The “plus” of the spine in from Moshe Feldkenkrais and that work I mentioned in the chapter on the weekend where I felt like I was twelve again. Moshe likes people to see themselves as five lines.

He understood that as the way the brain organizes movement most quickly.

This book is about enlightenment.

Enlightenment is about coming out of our heads and into our senses.

Arms and legs and spine are a huge percentage of our real estate and always in some configuration.

And we are usually unaware of these big chunks of us, unless we are lucky enough to have a physical job.

And when we put out attention on our five lines, vast chunks of our brains are lit up.

And our attention is vastly sharpened.

Don’t believe me.

Give it a go.

Sense those feet and toes.

And legs.

Sense those finger and hands.

And arms.

And spine/ head/ pelvis.

Wiggle around, talk, stand, sit, talk, write.

Sense them as you do anything. Everything.

Let’s do the morning meditation.

This will help Love. You want need to drag for attention. You’ll be giving it to yourself.

This will help Lust. You’ll be in the full body, not just genitally driven.

This will help enlightenment. Not just meditating with your eyes closed, but all day, how much more delightful time to “wake up”

Here goes:

Sit in a chair. Or anywhere, feet on the ground/ floor.

Close your eyes.

RIGHT LEG

Start at the tips of your right toes.

Sense them all, and keeping the attention always where it’s been before, move your attention bit by bit up through your leg to sense all the inside and outer flesh of your toes, until you reach your feet.

The whole foot, all of it, inside and out.

The ankle.

Up, up, keeping all you’ve sensed so far.

The lower leg.

Knee. ( No words, just sense it as…..sensation)

The upper leg, all the way to the hip joint.

Sense this entire chuck of you, toe tips to hip joint. Fill it up with attention.

THE RIGHT ARM

Keep the entire right leg lit up with attention and add on the fingertips of the right hand.

Move up, through the ‘

Fingers

Hand

Wrist

Lower arm

Elbow

Upper arm, to the shoulder socket.

KEEP THE WHOLE RIGHT ARM AND ENTIRE RIGHT LEG IN ATTENTION.

Good.

And now, add on

THE LEFT ARM

Starting from the top, this mediation sometimes being called, “around the world.”

The left upper arm from shoulder down to the

Elbow and then

Lower arm, wrist, hand, fingers, finger tips.

KEEP THE WHOLE LEFT ARM AND TWO RIGHT LIMBS IN ATTENTION.

Now, finishing the “circle”

THE LEFT LEG

Upper leg at the hip joint, down through ALL of it to the

Knee

Lower leg, ankle, foot, toes and toe tips

Now sense all four, fully, for while, then add on

YOUR SPINE.

Start with your pelvis. Feel how it connects to both legs, which you are keeping in sensing.

Find the spine rising out of your pelvis and sense up, as much vertebra by vertebra as you can, to the base of your skull.

The spine doesn’t attach to the arms, but feel their proximity, and sneak in the ribs if you want.

Feel the skull, your skull on top of your spine, as if pelvis – spine – head are your central line.

Which they are.

SENSE ALL FIVE.

INDULGE AND ENJOY.

Then

Add on listening. Hear whatever you hear WHILE KEEPING BOTH ARMS AND BOTH LEGS ABD YOUR SPINE IN ATTENTION.

You now have inner and outer attention.

Bask in that for awhile.

Then OPEN THE EYES AND NOTICE REFLECTED LIGHT COMING IN TO THEM.

Four windows out into the world , two ears and two eyes.

Five bastions of inner attention, two legs and two arms and one spine.

Hang out in this fullness.

Now get up and go about your day staying in all this attention.