LIVING DAY BY DAY

       We put here, in the Enneagram, the process of living each day. It is a complete process, repeated according the cosmic and psychological  transcendental biological cycles.
       Days are units in themselves, as the pearls of a necklace, which we collect to form our personal life.
       The most important is that we have the power to cultivate these pearls, one by one, to build a beautiful and harmonious whole.
        The day can be organized by stages in the Enneagram, and this can orient us in out personal time management.
        Note that these stages are not simple consecutive or sequential phases, but they are interwoven and complementary.
 

TRIADS

Under the point of view of the Triads, these fundamental Gurdjieff's exercises for the day correspond to the triad of Evolution (2-1-3). It is worthy to remember that all the evolutionary triads begin with the passive force (2).

Triad of Evolution (2-1-3):

      In the interval "down" — remember that "this will pass"
      In the interval "up" — do not exaggerate.
      In the interval "top" — relax.

DETAILING OF THE DAY

1. SITTING BY MORNING

      Sit every morning, for 5 to 20 minutes. Relax, considering the parts of your body from the head to your toes. Turn yourself receptive to higher influences.

2. WHAT IS MY PRIORITY TODAY?

      Do no leave your room or your home without defining what is more important to you this day.

3. CONSCIOUS DISPOSITION
     TO NOT EXPRESS NEGATIVE EMOTIONS

    The first interval is the moment of Grace. Although the note Mi (see the musical scale in the enneagram) have a tendency to stop and give up, it is in this moment that the Grace enter our life to animate it, like breathing, which is essential to the digestive process.
       We must take this interval like a favorable wave to "surf" the day. The disposition we have at this moment will follow us till night.

4. IDENTIFY AND SUPPORT MAINTENANCE NEEDS

      Point four command the rhythm of the Earth, the administration of material things, and so, the maintenance of life.
      Discernment is needed in the management of life, to identify a lot of tasks that are simply undelayable—under penalty of the non-continuity of life itself.
       Such activities, as eating and hygiene, and everything that need constant attention, cannot be accumulated. They determine the rhythm.
       We cannot eat a lot of meals today and wait several days to eat again.  Neither it is worthy to take three showers, one after another. And so are those activities like classes and exercises, which only work with constancy, persistence and repetition.
       Our organism is structured for the rhythm that animates it — it doesn't store vitamins and requests the replacement of proteins in the process of daily cellular reconstruction.
       So, four is the number of death and regeneration, characterizing our cosmic species. Like the Sun, that appears and disappears every 24 hours, we die at night and are born again each morning. We are always new.

5. One Anti-entropy Action at Least, Each Day

       Number five corresponds to the note Sol, the star of our Solar system. It brings a type of time that transcends the planetary rhythm and transcends the day.
       The activities of this point of the process form the work itself.
       If in point four we were considering a "job", as maintenance, in point five we are "entrepreneurs" and everything we do must have a particular meaning, as Creation.
       In point four we fight against death; in five the fight runs against time.
       The flow of the time, which Gurdjieff calls "the merciless Heropass," is the action of the entropy universal itself: strong, constant and automatic, sweeping the cosmos in the direction of chaos and destruction.
       Therefore, the work of five offers an anti-entropy movement, for everything that can create order and meaning. It is the truly central point of the day.
       Gurdjieff says that our Common Father created the world because of the need to face Heropass. The human being, made as the Creator's image, also needs to create and to maintain his own universe — and this has to be done in daily doses of constructive work.
       As well as God created the world in seven days, we need here to consider the week as an extra-planetary unit of time, like the month and the year in terms of solar rhythm.
       The corporative work of five should be linked to values and goals (7 and 8) that pull us ahead and upwards, beyond the simple survival of the body.

6. DO A BORING TASK A DAY

       Remember, the day has been placed in the ENNEAGRAM, and not in an ordinary linear scale. We need to see that it doesn't just follow the chronological sequence of the hours, but that the mind goes forth and back in the héxade and the emotional is always present in the eternity of the triangle.

       The six is an interval that demands choice, commitment and responsibility. It is always present in each instant of the life. Human free will is exerted at each fraction of second, either consciously or by default. If we don't choose to decide, life — or the Heropass — decides for us. And, there is no doubt, every time that we abstain from conscious and positive activity, natural entropy pushes us a little more downward.
       This is what that famous sentence refers: "Watch and pray" (Matthew 26: 41).
       Finally, deciding or not, wanting or not, we are responsible, not only for the way we receive the influences and external expressions, but also for the influence we sow in the world.
       Aiming to do a boring or difficult task a day, something you had been postponing, is not only useful — at the end of one year you can have "killed" 365 of those tasks! — but it is an exercise to strength your Will.

7. I AM

       An archetype of what we are — or imagine, or we wish to be — is constantly molding our being. Therefore, Gurdjieff taught an exercise to be done all the time, during the whole day: "Remember yourself, always and in every place."
       The statement "I am" it is an exercise for remembering ourselves. And the most important: "I am" does not need complement: neither "I am this" nor "I am that." I simply exist; I make part of the universe.
       Point seven is also the archetype or model of the work we do in point five. According to our goals for the short and medium terms, we can make positive visualizations that helps our self-transforming process.

8. THE Film OF THE DAY BY NIGHT

       At night, before sleeping, review your day, as a film. Without anxiety or judgment, we simply fall asleep easily when seeing the images of the day that we have just lived.

9. SLEEP

       This day has ended, and we accept that as calmly as the sun sleepy diving down the horizon, every evening.
       Well or badly, another cycle has been completed; another begins anew on and on again.
       We needed to surrender entirely to sleep and rest, so that the forces of the universe may recover in us.
       Amen.

IS YOUR LIFE IN HIGH RESOLUTION?

       This depends on your level of conscience. Is this year passing slowly? The end of the month has come before you expected? Did the day end suddenly? You don't have time for anything?
       The only way to obtain high definition, focus, meaning and beauty in your life is placing attention and consciousness in each moment of the day, aiming defined goals and based on correct values.
       This is the true exercise of being human.
       Parallel to this sequential description of the activities of the day, it is essential to remember that the intervals (3, 6 and 9) belong to the omnipresent triangle, and constitute the contact points with the exterior. In a closed system, entropy [the tendency to disorder] certainly leads to chaos.
       At the vertexes of the triangle we can have exchanges with the exterior, with things, people and the laws of the universe.
       Although the intervals also come chronologically, in defined moments in the sequence of time, they are part of eternity. Consequently, the relationship — or contact with the exterior — is omnipresent.
       Love is the relationship among everything that exists, the union of the whole.