Chapter 12
Decision

We cannot get rid of impulses in us, but we can say yes or no to them. _JG Bennett

Five weeks into the curriculum Mr. B is about to introduce us to the Decision Exercise. We are gathered in the bright and airy ballroom, excitement bubbling through the air as it always does whenever Mr. Bennett is announcing something new. If we hadn’t already learned a little restraint, people would be asking questions before he even spoke. Instead we quiet ourselves so as not to delay his talk by making him wait for us to simmer down. As always, he sits with his eyes closed for some minutes, probably getting a feel for what we might be capable of understanding. read the rest of this entry… »

Chapter 11
Like Sheep in the Field

Try to learn to come to everything as if it were quite new,
And as if it had no connection with what you have heard before._JG Bennett

In lectures and classes, much attention was given to the philosophical significance of the qualities of energies, will tasks, seven lines of work, the nine-pointed figure called an enneagram used as a tool for understanding the process of transformation, and other diagrams illustrating all of these concepts. It was a fact that most of Mr. Bennett’s writings were of this sort. He was a scientist and presented his philosophy methodically, requiring all of us to stretch our thinking—in my case, well beyond my natural inclinations.

It’s not that examining guiding principles wasn’t significant. I valued the world created at Sherborne where understanding human existence was considered a necessity; yet, sometimes the intellectuality felt devoid of common sense. Couldn’t we see by the results what happened when someone behaved poorly in the garden? It seemed as if Mr. B and his previous students couldn’t process information about feelings directly and needed systematics to create distance from human emotion in order to understand what occurred. For them, diagrams of triads with arrows indicating the order of active, denying, and reconciling forces made it clear. read the rest of this entry… »

Chapter 10
About Silence

Speech is one of the harmful activities of man
that prevent his spiritual progress. _JG Bennett

There was still more to our daily schedule—much of it orchestrated by Mr. B. Between dining with him, his leading Morning Exercise, reading aloud to us each evening, and his introducing and closing weekly Themes, he was a constant presence. Despite classes and practical work with other teachers and his short excursions elsewhere, he seemed to always be with us.
At lunch and dinner we ate in silence and began those meals with a prayer that Mr B. wrote: read the rest of this entry… »

Chapter 9
Introduction to Themes

Everyone has an inner teacher,
But we have not yet learned to go to that school. _JG Bennett

From the moment I arrived at Sherborne House, I felt I’d never be able to meet the expectations. The quantity of silence increased that unpleasant self-awareness just as the short meditations had at the Cayce camp. However, camp had a friendly ambiance and lasted only a few days. Here, time felt interminable with too little mitigating kindness.
How could I assess what I was experiencing? Time and again, I was repulsed by the snappish tone of voice used by staff and old Bennett students. Unlike the ready empathy at camp, I had to search among my classmates for tenderness to smooth the rough edges. At the same time, the systematic way of looking at the world was similar to the sparse and analytical communication I was brought up with. Although it was unpleasant, often missing important expressive ques, it was familiar and I believed what I’d been told—that it signified discernment.
At Sherborne, when my activities were questioned, I always made excuses about what I was doing. Had I never moved beyond parental expectations I adopted as my own? Sometimes, I could see I was wrong about what I thought others expected of me, but what was reasonable for me to be capable of doing? No matter how hard I worked at something, I was always dissatisfied with the outcome. With this degree of self-criticism, I could never feel satisfaction with anything I did. Now, at Sherborne, we were told every day to ask more of ourselves. The language was so unappealing; it rarely inspired or gave me hope. read the rest of this entry… »

Chapter 8
Getting Into Our Daily Life

You can actually be much closer to a person
when you can bear their manifestations,
than if you’re upset by them. _JG Bennett

I was still just getting to know the students in my group and become more familiar with the classes and exercises that were an essential part of the course.

read the rest of this entry… »