I was listening to a CD on the way to work today about how mechanical people’s interactions with each other are. I also have been studying Gurdjeff and "The Fourth Way" about our I's. I's are the different roles we play in our life but they are not who we are. They are not our Middle Pillar.
This made me more aware of my I’s that I slip into at work. I’s that I need to do my job. But it would be nice if I had more control of my use of these I’s instead of them just taking over in reaction to situations at work.
As I was walking through the building people always say “hi” or “how’s it going?” I work in a big building with a lot of people.
So I was paying attention to my body and my own automation and someone greeted me this morning. I completely fell back asleep. I answered with my own automated greeting and I forgot that I was practicing awareness.
A short time later I saw a blue shirt (the current cue I have programmed myself with to wake back up, to become aware) and I woke up again, “oh, yeah. I was practicing awareness.” And I realized that slipping into that state of automatic interactions with people made me fall asleep. I told myself not to let this happen the next time someone said hi. Being aware of the problem made it easier to combat.
As I continued to interact with people, I was watching myself. I learned two ways to remain awake while interacting with people. The first is to give an un-expected response. Example: “how is it going?” “the weather sucks, my job sucks, life sucks…”
The second way I found is to give an automated response, but do it by choice. Choose a response from a list. Don’t give your usual automated response. If someone says “hi, how’s it going?” and I usually say “Good. Busy.” then I can consciously change my response to something else. I could say “Not good. Falling behind” or “Good. More busy than yesterday; less busy than tomorrow”…
Using my consciousness to consciously pick my response kept me awake after the interaction was over.
