FCR paper from 16/2/1981

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Rumpelteazer
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FCR paper from 16/2/1981

Postby Rumpelteazer » Mon Feb 21, 2011 7:02 pm

Cheltenham Group Meeting report 17/2/2011
Our meeting taker brought this paper from a meeting taken by Dr Roles almost exactly 30 years ago.
1981_4.pdf
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Group members agreed that the content was just as relevant to us today. It resulted in a particularly sattvic and quiet meeting with an unusual degree of openness.

There was much discussion about positive emotion and the difference between positive and negative emotion. Some group members felt that it was the purity of the emotion that was significant. Righteous anger was usually negative as it involved ego but in some cases it could be a positive emotion if there was no personal involvement. An example was given of Christ driving the money changers from the temple and overturning the tables. One person explained that the sacrifices and offerings made in the temple had to be purchased with temple money rather than common currency. The money changers were charging an extortionate rate of interest to poor people who had simply come to worship. This is why Christ described them as a "den of thieves". But was Christ was simply expressing anger because anger was needed and not actually feeling it? Perhaps he was feeling quite calm inside?

Negative emotion can be the result of wanting the wrong thing. Something one cannot have. One person explained how he had wanted love and companionship but could see that this was not going to happen. He had come to accept this and as a result had become much happier. Another said that when she first came into the Work her aim was self-control. She worked hard but did not get any closer to her aim. Now her aim is different. She simply wants to live all her life in the present, feeling and enjoying unity with everything in the universe. This has made all the difference because she can see that it is achievable. An older person said that she didn't really have specific desires any more. So there were no strong negative emotions, or positive emotions.

Someone said that he thought he was getting quite good at avoiding negative emotions, and seldom felt them. However, his recent experience of buying a new computer that didn't work showed him that he hadn't got rid of them entirely. But at least he was able to observe this and do his best to control expression of the negative emotion.

The group enjoyed the poem quoted by Dr Roles. One member said it reminded her of a Shakespeare sonnet:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixéd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose Worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

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