Attitudes -A New Heart Part II

Attitudes -A New Heart Part II

Attitudes are third force. Conscious or unconscious, just or unjust, selfish or selfless, they govern how we experience, interpret and respond to life; they govern our Being.

For example, if we have an attitude that a sunny day is a ‘nice’ day and a rainy day is a ‘rotten’ day, then the weather will affect both our mood and our behavior. This is a very simple example but it illustrates how our attitudes are a sort of internal sense perception which further processes the impressions that our physical senses have taken in. Our physical senses take in impressions in a more or less neutral and objective manner. Our subjective attitudes colour this reality with expectation, imagination, identification, social norms, judgement, fear, elation and so on. In other words, “we don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are” (a quote which has been attributed to various persons), and we react mechanically according to this subjective colouring.

Change in Being requires a change in attitudes. A conscious life cannot be governed by mechanical attitudes. Conscious attitudes must be developed. We must learn first to think in a new way, and gradually, through repeated efforts and verification, to feel in a new way. An attitude is just an intellectual formulation unless it is supported by an emotional valuation for the words. For example, how often does ‘being right’ take precedence in our personal scale of values, regardless of all other considerations? What is the cause of this?

Regarding negative emotions, Ouspensky states categorically that “all causes are in you”. This is a very practical example of how an attitude, if it can really penetrate the heart, can change everything.

Self observation shows very clearly, that we tend to attribute the cause of our negativity to something or someone outside of us; unfair treatment at work, an insult, a traffic jam, an injustice. Ouspensky offers a new way to think about this; a possibility of freeing oneself from the strings that cause us to ‘dance like a puppet’. If I adjust my attitude to one of responsibility for my own emotional state and a freedom to modify my own conduct, a great conscious liberation is suddenly within reach.

The Fourth Way, from one angle, is a collection of new attitudes, offering us a new way of thinking about our entire existence.

Transforming our existence, however, is an emotional relationship to the attitudes offered; an energy of the heart, burning with sufficient intensity to actually Be the words, transcending the world of attitudes altogether.

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Image: ‘The alchemist who has achieved illumination’, from the Clavis Artis