commentary by maurice nicholl...
Quaremead, Ugley, June 22, 1946
WORK ON THE EMOTIONAL CENTRE
At the London Meeting this week at which all Groups were present
the teaching of the Work was begun afresh and one of the main ideas
stressed at the beginning was that this system of teaching is based on the
idea that Man was created specially as an experiment in self-evolution.
The Work says that Man was created a self-developing organism as
distinct from the animals. From this point of view Man is incomplete
like a building not yet finished and it is left to him to finish his own
building, to complete himself. For this reason certain teachings have
always existed in the world which can be called "esoteric teachings".
For example, this teaching that we are studying is sometimes called
esoteric Christianity. This has nothing to do with exoteric Christianity.
At this Meeting the three centres of Man were touched upon and
it was said that the Emotional Centre in Man is in a very bad state.
Let us make some brief commentaries on this point that this teaching
emphasizes so much. The Work says that we must work on our Emotional
Centre and purify it, clean it out, get rid of unnecessary emotions that
keep us asleep and keep us slaves to external life. Let us take a person
who is always cross, always frowning, always bothered, always difficult,
in fact, always a nuisance. In such a person the Emotional Centre is not
working aright and it is necessary for such a person, through long trained
technical observation, to become aware that this wrong working of the
Emotional Centre exists in him or her. Now a person who is always
cross, cantankerous, difficult, quarrelsome, and even venomous, has in
this Work to realize that such a state of the Emotional Centre is quite
incompatible with any self-development—that is, this person, whether
a man or a woman, has to realize that to complete themselves in the
sense of this teaching, to evolve, to develop, is quite impossible as long
as the Emotional Centre in him or her remains in this mechanical state.
The point is that such persons are quite unaware of the state of the
Emotional Centre in themselves. They do not see that they are cross,
difficult, fault-finding, unpleasant, angry, and so on. On the contrary,
they have a picture of themselves as being very sweet and charming.
Therefore a gap exists in them, a gap in their consciousness of them-
selves. This gap can only be filled in by sincere and conscious self-
observation carried out according to the instructions given in this
teaching for self-observation. People all think they know themselves,
but no one does. This is an illusion. Usually other people know more
about ourselves than we do, but they, on the other hand, do not know
themselves. So it is a very good thing to begin to observe the state of
your Emotional Centre and the unpleasant manifestations that come
from it mechanically. The Work teaches that the Emotional Centre is
the most wonderful centre in us but that at present, in the state of sleep
in which we all exist, it is inundated with negative emotions, with self-
pity, with self-emotions, with self-esteem, and a hundred and one other
similar forms of emotion that prevent us from really making contact
with one another and so prevent us from understanding one another's
difficulties.
Work on the Intellectual Centre is different from work on the
Emotional Centre, but the Work begins with observation of the three
main centres in us and we have to come to the point in which we realize
through self-observation the state of two centres—i.e., what goes on all
the time in the Intellectual Centre and what goes on all the time in the
Emotional Centre. Here you have a man who always dislikes everyone,
who jeers at people, who finds fault with people, and so on. Such a man
does not know that this is the state of his Emotional Centre. Or a man
feels himself always through superiority to other people but yet does not
realize it. The emotional feeling of superiority is always based on self-
esteem, on self-love, on self-feeling. In such a case the Emotional Centre
does not work as it should, nor can it fill a person with the right feelings
that give him inner meaning and so peace. So it is a good thing to
observe the state of one's Emotional Centre, to observe it in action—i.e.
to observe how it mechanically reacts to external events and particularly
other people. Here lies a great task, which is really a life-task. This
Work is for all one's life and through applying it we gradually undergo
a transformation internally owing to the fact that we become more and
more conscious of our real sides, and what we really are. This destroys
illusions about ourselves.
When a man begins really to work on himself, when he has begun
to see the depth of this teaching, he can no longer remain the same kind
of man, a woman cannot remain the same kind of woman. He or she
then begins to understand what it means that people are born on this
Earth as self-developing organisms, and that there is a special task for
everyone that has to be followed and worked out in order to attain this
completion, this final development that is their real meaning for being
on this very imperfect planet. Each one's task is different, but once the
Work is understood in its broad outlines and once the truth of it is
acknowledged internally, each one is shewn what it is necessary to work
at. You must remember that the Work teaches that negative emotions
are unnecessary, that they complicate life continually, that they produce
all the unhappiness that exists in people's relationships to one another,
and that it also teaches that it is possible gradually to free oneself from
these unnecessary negative emotions. Once a person knows this and
understands it and sees this inner truth he has already in his mind a
secret of incalculable value. He need never be at a loss, whatever his
circumstances, for he will always know what he has to do in any
situation—that is, not to express negative emotions, and then, to separate
from them, and finally not to have them at all. This Work does not
teach that we have no right to have negative emotions, because that
would be too difficult. It teaches that we have a right not to have
negative emotions. All our troubles, domestic tragedies and so on, are
mainly due to nourishing negative emotions, to feeling that we are owed
something. I ask you—what do you think you are owed? Examine it
—and then look at yourself. When you see what you are like, can you
really think you are owed anything? I would say, No, I realize that,
on the contrary, I owe to others. A phrase in the Lord's Prayer says:
"Cancel what we owe to God, as we cancel what we think others owe
us". That is, as long as your life is based on imagining that others owe
to you, you will get nowhere. But as more and more you see that no one
owes you anything and that it is always your own fault—then your
accounts, spiritually, are cancelled. This gives the possibility of hearing
higher centres and what they will tell you. But if you are a mass of
internal considering, of self-pity, of feeling you have never had a chance,
of feeling that your typical life-situation is exceptional, and that no one
understands your peculiar difficulties—then you will continue to
inundate the Emotional Centre with negative emotions. In that case
it cannot perform its true functions and so cannot give you inner
meaning and peace.
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