How do we use the highest parts of ourselves to work towards awakening, and rest when needed? Intellectual parts of centers need to work together for us to truly remember ourselves.

The Four Lower Centers

Fourth Way authors alert us to the fact that we have seven brains, rather than one. Two of them function in times of heightened awareness, or presence. There is also a sex center, which stands apart from the other centers. Here, we will concern ourselves with the four lower centers: moving, instinctive, intellectual, and emotional.

Degrees of Attention in the Lower Centers

Each of these four centers can be divided into three parts, according to the level of attention manifesting. The jack, the lowest division—the most mechanical part—of a center can function without attention. The queen, the emotional part of a center, functions with attention riveted to an internal or external object. The king, the intellectual part of center, functions with concentrated, held attention. 

Intellectual parts of centers are the those that can more intentionally lead us to higher centers, or higher states of consciousness. There is a fifth lower center, the sex center. It has higher energies that we can use, through creating disciplined attention in the kings, to add to consciousness.

This Chinese figure depicts, upside down on its belly, the Lower Self, a part of us that uses the jacks and queens to displace presence. See inverted detail below.

Attention is the tool of the soul. – Rodney Collin

Remembering Oneself using Intellectual Parts of Centers

In the Fourth Way, to remember oneself, to be present, intellectual parts of centers need to be working together. These parts of centers are slow, and often require a certain time in order to get going. This can work in our favor. For example, if we detect that we are moving or performing an action quickly, we can see that we are most probably not in the kings, and may be in the queens.

Attention in the kings may assist presence, or higher consciousness, with two aspects of sex energy. First, attention can help prevent the lower self, our lower parts, from continually wasting sex energy and throwing it away. Secondly, the kings can contain and rechannel sex energy upwards, in order to create higher awareness. 

P.D. Ouspensky suggested trying to do everything intentionally; that is, to be in the intellectual parts of centers. 

Disciplined Attention – an Aspect of School Work

When Jesus was asked “What is life?” he replied, “It is a movement and a rest.” School work requires the work of the kings, disciplined attention. When we work with higher energies, or hydrogens, we need to find an entirely new way to rest, as Rodney Collin put it. Curiously, as we need to be taught how to be present, we also need to learn how to rest. 

Labor is rest, and rest is labor. – Robert Earl Burton

This Tarot card depicts the steward, an inner entity created from the kings to promote presence.

Developing a Steward for Movement and Rest

Movement can mean an effort to engage presence through the steward, a part of us created by school work. Rest would be the temporary cessation of that particular effort, inviting higher centers, or presence, to come forward. How can we know when it is time for movement and when for a rest? Curiously, we must already have a little presence to make that discernment.

Take a rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop. – Rumi