Classroom Talk
Fifth and Sixth Grades Archive
About some changes in facial appearance around here.
Posted by John on 06/13/2003 20:43:35
In reply to Re: How about a new department here for class writings? posted by rob on 06/08/2003 17:26:04
Okay, we can do this, Folks. I had a long talk with Brent Pearson in San
Francisco, our faithful TTMT Architect, and he says he can build us a
room for Class Writings, with a desk for any of us who would like to use
it.
With these fantasy class projects that I cook up, I have long followed a
strict policy of avoiding letting any of you put in any work on a project
before it is obvious that the project is *actually going to happen*.
Conserving our energy in this way is a worthwhile talent of mindful
warrior life to remember.
>Now the hard part, have to really start the work of writing.
Heh-heh. *Really* indeed, ol' pal.
Until you get some new copy ready for your desk in Class Writings, I'm
telling Brent to hold off in spending the time it takes to build that
department. Incidentally, Brent is the only one of our group that is
currently being paid for his work. He's being paid at the same hourly
rate that I'm paid for my ranch work out in the country, that is, twenty
bucks an hour. He would do it free. But for all the work that he puts
in here, we both feel it's appropriate to be "straight with each other"
this way.
The budget for this is from funds that I've set aside as my basic
financial contribution to the project of incorporating our school as a
non-profit organization. So . . . . I'm putting my money where my mouth
is on this venture, Folks. That seems like a conscientious thing for me
to do. Our only other TTMT, Inc. disbursement in paying for work done
here so far has been $500 to Douglas, some time ago, for designing a
beautiful new logo for our school. That fee seemed right, and fair. I
ought to get around to coordinating with Brent one of these days, so he
can put this logo up. Douglas, in some moments of artistic genius, came
up with a simple design that I think "speaks perfectly" to the basic
design of the awareness game. Maybe we'll give that new logo its first
showing here in Class Writings when that department is ready to go.
With these new things, the structure of our school can be changing now,
and growing *organically*, becoming more and more whole. Rob, once again
to show that I'm practicing what I preach, and that I'm willing to take
my own medicine and do my own exercises . . . . . and it *does* seem like
fun! . . . . . I've decided to have a desk in that department, too, to
keep you company when your first draft pages are ready. I've started
outlining a piece I'm going to write which comments on an amazing little
chapter written by Maurice Nicoll ("What We Have to Observe in
Ourselves," in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff &
Ouspensky, Volume 4, pp. 1391-3) in which he summarizes "Gurdjieff Work"
so beautifully. Perk turned me on to this. I'd like to write an article
that shows how closely the model that he describes there seems to
parallel the experiential model of our awareness game.
Now, the hard part . . . heh-heh. Well, Brent is ready, and I'm ready to
team up with you on this project, Rob. I'm not saying there's any hurry,
because there isn't any hurry. When you are ready to step forth and take
the leadership of this little exercise, let us know, and you will find a
little team stepping in behind you. Perhaps some others of you in this
class would like to play with us on this one.
Now I'm reminded of the Library project. I liked the placement you
chose, and the cutline you wrote in posting that site I asked you to put
in the new Library, Rakesh. Thanks. I *knew* that you, having been a
newspaperman for so long, would be able to write good cutlines like that
for new links that are posted there.
I guess I wasn't clear with you before, or you misunderstood me, but I'll
be glad when you go ahead actively now and start replacing the non-
functioning links in the old Library with new links that do work. Didn't
I remember correctly that you intended to do that? I was in the Library
yesterday and I found that only a few of the links in the first dozen
entries at the top actually work. I think Brent has already taught you
how to use the new Library program in the Administration Building. If
you don't know how to update links there, please ask him to show you how.
He will be glad to help.
As for the many present links that are no longer functioning, if you
don't find a new URL for them, simply delete them from the Library,
please. You can keep a print-out of the old Library and maybe new links
will turn up later if they aren't available now, and we can add them back
in again. But it was your consternation about the dead links a long time
ago that woke me up to realize that we cannot pretend that our school is
"ship-shape" and call ourselves a sharp outfit around here with an
outdated Library in that poor condition. Even if we have to delete most
of the sites that are in the Library now, we're in better shape with a
much smaller Library that actually *works*!
I'd like to reach a point one of these days where we have the means to
pay any of you who would like to be employees of TTMT, Inc for the work
that you do here. I know you are not asking for that, Rakesh. What you
have been doing has been in the spirit of pure giving, and I really
appreciate it. Yet, if some of these formative projects can actually be
made to *work*, I wouldn't be surprised if that can lead to a normally
functioning non-profit corporation out of the resources that we have been
gathering here at this website. I think you agree, or you wouldn't be
doing the work you are doing here. If we make this place ship-shape,
conscientiously, this website can be around for a long time to help
others yet to come along who may someday find and feel this kind of study
and work can be beneficial in their lives.
I hope all of you are noticing how often I am speaking about things that
*work* today. Let that be the keyphrase in any of the projects that any
of you might like to pitch in with around here from now on . . . . . *
doing little things that actually *work*, one step at a time*.
And in the meantime, no one of you all is obligated to do anything around
here. I say, let each of us only do the things that seem like fun to do.
And during the rest of this year, I intend to go on with our classes (now
in the form of our "forum"), as this style of functioning has emerged for
us now. It seems to me to be working beautifully this way.
Happy trails to all of you! I start in on a 16-day stint at the ranch
next Saturday. I'd like to get in another class here tomorrow, and
"catch up" with some of the current ideas on the board—contrition,
conscience, leadership, love and intimacy. Jesus said: "Do not pluck
the mote from your enemy's eye. Pluck the beam from your own."
Heh-heh. Speaking of love and intimacy . . . . . well, I know it may
seem unseemly for the coach here to speak openly about my personal "love
life," but it's all grist for the mill to me. My first-person anecdotal
accounts are no better than any of yours, and this is how the
understanding of any areas of life is communicated and taught in schools
of awareness and transformative work. Guess what Folks—quite
coincidentally, I suppose—since I gave up walking around playing the
really old man routine, all of a sudden there are four women in my life.
I'm not kidding. My phone hardly ever rings. And there is at least a
chance now that any of them might call me up at any time. This cheers me
up, somehow. They are *friends* only, of course, but what a sudden and
remarkable change of the environment for me. How utterly amazing that
the Cosmos would suddenly make me seem to be a "magnet" for all this
wonderful company, all at once, where I had been being alone and lonely
and suffering a little about it sometimes, as well I knew from my daily
processing.
And the wonderful thing—from the work standpoint—is that I don't find
myself feeling attached to any of them. I wonder how many other men have
had the same experience as me during their lives, after being lonely for
a long time, and suddenly finding several appealing women in their lives
all at once, and thinking, "Well, surely it's going to work out with at
least one of them!" . . . . and then seeing them, one at a time, dribble
off their fingertips and all be gone. Any of you guys in class ever seen
that phenomenon? I wouldn't be surprised if that happens here. What the
hell? So I'm not counting on anything. Indeed I'm not wanting for
anything. I'm content with my life the way it already is. I'm not at
all sure that I even have it in me to enter another intimate relationship
at this time in my life. I'm not "waiting" by that phone; I only know
that some possibilities are there for awhile. I like that aspect of
life, "having real possibilities," if nothing more. In fact, I feel very
free, very whole, and very comfortable with my life, just the way it is
right now. And, of course, the high level of authenticity, and potential
functioning that I see popping up now around here in class—the happiness
I feel in doing my chosen work on this planet—has a big part to play in
this sudden new era of real inner peace.
And this one is probably going to get a grin out of you. One of these
women has actually spent an afternoon doing a make-over of my facial
appearance that is quite astonishing. I don't know if my friends here in
Tucson will recognize me at first when they see me. No doubt they will
crack up laughing. No more beard and mustache, no more long grey hair
hanging around my ears. No more "old desert rat" in my looks. I am
actually a red-head now, for the first time in my life (reddish-brown,
which is the hair color "ehu" to the Hawaiians that members of certain
royal families were said to have among the high counselors and kahunas in
their lines). At first it was hard for me to take when I looked in the
mirror and saw this, and my first reaction was that it was somehow
"grotesque." But in a couple of days here now, I've gotten used to it,
and—how strange, how strange—I look about twenty years younger than I am.
I don't know. Am I ready for love? I saw an old tape on television the
other day, of Bill Moyers interviewing Joseph Campbell. Campbell said:
"Love is a pain you might say, the pain of living life to the fullest."
Archived 09/22/2003