Chain Gang
Maintenance, organization and nourishment of collective energetic fields
Recently our men’s group took up an advanced inner spiritual exercise referred to as the Chain Exercise. It belongs to a group of contemplative practices brought by G. I. Gurdjieff which form, maintain, and nurture collective energetic fields between groups of people.
There are numerous variations, and no doubt we have only been handed down a slice of what Gurdjieff introduced to his students in the 1930s and 40s. From what has been handed down it’s reasonably fair to assume that groups were working with them in person (perhaps once, perhaps weekly) and more definitely doing “remote” work with them on a daily basis. How long any one group’s effort with a given Chain Exercise was sustained is not altogether clear; our group did it for four straight weeks and then set it down.
The particular Chain exercise we took up is one of the rare few with explicit direction regarding number of users, gender and frequency. Seven men (or seven women) mutually agree upon seven times throughout the day when they would do the exercise during the course of their daily life. In each instance during the day, the group would undertake the exercise on behalf of one member of the group, rotating members throughout the day, always the same member at the same assigned time. Gurdjieff was nothing if not practical, and our group agreed that we would do the exercise for 3-5 minutes at each moment, and if conditions were extreme, to, at minimum, take 60 seconds interiorly.
The first week was straightforward, powerful and full of beginner’s luck, but being aware of the benefits of working beyond initial “highs” we opted to carry on for three more weeks, subsequent weeks proving to be more challenging, more rigorous, more instructional, and ultimately more rewarding as we went along. We were careful not to anticipate outcomes in those subsequent weeks, though some results from the first week were so strong and sustained that it was difficult to lay them down and approach each iteration with a beginner’s mind. Nonetheless we did what we could. Some notes follow here, collated after we put the exercise down, and drawn from our weekly observations exchange.
Will
Over the month all seven group members shared examples of increased will-to-act-now, and deeper decision-making capacity and clarity. It was as if we experienced a collective healing of the “tomorrow disease” (or, putting off doing things for some unspecified future time). It became easier to “get-up-and-go” for tasks and chores that had otherwise annoyed us, coupled with an absence of self-pity and an abiding sense of “effortless effort.”
This is Will without fanfare, a Higher receptivity to what is needed in the given moment, the end of my habitual need to “show” how much something is costing me to do. One of the guys shared that when his partner interrupted him in the middle of doing something else to ask for help, he didn’t experience it as an interruption at all, but rather as a flow of energy ready to pivot and help. Our common ritual of cold-water ablutions first thing in the morning became more joyous, and one of us shared that waking up at 4 AM to precede his infant child became something matter-of-fact. (This impressed enormously the Dads among us who knew the shattering exhaustion of newborn caretaking.) Many of us experienced an increase in “forward initiative” or anticipating things that needed to be done without being asked.
Aim and belonging
All seven group members shared a deepening of their work with and understanding of Aim. Keeping seven distinct appointments throughout the day, day in and day out makes some sense of this, but there was a greater result than what could have come from a simple disciplinary action. Sharing such a rigorous group effort had profound and immediate impact on the individually held aims of members as well. Furthermore, everyone reported a strongly felt sense of not being alone in their inner work, on the search. This despite the fact that all of these appointments were kept individually, by members all in faraway places. The actual experience of being one member of a larger body that contained its own unique set of vibrations was real in every one of us, heart, body and mind. The necessity of working with these appointments in linear time is evident. We fielded reports of one member “coming online” to the larger body at the specified time despite having forgotten the appointment.
Energy
The mechanics of the exercise itself involve sending and receiving energy in specific ways. For most of the members this was difficult to maintain after awhile, as the distinction between sending and receiving began to blur. It felt less and less like a specific operation, and more and more like stepping into the larger body and simply being in it, each doing his small part in transubstantiating the energy that the larger body was able to contain. This was not experienced as a failure and there was no call to insist on the initial mechanics. After all, unless its life is threatened, the hand does not concern itself with the sending and receiving of energy per se, it simply is so, and thus freely exchanging, the hand concerns itself with action, with practical service of the larger whole.
The energetic quality of this larger body had a specific signature. This was observed severally, as being distinct from the energetic quality experienced in any other type of work with inner exercises. The essence of this widely shared observation could be boiled down to: when you walk into your own house, there’s nothing else like it. This isn’t to limit the possibility of other unique energetic signatures resulting from other efforts. But it was universally clear that this larger body, greater than the sum of its seven parts, was as distinct from another as home is from a hotel room. It was increasingly instantly recognizable as the weeks went on. One adjacent discovery was the heightened capacity of, when it was necessary to do so, maintaining an outward activity while keeping the appointment inwardly. (To stretch the metaphor, something like being at home, washing dishes at the kitchen sink.) The appointments themselves took on the real quality of being a place, rather than a task.
An organizing principle
Whatever else remains to be said, the Larger Body could not be motivated by the sum of energy contributed by seven individual knuckleheads. “Where two or three are gathered in my Name, there I AM.” So the saying goes. And so the going was. Taking this promise for a run down the double black diamond slopes led to an experiential knowing: the I AM—this Higher Energy; this Holy Spirit, this Breath of Life—can have an ordering, organizing effect on human life. It goes above my pay grade to say much more about the theoretical dimensions of consciously operating as part of a whole (rather than the center of the universe) on a daily basis. So I limit the rest of this brief to listing a handful of the individual results attributable only to the organizing-harmonizing quality of the Higher moving through our Larger Body, and Whom we now know through experience.
The neuropathy in my feet completely absent for weeks, no pressure-build up or need of therapeutic massage which had been necessary for a long time
I had complete relief of my ongoing back pain despite strenuous physical conditions at work that always otherwise cause it
Preternatural clarity and calm in high-stress conversations at work
Deep sensation, lighter and denser at once, as if aligning cells in my body
Clearheadedness in tense interactions with my employer
Total absence of squeamishness in dealing with rodents / large insects that have horrified me since childhood; as if it was your hand, not mine, picking them up
Positive outcomes from difficult group dynamics at work. No matter whether I was blamed or congratulated, the outcome in the large picture was for the good
Need to be right or vindicated vanished
Most meaningful and productive marriage counseling sessions we’ve had since we started six month ago; taking marriage counselor’s wisdom into our everyday home life for the first time
I’ve reconciled with my brother after years of tension, resentment and anger.