@tsuki Please don't think I'm trying to preach at you. I know you're already aware of some of this material. Just wanted to make this as useful as possible for others who may be interested while I'm at it.
The philosophy and practices for purifying the emotional center is at the heart of the Gurdjieff Work, also referred to by some as Esoteric Christianity or the Fourth Way elaborated on by his direct students, PD Ouspensky, Maurice Nicoll and also contemporarily Ocke de Boer and Almaas's Ridhwan School Teachings. There are many others but it is mostly these that I draw on.
The General Principle ofthe Gurdjieff Exercises
The idea is that unless we are actually 'aware of being aware' we are 'sleeping'. Most people, although they believe they are thinking, decisive beings, are in fact slaves to reaction and conditioning. Eventually, being 'aware of being aware' will lead to the experience of what Gurdjieff called Endlessness, or the infinite godhead. The aim of the game then is to remain in a state of being 'aware of being aware' at all times, as a means of reducing our identification with these reactions and acting in a decisive manner in accordance with our actual will, and as means of moving closer to experiencing our true identity, which is unity. An example of a Gurdjieff exercise is to pick a random part of the body, and retain the awareness of that body part at all times, regardless of what we are thinking, feeling or doing.
Inner Work Practice
Become aware of the natural flow of your breathing for a few breaths, noting the sensation or presence of the physical body as the air comes in and goes out. Relax the body as you breathe out.
Let a feeling of gratitude or wonder arise. Relax into a feeling of gratitude or wonder for life or for whatever you may feel gratitude for. Do this for a few more breathes.
For the next few breaths, say inwardly “I”, as you inhale, breathing with the intention of taking in finer energies or substances in the air and feeling a connection to Higher help. When you breathe out say inwardly “AM”, with an awareness of your whole body physical presence.
Finish in three breaths with Inner words: “Lord Help Me”; “Lord Help Us”; “Lord Have Mercy”.
The exercise itself is a form of self-remembering — returning from “all these other things” back to myself. Its aim is to practice three-centered awareness — observing (seeing), sensing, feeling. Engaging all three centers and having a sense of whole body awareness is essential. Activating gratitude, wonder, our being, or our own inner poverty and need for higher help — all are good catalysts for self-remembering.
The inner exercise should only take a minute or two (or less) once familiar with the steps and will remain the same each week. Only the time we choose to engage the exercise will change. Each week we will engage this practice at a designated time — usually before or during a routine activity in the day, or while transitioning into a new activity.
Basically we repress our emotions or feeling center which results in limiting our awareness and the ability to feel what's going on/with inside of others. The capacity for dividing one's attention is crucial. The following is an excerpt from an Ocke deBoer article. Ocke begins and then quotes this meeting of a work group where Gurdjieff talks bluntly with Madame deSaltzmen. It's an exercise for gathering up one's dispersed attention and getting into a 'collected state'.
The result of work is that knowledge becomes understanding. To learn to get our two-natured system (planetary and astral bodies) accustomed to higher states, we have to learn to become collected. To get to a collected state is described in the Transcripts of Meetings by Gurdjieff from 1941-1946. This collected state is the basis for learning to remember ourselves. Gurdjieff: You must do an exercise to be more collected. Learn to collect yourself. Choose a good moment that seems propitious. Sit down let nobody disturb you. Relax yourself. All your attention - all your will is concentrated on your relaxation. You quieten your associations. After - only after, you begin to think.. Mme D: Yes. I try like that and I do not succeed. Gurdjieff: Wait. Do not disturb me - do not interrupt me. You have never done like this. Your explanations prove it to me. After, when you have quieted your associations, only then, begin the exercise - consciously, with all your attention, all your faculties. You represent to yourself that you are surrounded by an atmosphere. Like the earth, man also has an atmosphere, which surrounds him on all sides, for a metre, more or less - to a limit. In the atmosphere the associations, in ordinary life the thoughts-produce waves. It concentrates at certain places - it recedes; it has movements according to the direction which you impart it. This depends on the movement of your thought. Your atmosphere is displaced in the direction in which your thought goes. If you think of you mother, who is far away your atmosphere moves towards the place where your mother is. When you do this exercise, you represent to yourself that this atmosphere has limits. For example one metre and a half, shall we say. Then you concentrate all your attention on preventing your atmosphere from escaping beyond the limit. You do not allow it to go further than one metre or one metre and a half. When you feel your atmosphere quieted, without waves, without movement, then with all your will you suck it into yourself - you conserve yourself in this atmosphere. You draw it consciously into yourself. The more you can, the better it is. To start with, is very tiring. That is how one must do the exercise. Afterward you rest yourself - you send the exercise to the devil. Repeat it afresh in the evening. This exercise is done especially to allow one to have a collected state. It is the first exercise. It is difficult to penetrate into yourself at the first effort. One must compel the atmosphere to remain within its limits - not allow it to go further than it should. It is the first exercise in order to have a collected state. This exercise I have given to everybody. No one has understood what is collectedness, nor given it any attention”... This exercise was given by Gurdjieff for everybody, and it is the basis for learning to remember yourself and it is also the basis for learning how to sense and fill the body, which is extremely important if we want our atmosphere to be detached from other surrounding atmospheres. This detachment will make it possible to become free inside from other people. If we want to coat the higher in us we have to become free from other people.
Maurice Nicoll describes it as the capacity to become hermetically sealed from the negativity of the outside world and is something we must do everyday.
These short youtubes contributes to these concepts and practices
Identification or becoming identified with anything = spiritual sleep
Ocke says After a certain point in this Work, we can only grow in being by assisting other creatures whether human or animals in their evolution. To do this we need to forget ourselves and pray for assistance. To pass this work on is not an easy thing. For this striving we need to learn to feel other people and animals. To really feel others is a huge achievement. Our feeling-centre needs to be speeded up for this. It needs to become healthy and independent. In most people the feeling-centre is a wounded animal in need for much attention. Because of these wounds they cannot even feel themselves, so to feel other creatures is very difficult for them. About this striving there is also a saying in esotericism: ‘If those above do not move up, then those below cannot move’. To understand this we need a healthy feeling-centre, a compassionate one. A healthy, independent and compassionate feeling centre is achieved by practicing the being-obligolnian-strivings, and it can therefore act from Conscience.
I won't open the can of worms called the being-obligolnian-strivings other than to say there are 5 of them.
