Absent - Not Present in Mind

Absent, absently (adverb), other uses: absented, absenting, absents (transitive verbs), also absence (noun)

Absent is not present in mind, missing, or amiss spiritually and intellectually, but often only referenced physically or emotionally. The act of inattentiveness also carries a physical and emotional aspect to it, however, it is heavily perceived by the level of intelligence and intuitional interpretation.

So what is going on here in our minds with the constant loss of focus and attunement, where we daydream, read novels, dig a movie, yet these abstract constructs haunt us while working and cause us to stare at the wall for five minutes? Is love always affecting our thoughts in these areas?

It seems the word absent has the same derivative as the word sin, and that being centralized around the phrase to be. This is part of the answer, where in order to be, a metaphysics must be occurring. This is between the absent and the present in our minds and our abilities to make it happen.

For this reasoning, absent represents a key primer marker for understanding our minds and our emotional expressions that result from our thinking and instincts. Author P.D. Ouspensky makes an worthy comparison when sharing the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff in reference to sensations, emotions, and feelings. This is from "In Search of the Miraculous", page 107.

"Sensation and emotion do not reason, do not compare, they simple define a given impression by its aspect, by its being pleasant or unpleasant in one sense or another, by its color, taste or smell. Moreover, sensations can be indifferent - neither warm nor cold, neither pleasant or unpleasant: 'white paper,' 'red pencil.' In the sensation of white or red there is nothing pleasant or unpleasant. At any rate there need not necessarily be anything pleasant or unpleasant connected with this or that color. These sensations, the so-called 'five sense', and others, like the feeling of warmth, cold, and so on, are instinctive. Feeling functions or emotions are always pleasant or unpleasant; indifferent emotions do not exist.

Just think about this for a moment. Not only do we not always know exactly which sensations are indifferent, but at the very same time, no emotion is the same. No wonder we have problems. Our sensations develop from our instinctive or spiritual center. Our feelings are a combination of emotions developed in reflection to our thought. Gurdjieff goes on to explain some of the difficulties in sorting through these elements we all seem to normally possess.

"The difficulty of distinguishing between the functions is increased by the fact that people differ very much in the way they feel their functions. This is what we do not generally understand. We take people to be much more alike than they really are. In reality, however, there exist between them great differences in the forms and methods of their perception. some perceive chiefly through their mind, others through their feeling, and others through sensation. It is very difficult, almost impossible for men of different categories and of different modes of perception to understand one another, because they call one and the same thing by different names, and they call different things by the same name. Besides this, various other combinations are possible. One man perceives by thoughts and sensations, another by his thoughts and feelings, and so on. One or another mode of perception is immediately connected with one or another kind of reaction to external events. The result of this difference in perception and reaction to external events is expressed in the first place by the fact that people do not understand one another and in the second by the fact that they do not understand themselves. Very often a man calls his thoughts or his intellectual perceptions his feelings, calls his feelings his thoughts, and his sensations his feelings. This last is the most common. If two people perceive the same thing differently, let us say that one perceives it through feeling and another through sensation - they may argue all their lives and never understand in what consists the difference of their attitude to a given object. Actually, one sees one aspect of it, and the other a different aspect.

Gurdjieff clearly shows us how absence works in subtle ways. Don Juan might refer to this as assemblage point disorder, we all experience it. Absence is the state of being away, it is also referenced by the words, lack; want. This last reference seems to be related to yearning, and may in fact be a poor reference from the diction for confusion. Not only can we experience absence while alone, we also experience the same problems when we perceive others and communicate with others. The cure for this says Gurdjieff is understanding knowledge, and what I call the view. It simply has to do with the mind, and being minded. Is this how the elements of love work in secret?

"In order to find a way of discriminating we must understand that every normal psychic function is a means or an instrument of knowledge. With the help of the mind, we see one aspect of things and events, with the help of emotions another aspect, with the help of sensations a third aspect. The most complete knowledge of a given subject possible for us can only be obtained if we examine it simultaneously with the mind, feelings, and sensations. Every man who is striving after right knowledge must aim at the possibility of attaining such perception. In ordinary conditions man sees the world through a crooked, uneven window. And if he realizes this, he cannot alter anything. This or that mode of perception depends upon the work of his organism as a whole. All functions strive to keep one another in the state in which they are. Therefore when a man begins to study himself he must understand that if he discovers in himself something that he dislikes he will not be able to change it. To study is one thing, and to change is another. But study is the first step towards the possibility of change in the future. And in the beginning, to study himself he must understand that for a long time all his work will consist in study alone.

The ability to simultaneously coordinate your feelings and sensations is part of the metaphysics of bearing for absence and presence in the mind and of these, they are utilized by the now, this being an analogy to the whole or absolute essence excavating the perception of time. This is important as time will rot your brain in any attempt to make what we perceive as change. Immediately time is implemented and in most cases defeating the very purpose or reasons for change. To continue with Gurdjieff:

"Change under ordinary conditions is impossible, because, in wanting to change something a man wants to change this one thing only. But everything in the machine is interconnected and every function is inevitably counterbalanced by some other function or by a whole series of other functions within ourselves. The machine is balanced in all its detail at every moment of its activity. If a man observes in himself something that he dislikes and begins making efforts to alter it, he may succeed in obtaining a certain result. But together with this result he will inevitably obtain another result, which he did not in the least expect or desire and which he could not have suspected. By striving to destroy and annihilate everything that he dislikes, by making efforts to this end, he upsets the balance of the machine. The machine strives to re-establish the balance and re-establishes it by creating a new function which the man could not have foreseen. For instance, a man may observe that is he very absent-minded, that he forgets everything, loses everything, and so on. He begins to struggle with this habit and, if he is sufficiently methodical and determined, he succeeds, after a time, in attaining the desired result; he ceases to forget and lose everything. This he notices, but there is something else he does not notice, which other people notice, namely, that he has grown irritable, pedantic, fault-finding, disagreeable. Irritability has appeared as the result of having lost his absent mindedness. Why? It is impossible to say. Only detailed analysis of a particular man's mental qualities can show why the loss of one quality has caused the appearance of another. This does not mean that loss of absent-mindedness must necessarily give rise to irritability. It is just as easy for some other characteristic to appear that has no relation to absent-mindedness at all, for instance stinginess or envy or something else." p108

The fact that absence can exist, allows envy and a mirage of emotions and feelings to reveal themselves unforeseen only in the fact, many have left them off the table and preferred to experience them on the spot, in part in some way, giving in to the fight of dislike in any preparation and most likely in some cases using absence in a peculiar way, a sort of aversion control for fear. These strange mental states are effected by the gravity of love, but the snow can fall on both sides of the mirror. The question we may ask is not how deep in the mirror are we looking, but how to balance the view and in turn the expression presence with others.

In preparation, each side has a field marker I label as absent and present, and the difference between them is every second of time, and the existence of time itself. The logic in this is speculated as needed to determine the impossible from the possible, or the supernatural from the natural, juxtaposed by the power of love, which is represented by what is known as the station Earth. The fact that we exist at all is centered upon the Earth itself, and our position, in essence, the absolute magnetic center. Here lies the motives hidden in our souls.

G.I. Gurdjieff divides the perception of Earth as part of what he refers to as comoses, a group of 7 of which Earth is included in the Mesocosmos. The first cosmos being world one, and then different forms of perception in a curious way. Of all seven cosmoses, we only have the first [Proto], the holy [Ayo], the large [Macro], the second [Deutero], the middle [Meso], the third [Trito], and the small [Micro], totally seven [page 205]. The middle cosmos is Earth and the planets according to Gurdjieff. There is another curious analogy to this where in order to travel in time it is perceived to take six reference points and a point of origin to calculate a destination in any space time continuum. Even so this is speculated, it does make you wonder if there is a connection.

When you look in the mirror, know there is a point of origin of the ability of perception that must rest in the microcosmos of the atom, but as always, man [Trito] is involved in the perception of it. Even though Earth is not the center of the universe [Macro], it is the center of our minds. When you gaze into the mirror, this can be clouded by the view. That's envy, and we fear it's power in a paradox over viewing our point of view in this world of presence and absence.