Article - The Four Forces, Initiative, Resistance, Form, Result
from Awareness Journal, Vol II, No 1, Fall 1993
Please discuss the Four Forces - I do get the principle, can discuss the theory, do NOT see it all around me in my day-to-day life. Thanks for asking. [D.B.]
Talk about being passive to allow X to take the initiative. [L.P.]
There are four facets to all phenomena:
- INITIATIVE, First Force, Intelligence, Will;
- RESISTANCE, Second Force, always arises to oppose First Force and shapes and molds it into:
- FORM, Third Force, what's produced from the interaction of First and Second Forces;
- RESULT, Fourth, the response to the Form.
Let's take a very simplistic example of these Four Forces in action. You wanted to explore this more (First Force, your intention to check it out), you have looked and not found much in the way of demonstration. (Second Force is the resistance you are having.) You are requesting (more Initiative) a little guidance. In order to do this, you had to compose your question, and write it down, which took a few minutes; find an envelope, address it. You attached a stamp which cost $0.29. Maybe you had to make a special trip to mail the letter. There is not a lot of expense involved, but the several minutes of your time and whatever time it took you to earn $0.29 is time you were not doing something else, maybe something else you would have preferred to do. All of these little activities were Second Force, they arose and had to be dealt with in order to get your question from there to here. More resistance is added in the form of time, the time between your asking the question and reading this. Now the form, this article, is Third Force, and the Fourth is how you respond to it: i.e., it clarifies some things for you, or maybe it fails to, or maybe even confuses you more.
Travel is another example. If you wish to do to the Sierras for a holiday, it will take some time to drive there. If it's a nice drive you might enjoy the trip as much as the destination. But the interval between where you are and where you want to be is Second Force. If, like me, you like to go places but are a terrible flier, then maybe a trip to Paris is appealing, but the intervening 14 hours to the airport, at the airport, on the plane, will be pure Resistance ... I must Work with it every minute to keep my mood up. The interval between aim and arrival at destination, plus the effort needed to accrue the funds to pay for it are Second Force. The Form is the whole trip. How it's perceived (Fourth Force) depends in this case on taste (and inner state).
Gravity is Second Force, it pulls us in an opposing direction to the one we might wish to be in: i.e., a standing rather than sitting mode, or sitting rather than reclining. But we hardly notice gravity, as infants we adapted quite nicely to it, though it still takes effort to oppose it. For NASA, though, for instance, gravity is another matter. Great amounts of effort - time, money, labor, fuel, brain power - are expended to transcend gravity. The intention to go to the moon, say, and the will to spend the time, money, labor to get there are First Force. The need to spend the time, money, fuel, etc., is Second Force. Third Force, the event of a moon landing, is the Form. The Result, Fourth Force, is the response: The first time it happened there was an enormous lifting of mood among millions of people; patriotism; admiration of science and technology, and so on. One result. Subsequent trips may have cost the same but probably had a lesser result. Eventually, were they to continue spending the tremendous costs incurred in going to the moon, for no other reason than to go for the sake of going, there would be a decidedly different Result - response - to the event.
On a more personal level, the Four Forces can be seen within us, too. If I have made the Initiative to do the Work, I can be sure Resistance will arise: I will forget, Not-I's will grow louder and especially slyer, people around me will not understand, and so on. If I maintain an Initiative equal to all that noise, a Form will be produced: A New Man. The Result will be this New Man's contribution to the evolution of humanity (and thus to Spirit).
Second Force is not "bad" or necessarily unpleasant. People who like to lift weights use it all the time, willingly, to accomplish their intention, i.e., to alter their form. If you play any kind of game at all, from golf to crossword puzzles, you know that if it's too easy, it's no fun at all, why bother. Enjoying a little Second Force is the whole reason for playing games. (If a person is a fanatic about "winning," this statement still applies. Although it seems that Result is the issue - the form, win or loss, will determine the result, a high inner state or a lousy one - he thinks in terms of "conquering" Second Force rather than enjoying it.)
I think if you take tiny little activities and look at them, you will begin to see. For instance, changing from a horizontal to a vertical position first thing in the morning is a great triumph of Initiative over Second Force for many of us ... The coffee you drink in the morning, and the gas or electricity to heat the water, and the water, and the coffee pot, filters, had to be paid for with someone's labor. (Second Force "opposing" the intention to have coffee to drink.) The form is the cup of hot coffee, the result is what this means to you.
At the other end of the scale, Mother Theresa is a picture of all this in a big way. She is old and frail and yet does difficult work day in and day out until she collapses and they have to force her to rest. ASAP she is back at it. Surely for an old woman (or for most of us) the kind of labor she has chosen to perform would be seen as Second Force ... her Initiative is mighty, indeed. The Form here is the opportunity for peace and serenity (and Love) she affords people who otherwise would never have tasted peace and serenity ... The results, I think, are several, including whether the opportunity she provides is accepted; and an example for us.
In between the extremes of a cup of coffee and Mother Theresa are countless examples of the Four Forces in action, if we look. Another way of looking is to work backwards. Identify something going on, say the fact that you are at this moment reading a newsletter. (4) The RESULT is what you make of it, i.e., it may be interesting, or boring, or confusing, or however you see it. (3) The FORM is the newsletter itself. (2) The RESISTANCE can be seen in two directions, either the resistance you might have reading it for some reason (noise, time constraints, the money it costs, whatever), or you could imagine the resistance I might have had putting it out (considerable, though breaks down into three main parts, time, money, and often false expectations on my part that people I pay to provide certain services will actually provide those services as specified - for instance print the back of a page the same side up as the front of the page). My INITIATIVE I will let you deduce from hints I have given and what you know about the Teaching and the responsibilities that go along with having it. (1) Your Initiative (you intention) is known only to you.
Or take the place where you live, backwards from (4) the Result that you live there, (3) the Form of the dwelling itself, (2) what resistance they had building it, what you had moving in there, back to (1) the Initiative of the thing.
I would really like to follow up with you on this, please write back if it has not been clarified, I think this understanding is essential and I want to do whatever I can to see that you get it.
The second question was a variation of the first; although you do not say you can't see the Four Forces, by reading between the lines I think your looking at it may be a little skewed. I went down this skewed path a long time myself. I suspect it is a common misconception. I am glad this question about "being passive" was sent in.
Passivity is certainly a step along the way, sometimes it is the only way to deal with Resistance (with certain kinds of physical pain, for instance. Say you put your hand in water that is much hotter than you thought. You yank your hand out but for the next moment there is nothing to do but be passive) ... We need to learn how to be consciously passive. But passivity is only one mode of behavior. When we first start doing the Work we realize one day that we have been trying (and usually failing) to control everybody and everything. Self-observation shows us that we have been completely passive all our lives, letting the Not-I's direct the show, at the same time erroneously thinking we were "doing." So we begin to Work on ignoring the Not-I's and find we are "passive" because we are no longer reacting. But this isn't enough. I realized one day in a flash that patience without Initiative is nothing, it is a waste of time, entropy is the law of the land. By this I mean if we don't initiate, everything will just disintegrate of its own accord.
What a shock this was ... until the moment I had been so proud for having stopped trying to control, for being free to experience what is, to just let things (and people) be. And while it is stupid to be proud of oneself for finally being at least semi-conscious rather than a robot, the passive state is a worthwhile place to be - for a while. Just totally passive, letting everything that is just be as it is, freely experiencing this. But not for too long. When this house Awareness is cleaned out of all those demons who are making havoc in my name, I had better re-furnish with some new Initiative, quick, nature abhors a vacuum, I want to be in charge of what's in my house.
Where the misunderstanding lies here, I think, is that we see Awareness and X as separate entities. This is error. Awareness is not separate from X, it is a function of X. Let's take as an example your vision. Can you imagine you "eyesight" separate from you? Off floating around somewhere on its own? No way. Vision is a function of you. So being passive does not mean that we just sit and wait for X to do something, it means that the function of Awareness reports single-mindedly (no conflict) what's to the benefit of, advantage to, of value to the whole being. Then, not before, X will do the appropriate thing.
So the Work is to get the Not-I misinformation cleared out, either banished altogether or, more likely, ignored, and then to start placing values on what's going on. In other words, X's Initiative depends entirely on what It is Aware of ... and Its Awareness function (you) is not separate from Itself. X is not "out there" somewhere, waiting for Federal Express to deliver the information, while "we" site here twiddling our thumbs waiting for X to send a return reply. It not only is right here, It is I ... Awareness is a function of It, not in any way separate.
To continue our vision analogy: we think of our eyes as the source of vision, but also know that in reality they are lenses and sensors which send information to the brain for processing. Although we might not be aware of it every moment, we know that the eyes and the brain must work together as an inseparable team for vision to occur. Now to reach this point where the sense of I permeates every facet of the being takes some Work ... many years. While we are Working on this, the sense of I will reside in Awareness ... but this is a temporarily limited place. And while it feels "real" and maybe one cannot imagine it any other way, we want to continually tell ourselves, at least in words, "I am." Period. Not X out there and me down here, but rather I am. X is right here, right now. In the meantime, until that point where we KNOW precisely what I am, until we live it moment by moment, we make the Initiative "ourselves." Nothing will ever happen unless we do, everything will just fall apart while we are "waiting" for X to "show up."
Now the correct harmonious function of all this depends on Purpose. If my Purpose is erroneous and my methods of achieving an erroneous purpose conflict, I will never get anything accomplished. Awareness is just feeding Not-I's, who lie about what's going on (insist on gain and escape), no Initiating occurs. So the way to get to the point where X and Awareness are felt as One, we must always question purpose, check it out, what is my purpose for this action. When disintegration ends, integration is.
So what we can do is ignore all the noise around us, make up "our" mind ("our" = X + Awareness) and just do it. X will do whatever Its Awareness says is of value. What we have to wait for is time, place, and circumstance, we don't have to wait for X if we are single-minded. You can be sure it is in gear as soon as it gets the message (the same moment the "message" exists.) Awareness and X are partners, not separate, they always work together.
Another analogy of all this is the idea of "a woman alone," seen as anathema or tragedy in many cultures the world over. This is a very literal (and inappropriate, especially today) reaction to the Truth that Awareness without Spirit is nothing. When working together, this is union or "Holy Marriage" (and what I think The Song of Solomon in the Bible is all about). Of course Awareness without Spirit is an impossibility, but "she" can forget all about her "Marriage" Partner, turn away from "him," and take in all kinds of strangers, creeps, and deadbeats (Not-I's), looking in the wrong place for her Source. This is universally unacceptable, except that everyone has forgotten that these things are just symbolic of inner Truth, the Forms are not the thing - "she" is subject to her One Source, "him." It's all within.
So ... one day you will know Real I initiating everything in your Life, one with Its partner Awareness. Meantime, "fake it" a little bit and start taking the Initiative "yourself." We will never know full integration until we give it a try.
