“Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.” – André Gide.
I have very recently, in the last couple of days, decided to split this post into two parts, as I am finding that it has become far too unwieldily for me to manage in quite the way that I would like.
This particular post then will deal further with my own experiences at ‘Working’; while the next post will focus mainly on my attempts to come to some practical understanding, concerning what I believe is another major concept of Eugene Halliday’s (and one that I maintain is intimately linked with ‘Working’), that of ‘Being here now’.
For the time being at least, these two post will be the last ones in which I will be dealing solely with these related ideas.
I should also add here, that although the contents of this particular post arose as a direct consequence of the comment Richard had posted at the end of my previous post (here), what I have written below is not intended to constitute a reply.
To begin then …
NOTE: At some point during this post I hope it will become clear to you why it is that, when I’m attempting to clarify what I mean (certainly in practice) by the terms, work (‘work/Work’) and working (‘working/Working’, I make use of both, the small-case ‘w’, and also the upper-case ‘W’.
If you maintain that you’re having real problems in coming to an appreciation of this ‘work/Work’ concept of Eugene Halliday’s (a situation that is understandable if you’re relatively new to his material; but difficult (at least for me) to appreciate if you claim to have been ‘working/Working’ – or ‘involving yourself’ with his ideas for a reasonable amount of time) then what I am suggesting below, is that the tackling of questions such as “Who is doing the work?” might be used to uncover a great deal of useful information – and perhaps even result in an increase in overall understanding here. Particularly if this subject is approached with questions that attempt to view it from a number of disparate (and maybe not quite so obvious) viewpoints.
I have used this approach myself a great deal over the years as a means of uncovering information concerning this, and also a variety of other subjects that have – one way or another – somehow managed to ‘take my fancy’.
I would claim that this approach is, in many ways (in part at least) similar to the one used in deconstructing texts. Particularly where I am attempting to discover any ‘gaps’ that I believe might be situated ‘around the periphery of’ the accepted meaning of the text(s) that I am examining.
This approach was one that I first began using as a consequence of the way in which I believed I understood Eugene Halliday’s ideas regarding the (as he puts it) ‘limits of the application of terms’.
A quick comment here then before continuing, about Eugene Halliday’s ‘limits of the application of terms’…
If you continually attempt to bear this idea of Halliday’s in mind, you will hopefully, in the ‘here and now’ moment, eventually become aware that any utterance you are presently making use of (that is – any concept, or any idea that you are presently examining) is always relative; is always bounded; and is thus then, always heuristic by its very nature…
You do not, and cannot, speak exhaustively about anything whatsoever, and thus any attempt to say what is absolutely ‘real’ is – before you begin – doomed to failure.
What you can do though, is objectify your present view of the world, and construct a relative viewpoint in such a way that it allows you to move forward.
You need to formulate then, what it is that will (for the moment at least) allow you some measure of predictability in the manner in which you proceed… Or, in my case, what exactly was it that I need to know now in order to make some progress – had become the pressing question here for me.
So we can say that, when using language as a method of formulating meaning, we are always being, in some measure at least, hypothetical … And thus we can, in practice, be aware then, that the moment we hypostatize our hypothesis – that is, that we believe it to be ‘real’ – we are already beginning our slide down the slippery slope of the process that Eugene Halliday refers to as ‘identification’…
The ‘name of the particular game’ here for me then, is to attempt an understanding of the context, the range, and the scope, of that group of ideas contained in Eugene Halliday’s term ‘Work’ – in order to discover ‘the limits of the application of this (particular) term’… for me.
If I am – to any significant degree – successful, it should then be possible for me to realize when I can properly make use of this term, and so when it might be prudent for me to use a different one (such as: ‘talking past myself’; ‘fiddling about’; ’trying to be a smart-ass’; ‘fantasizing’; or ‘dithering’).
Here, then, are a number of ‘different’ approaches that I would suggest could be used in order to throw further light on this term – ‘working/Working’
- Can you be ‘Working’ and not ‘know’ (not be aware) that you are? …Can you ‘Work’ without ever – either vaguely or exhaustively – attempting to define (and thus subsequently give a textual meaning to) this concept/activity? Or – putting this another way – can you Work and be completely unable (or perhaps simply just not see the point of) formulating a precise definition for this mode of activity? …. Looking at the question this way could help you get some idea of just how important the formulating of concepts like these are to you (at least emotionally).
- If, on examining a significant number of examples, you arrive at the conclusion that knowing what ‘Work is’ appears to matter very little in these instances (that is – where it concerns the process of actually doing some Work) then this conclusion of yours could lead you to maintain that people who need to define and explain everything in this way might very well not in fact be, in some way, superior here… But, rather, that they might actually be handicapped by this continual attempt on their part to engage in an endless search for (and subsequent pontification over) the ‘correct definition’, or the ‘real meaning’, of everything… A process that might even have gone so far as to see them agonizing over every single letter that they make use of, during these attempts of theirs.
- Would you ever maintain something like, “‘Working’ constitutes its own definition; it is its own text… It does not need some form of further elaboration.” Or perhaps, “It is the real and only expression of Love, and it ‘speaks for itself’.” …And if you did, what would you mean by that?
- Are you the sort of person that, when presented by someone else with explanations, like (say) the one that I have used for ‘Working’ in the paragraph above, thinks that its ‘very good’. And, as a direct consequence, will then immediately attempt to appropriate it? … If you are, to what degree do you then attempt to ‘make it your own’ by, say, meditating over this ‘explanation that has taken your fancy’, and then attempting to incorporate it into some form of praxis (use it to ‘work/Work’ yourself)? … Or do you just find that you now have a very good way of disguising the fact that you – in truth – don’t actually do much work – but when asked about the subject, you can now ‘say something smart about it’ and so appear to those who are looking for answers here, to be someone you’re not; that is, to be someone who is practically ‘in the know’..
- What advantages were obtained (if any) by you, in studying material produced by people like Eugene Halliday (and perhaps others in the same field) where it concerns your own efforts at – what it is that you now (or in the past) refer(ed) to as – ‘Working’?
- Was it essential to you that there was someone like Eugene Halliday ‘about’ – a person with whom you believed (or imagined) that you could form some sort of (meaningful) relationship with, in order to – in principle at least – come to any subsequent understanding (as you see it) of this concept of ‘Working’? … That is, would you subscribe to one version or another of the idea that some sort of ‘qualified teacher’ is essential here – before you can begin to engage in something like ‘Working’? ….
- And to put this last bit into some sort of context… The overwhelming majority of those beings who were passing themselves off as ‘yoga teachers’ in the 60’s and early ‘70’s (such as Ken Ratcliffe) had learned what it was that they thought they knew about the subject from either: reading a book; listening to a recording; watching others doing it on TV; making it up themselves; engaging in – and subsequently promoting – various calisthenic and/or calming exercises that are all rather obvious really; or (like John, Paul, George, and Ringo) hanging around with some guy who hailed from ‘East of Suez’ (take your pick) while, at the same time, dressing-up like extras for the cover of a ‘Quality Street’ chocolate-box photo shoot… In these instances above though, would you say that, even so, it would still be possible to gain at least some understanding of what it was that ‘working/Working’ might actually be about; even if these particular experiences only resulted in serving to illuminate what ‘Working’ ‘was not’?…
- If your answer to this last question was, “Yes, you must have a teacher,” then how do you arrive at the conclusion that the particular teacher you’ve ‘signed up with’ knows what they are talking about? … Do you take it on trust? … Would it simply be that they appeared to be ‘popular in a particular ‘occult’ area’ (like Russell Grant in Astrology, say)? Or would you say that you ‘just knew’ they were the right person, because of the ‘strong feeling’ you had about it…. Or was it for a completely different reason – for example, you felt that if you demonstrated a ‘real earnestness to learn’, this person (unlike almost everyone else you knew) might recognize something in you ‘of true worth’ and ‘bring it out in you’… Or something like that?
- Would you admit that, although you don’t need a ‘teacher’ constantly, the truth of the matter is, that you believe you needed someone to point you in roughly the right direction at the beginning here… Even if you subsequently ‘moved on’ and severed this relationship.
- Do you believe that ‘Working’ is something that you (and perhaps all human beings) are, somehow, already naturally required, or fundamentally equipped, to engage in? … Or do they need to acquire – what you presently believe are – ‘special powers’, (such as ‘reflexive self-consciousness’ for example). And thus, that this activity therefore, is only available to the ‘fortunate few’ (or some group or other of ‘The Elect’ etc.)… Or do you believe that your average milkman/postman/fisherman/tax-collector/’lady of the night’ would have just as much success at understanding – and of actually actively engaging in – ‘work/Work’ as, say, Eugene Halliday? … What are your reasons for thinking about this in the way that you do?
- Was ‘becoming involved in these sorts of activities’ a course of action that you thought you might like to embark upon (when you could get round to it) that was suggested to you by someone else (as an ‘idea’ or ‘concept’, or ‘interest’) … By someone who (perhaps) represented some sort of ‘authority figure’ here… … But that, even so, this idea already appealed to you in some way? (You rather liked the sound of it’ – although you didn’t really understand it at the time – but just ‘sort of’ believed that – one way or another – ‘it would all become ‘clear(er)’…eventually… ).
- Did you have a vague intuition that becoming involved in ‘this sort of thing’ would somehow make you a ‘more interesting person’, either to yourself, or to others… Why?
- Do your ideas about ‘Working’ include the necessity for you to be associated with some particular group of people?
- If the answer to the last question is ‘Yes’, do you believe that this group would be hierarchically organized, and that your position in this hierarchy, or the activities with this group that you like to engage in, constitute for you, in some way, a measure of your ‘success’ in ‘all this’?
I am suggesting that you look at these questions (and questions here like this) because they arise out of my own experiences – which I believe is a far better approach for me to take here than attempting to supply (yet more) mysterious and occult ideas that I have purloined from either some book; or from some other source; or have ‘personalized’ from someone else’s ideas, or from accounts of their own experiences … (Which is something that I am more than capable of doing, by the way 🙂 …)
I began reflecting upon my own position here relatively early on in all this, with the result that I came to realize that I had swallowed this particular ‘work/Work’ concept, ‘hook line and sinker’ (along with quite a few others) – without really understanding it – simply because I was attracted to it, and found it so appealing! … If I were to be more precise, I would maintain that I was, in fact, seduced by these ideas (a situation that I have alluded to in other posts) …
And so, as a direct result of this ‘seduction’, it became essential that – before I went any further – I completely understood that I would have to take full responsibility (or as much responsibility as I could) for what it was that I had willingly allowed to happen to me here… if I was ever going to move on, that is… Otherwise I would be condemned to a life of ‘turning up at meetings’ without really understanding why… These habitual ‘social occasions’ being pleasant enough so as to not ‘rattle my cage’ and perhaps ‘wake me up’ … (Heaven forbid!)..
To elaborate on the seductive aspect of these ideas for a moment (as far I experienced them), this idea of ‘working/Working’ (and ideas very like it) seemed to point to the possibility of my appreciation of – and perhaps my subsequent direct involvement with – other ideas that I vaguely thought were ‘related’. Such as; ‘understanding’ stuff from the vantage point of a ‘higher level of consciousness’ (although I did not – and still do not – have the faintest idea as to what that term might really mean in practice); or come to embrace the idea that we were all, somehow, disembodied beings, who were making use of these ‘gross material’ bodies of ours – via our various ‘consciousnesses’; or perhaps we were all making use of the same consciousness; or indeed, that perhaps ‘it’ was making use of ‘us’ – and upon dying we would all subsequently be released (somehow) in order to ‘fly off’ (or ‘plummet down headlong’) to a ‘better (or even worse) place’ as a direct consequence of some sort of ‘evolutionary mechanism’, or ‘grand cosmic plan’..
I should also mention here, that one of the very real problems with Eugene’s material that I initially had during that first ten years or so was one that I now realize was absolutely necessary for me to experience… Which was that, the more that I fancied that I ‘understood’ his ideas, the more this meant – in some way – that I was finally getting to know ‘what was really going on’ down here… But in practice, nothing could have been further from the truth … and I was actually, instead, very busy laboring away at ‘vanishing up my own behind’…. Luckily for me though, during this period, I was still unable to give up the fags, booze and other recreational ‘enhancers’, bacon sandwiches, visits to the White City dog track, and the perusing of magazines such as ‘Tit-Bits’ and ‘Reveille’, etc. … Which probably went a long way towards saving me for more advanced stuff… (Which is, so to say, after I had ‘matured a bit’) …
Anyway, it was some time before I was able to stop (for short periods at least) all the ‘occult fantasizing’ that was going on. And it was with something approaching relief that I eventually came to accept – and also realized that it would be extremely profitable for me to go along with – Eugene Halliday’s concept of ‘working/Working’ – which he defined simply as, ‘The act/process of ordering (sentient) power’.
Of course, seeing the subject this way didn’t actually make it any easier for me to do any ‘work/Work’ myself… Although, it was now beginning to dawn on me that this ‘working’ (lower-case ‘w’) was not (and indeed had never been) a problem – because ‘working’ was something that I was doing all the time, and actually couldn’t stop doing – whether I liked it or not.. But luckily – from this perspective – I saw that it might now be possible for me to change things, by attempting to find ways of limiting the negative affects of my ‘working’ if I could; or even devise ways of increasing my ability to actually do some ‘Work’ (upper-case ‘W’).
In addition, accepting this concept of Eugene Halliday’s in the way that I now did, allowed me to view beings who weren’t particularly nice (such as Satan, Adolph Hitler, and Batman), and also very nice people (such as St Francis of Assisi, Miss Marple, and Jimmy Carter) to have been reasonably adept at managing their own abilities to ‘work/Work’ – at least for some of the time… … And the fruits of these ‘various beings’ labors (that were the direct result at their attempts at ‘working/Working’)? … Well, of course, this was conditional upon their particular ‘field of endeavor’… In one or two of the instances immediately above, for example, this could be said to be: marching into Poland; or riding around on a bicycle through the English country-side solving all manner of heinous crimes …(‘As ye sow,…etc.’). …
If I could be perhaps overly melodramatic for a second – I was also surprised to discover that it was now possible for me to ‘Defend the Devil’ … because I could now appreciate that He was, at the very least, ‘working’; or even (and far more interestingly as I understood Eugene Halliday to be suggesting) – ‘Working’.
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This realization vis-à-vis ‘sentient power’, and ‘working’ – that is, that not only your dog, but also the bacteria in your dog’s gut etc. were all very busy ‘working’ (the former beavering away at sniffing the crutches of various family members and friends, barking, tail-waging, and fetching sticks; and the latter producing dog-poop) – because both dog and bacteria were ‘ordering power’ – seems rather obvious now.. And indeed, this ‘obviousness after the fact’ is one of the reasons why I’m really attracted to the way in which Eugene Halliday presents some (at least) of his ideas.
And, indeed – from that time on, right up until the present moment – this is how I ‘see things’. And I am now in the happy state of finding it blindingly obvious that – in fact – every ‘body’ is ‘at it’… all of the time…
You might say then, that I fancy I now, almost, understand this idea. 🙂
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Having got that out of the way then, the task in hand now became one of coming to some understanding as to who it was that might be choosing (if indeed anybody was) to ‘affirm’ all this ‘work/Work’.. I was OK with the ‘who’ then, but now the ‘why’ seemed to be yet another crucial question here., because I could intuit that the ‘why’ would pretty much determine who the ‘who’ was.
And it was for this very reason, that ever since I arrived at my conclusion regarding what this ‘ordering of (sentient) power’ might mean for me, I have found it necessary to differentiate between ‘work’ and ‘Work’.. And also to recognize that both these activities constitute, ‘What it is that all of existence is ‘actually, really, all about’ …’ (Particularly in Eugene Halliday’s sense of ‘real(ly)’ – making a difference; and ‘about’ – around out’) …
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The question of what exactly constituted ‘work/Work’ then, was now, I felt, something that I had, finally ‘got some sort of handle on’…. But the question of just why this who was doing all this ‘work/Work’ was not nearly as clear to me…
I hope you can now see why this question of ‘agency’ (the ‘who’) began to dominate my thinking, when it came to this subject of work/Work… And also that I already appreciated a satisfactory answer here would not be anything as simplistic as just ‘the observer’…. or something like that. At least unless I could come to some idea as to why ‘the observer’ (if indeed I came to believe that there was such a ‘who’) would be involved… I mean, for God’s sake, “Why bother?” … 🙂
However, thankfully, it was now a question that I believed finally ‘had some flesh on its bones’ for me. And so I hoped that I would find myself, sooner or later, arriving at some sort of satisfactory answer here – or at least enough of a one to allow me to move forward.
But what I believed I needed now, was a way of ‘seeing’ these two concepts of ‘working’ and Working’… That is, I had to create some sort of metaphor in order to ‘illuminate’ them… Something that I could use to judge the degree of work/Work that I believed I was observing; and at the same time, also what it was that I believed this work/Work to consist in … as clearly as I could …
Because, if work/Work was – as I now maintained – going on all around me, all of the time – then in order to understand it, I needed to establish some form of relationship with it… At least one that would provide me with a way of constructing some form of text that: a). Satisfactorily described this work/Work as a process; and b). Described my relationship(s) to it in some way (my reaction to it; the consequences of it in the world for me; etc.).
The model that I eventually came to use was in the end, I would maintain, relative simple.
It consists of an imaginary rope that is black at its left end, and white at its right end. This rope gradually changes color from one end to the other – such that in the middle – for my purposes here – it would, most usually, be grey.
On the far left end I situate mechanical ‘work’ – this would be ‘work’ at the level of gross matter, that was just ‘going on anyway’. Power is being ordered here in such a way that it establishes the simplest of basic forms – something like, say, sub-atomic particles – and although ‘spin’ (rotation) is, I believe, the ‘quality’ that is most apparent in them; even so, they still – at this very basic level – demonstrate the capabilities of attraction and repulsion (reactivity then), or of ‘relationship’ (in the simplest of terms)…
On the far right of my rope is a Mythological Abstraction – ‘God at Work’.
The degree of difficulty that I experienced in attempting to maintain my balance when I (metaphorically) positioned myself on this rope at any one particular time (which was how I ‘saw’ my various attempts at working/Working to be) would be mirrored (would correspond metaphorically) to the height of the rope above the ground … Which, I should mention, was (again metaphorically speaking) positioned directly over the mouth of a large crocodile pit … which had big poisonous spikes sticking up from the bottom in it … that all had poisonous tips..
I should also add that – if that wasn’t enough – there would always be a wind blowing about – from the caress of a slight breeze, to a howling gale…
Everything that’s ‘going on’ down here then – when I’m either participating in it myself, or when I’m observing other beings ‘doing stuff’ – can be situated (metaphorically) by me, somewhere in-between the two ends of this rope.
Human beings are the only beings that I have experienced who I believe are capable of actually doing any ‘Work’ (although I appreciate that you might maintain this is not the case for you)… Primarily because they are the only beings potentially capable of being reflectively self-conscious at any particular moment in time – should they freely chose to be so…. All other sentient creatures that I have encountered have only been capable of ‘work’… But they can all, of course, still be situated at varying distances away from the far left end of my metaphorical rope… With, say, Geckos being ‘further to the right’ than Artichokes….
My sole intention for constructing this metaphor is to explore – and to consequently construct accounts for myself – of my own attempts at working/Working, and also my appreciation of other being’s attempts…. So it is crucial in all this that you fully appreciate these accounts of mine are purely hypothetical… And indeed, this is why this particular metaphor (with its colored rope and crocodiles etc.) in it, is so useful to me… Because I find it almost impossible to fall into the trap (… 🙂 …) of believing that it is substantive – that is, that it is ‘real’ … And this helps prevent me from hypostatizing these various metaphorical hypotheses’ of mine… And also allows me the room to appreciate that this metaphor could even become – in the future – far too naïve, or simplistic, for my purposes here… So you might be relieved to know that I am never in the position of actually believing that I am really balancing on a colored rope, suspended above a crocodile pit… Because, “Hey! … That would just be ridiculous!!”
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So, from this point onwards, I attempted to shift my own perspective around to a point where I could reflect on just what it was that I understood Eugene Halliday’s position to be here… Which was that it was not concerned simply with ‘working’ (with simply ‘ordering power’) but was – in practical terms – far more about ‘the act of affirming this working/Working’…. More importantly then, about just why it was that the who might be doing this affirming.
So, ‘the who that was in charge here as a consequence of the why’ from moment to moment became the consuming interest for me now. … And, indeed, I quickly discovered that this was an extremely slippery and evasive question for me to even attempt a response to – particularly where it concerns the formulating of any sort of textual (written or verbal) account that I was, in any way, even reasonably satisfied with….
But at least I now believed that it was now possible for me to be in a state where I could identify ‘who’ it was that was in charge (by reflecting upon it ‘in the now’) even without this ability for me to produce a (metaphorical) description of it… However, I now suspected there was a distinct possibility that I might soon be able to create these accounts – by, say, recalling them from memory, and subsequently writing them down (without, hopefully, embellishing them too much, in order to ‘present them in a ‘kindlier light’)..
But of course these ‘new improved’ accounts would be more complex, and so would have to include far more than just my ‘rope’ metaphor/analogy. Which was – although still very practical (at least as far as I was concerned) – obviously going to be missing a great deal of essential detail.
I would claim that my relative success at now being able to focus on my own states during these attempts of mine to work/Work began (and have remained so ever since) to provide me with (what I am pleased to refer to as) numerous examples of ‘Archetypal material’…
This material was dependent for its particular ‘form’ on those different working/Work scenarios that I found myself attempting to deal with at any one particular time… That is to say, these scenarios of mine seemed to naturally produce any number of different ‘personalities’, that – by the use of active imagination – I found I could then allow to ‘speak through me’..
And thus the particular scenario in question was ‘fleshed out’, as it were, in the form of this subsequent ‘account’ of mine. Which could (as a direct consequence here) have then been (hopefully) dragged into my egoic consciousness – to the extent that I was then able to interrogate it, to debate with it; to converse with it; to form a relationship with it; and to subsequently ponder over any implications in all this that it might contain … to my heart’s content …
You might say that I was ‘conjuring up spirits’ here 🙂 … Or you could say,that I was allowing myself to be possessed … and that this is what I was ‘affirming ’…
Only kidding! … … (No I’m not).
We never hear things as they really are; we only ever hear things as we really are.
From ‘NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS’
’
Random Dribbling from the Twilight World of the Undead’
(A series of fragments from Bob Hardy’s notebooks – from the late-1970’s to date)
I would occasionally (and still do) sometimes sit down and just attempt to noodle away at the the piano instead … As this particular approach to ‘getting at who it was that I am’ at any one particular time, does seem to mirror – broadly speaking a least – the particular ‘cluster’ of ‘in-the-now’ emotional states that I find myself in…
But the situation that I now found myself in had started to make me realize that keeping two of – what I believed were – Eugene Halliday’s major concepts separate, was becoming next to impossible for me.
These two major concepts of his were:
1) The one that I have been attempting to present in this and the previous two posts, re ‘working/’Working; and,
2) The one that I intend to attempt to deal with in my next post – ‘being here now’.
To be continued then …
BOB HARDY
March 22nd 2014
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