Fw: [TheEndOfTheRopeRanch] # 1 Accidie or Aimlessness

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Judi Rhodes

TheEndOfTheRopeRanch

Tuesday, January 10, 2006 10:19 AM

[TheEndOfTheRopeRanch] # 1 Accidie or Aimlessness

 

 

" Accidie " is a word which has gone out of fashion. It used to be described as

one of the Seven Deadly Sins and was often regarded as synonomous with " sloth " .

More properly the word can be applied to failure in motivation and the resultant

state of listlessness, aimlessness, and boredom. The condition is really

malignant and attributing many of the mental illnesses that aflict contemporary

man. Accidie represents the failure in gamesmanship and leads to a loss of

interest that can be total and devastating. It can strike anybody from a

wealthy widow in a Park Avenue apartment to a drifting derelict in a Bowery

gutter. Victor Frankl, descirbing the Nazi concentration camps, has described

how lethal accidie could be under those conditions. The prisoners could endure

cold, hunger, brutality, degradation as long as they had some sort of aim or

some hope to cling to. But when this hope was taken from them, they lay down

and died.

 

The student of Creative Psychology is as prone to accidie as anyone else. He

has embarked on a difficult, demanding meta-game, the results of which are not

outwardly visible, as are the productions of the artist, writer or research

scientist. His inner work demands efforts that are not particularly exciting,

but which must be repeated hour after hour, day after day. He encoutners on his

way one obstacle over and over again. Moreover, he plays this inner game in a

society that does not value the inner aims he pursues, that gives him no

encouragement, no " positive reinforcement " , from the members of which he is

compelled to conceal his most sacred aspirations lest he be thought " queer " or

even mildly insane.

 

One who has made the decision to play the Master Game inevitably discovers that

his emotional force, the wellspring of his inner work, fluctuates in its

intensity, may be powerful at one time, fade out completely at another. The

fading of the emotional force occurs usually about a year or two years after the

student has found his teacher and embarked on the work. In the beginning, the

novelty of working under direction, the excitement of new discoveries, the

thrill of " belonging " to a group dedicated to a single aim carry the neophyte

along and he works with ardor. But when the novelty wears off, when the first

impulse weakens, he enters the phase of disenchantment well known to spiritual

directors on the religious way and described as " periods of dryness " . This

inward aridity has the same effect on the inner life as has drought on a garden.

The flowers of the spirit droop. Zeal vanishes. Ardor fades. The student

wonders about his aim. The Master Game loses its magic. To this condition

Gurdjieff referred in the saying: " In the beginning it is roses, roses. Later

it is thorns, thorns. "

 

What is the solution? Is there a solution? If I do not feel an emotion how can

I generate it? For it must be clear to any objective student that man has

little control over the emotional center. A good actor can portray the outer

form of emotion, can produce real tears and what sounds like genuine laughter.

But this is not grief, neither is it joy. These are merely the outward

trappings of the emotions, their moving-center accompaniments. And what of the

will to transcendence, the appetite for consciousness, that sbutle, hard to

characterize emotion that stirs only in a few and plays so small a role in

contemporary life? How can I awaken that when it dies within me, when the flame

on the altar fades, when the peak toward which I was striving disappears in the

fog?

 

This question brings us face to face with one of the peculiarities of the

emotional brain. It has, in the third state of consciousness at least, a very

bad memory. We can remember an event in our lives, tragic or joyful, but it is

difficult to reexperience the emotion that went with it. This applies also to an

aim in which there is a strong emotional component. We may remember the aim

intellectually but not emotionally. And the intellectal memory, having no fire

within it, is a dead, dry remnant. It lacks the sparkle of the original aim.

 

But just as the moving and instintive centers can be educated and brought

increasingly under conscious control, so the emotional center can be trained not

to forget or not to forget so easily. A man does not have direct control over

the emotional brain, but he does have control over the moving and intellectual

brains, and both of these effect the emotional center. Thus, a person who feels

totally miserable can smile by an intentional effort. And although the smile may

be wooden and contrived, it will, on account of the feedback from the moving to

the emotional center, evoke a shadowy memory of happiness. Similarly the

appetite for higher consciousness can be faintly reawakened through the

intellectual center. Though disenchanted and lacking in zeal, the student can

recall his early enthusiasm saing: " Once this seemed vitally important, the

Master Game, the only game worth playing. " And from here, still purely

intellectual, he can retrace his steps, remembering his old dedication,

recalling the processes that led him to his decision, reviewing the alternative

life games and sincerely asking what they have to offer as compared with the

Master Game. Even though all this is purely intellectual, the effort will,

again by feedback from one center to another, evoke a faint taste of the old

ardor, a memory of the great enterprise and of all the hope and excitement that

went with it.

 

Self-pity is almost as paralyzing as accidie. It is the emotion of one who

falls down in the mud and, instead of getting up again, wallows in it and mabye

swallows some just to be able to feel more self-pity. Self-pity, a typical

false-ego phenomenon, is utterly false, totally useless. Unfortunately, the

prevailing tone of the Judeo-Christian tradition, its emphasis on groveling and

the " Lord have mercy on me, miserable sinner " theme, has for centuries

encouraged self=pity in its devotees in addition to self-hated and

self-contempt. Indeed, there are subcults in this traidtion which convert

rolling in the mud of self pity and selfabsement into an end in itself.

Devotees of this practice draw as much satisfaction from feeling sorry for

themselves because they are such tremendous sinners as some people derive from

displaying their surgical scars. Needless to say, a good spiritual director has

little patience with such nonsense, but, in this tradition, the good directors

are outnumbered by the bad, and the latter do not hesitate to enocurage the

groveling of their " pentients " , in fact will get down in the mud and grovel with

them.

 

How can one correct this bad hbit of the emotional brain? Again, it can best be

approached through the intellect. Self=pity is an emotion so obviously useless

that evne a little analysis is enough to reveal its falsity. Why do you pity

yourself? What will this pity accomplish? You failed once. Then get up and

try agian. What benefit can you get by groveling in the mud? This tough,

unsentimental line of reasoning puts the false ego in the spotlight and

illuminates its absurdities so brightly that no objective observer can take them

seriously.

 

Self-hated and self-contempt are also examples of the wrong working of the

emotional brain but are far more difficult to evaluate and correct than is the

obviously useless emotiona of self pity. There is, in the emotion which urges a

man to engage in the Master Game, a strong negative element which might be

called " self-contempt " . Nietzche's Zarathustra knew this well:

 

Alas! There comes the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer

despise himself....

Wht is the greatest thing you can experience? It is the hour of great contempt.

The hour in which your

happiness becomes loathesome to you, and so also your reason and virtue.

 

Insofar as the " hour of great contempt " leads to great endeavors, great efforts

to emerge from that sorry puppet like state of semihypnosis into one of full

consciousness, it is salutary. Is is not, in this form, a negative emotion at

all, but a very powerful impulse towrad true health and full development, a

negative reaction that engenders a positive response. Unfortunately, the

positive response does not always follow the negative reaction. Confronted for

the hundreth time with some unpleasant manifestation, the student groans

inwardly: I hate myself. He then proceeds to wallow in the emotion, indulging

in a masochistic orgy of self condemnation, deliberately recalling all the

stupidest, most degrading things he has done, performing a psychological

self-flagelleation , and getting the same perverse satisfaction from it that

real self-flagellation affords those who practice this art. In this way

self-contempt, which might be useful, degenerates into mere wallowing and

groveling. It is perfectly clear from the popularity of such wallowings, in the

guise of penetential practices, that they offer such satisfaction that those who

indulge in them will go to extraordinary extremes, not excluding phsycial

self-torture.

 

**

 

 

http://www.users.uniserve.com/~samuel/judi-1.htm

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[Guest guest]

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Judi Rhodes

TheEndOfTheRopeRanch

Tuesday, January 10, 2006 10:27 AM

Re: [TheEndOfTheRopeRanch] # 1 Accidie or Aimlessness

 

 

What is my point with all of this? You must keep an aim.

 

Under-standing, under-standing, under-standing.

 

Have I made myself clear?

 

Judi

 

http://www.users.uniserve.com/~samuel/judi-1.htm

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