An Inner Resident

Completing yet another trip to China, I find myself wrapping up yet another long period of contemplation, which is what always seems to emerge when I spend several weeks in a foreign environment with a good deal of time to myself.

Coming to it at this moment, I'm struck by how little I know about myself. I, like everyone else, tend to project myself confidently, as though I knew who I was or what I was talking about. I find it surprising that people consider me intelligent, even professorial. I am acutely aware of my own limitations and spend a great deal of every day examining my inner processes, which appear to me to bear little relationship to how others perceive me from the outside.

Perhaps one difference between me and others I know is that I don't believe in what I am doing. Every instance of action becomes an occasion for questions; the things that I say with confidence are not my own, they don't belong to me, but were all given through revelation. So there isn't anything there that is mine, even though people ascribe these things to me.

The only purpose that we have on this planet is to serve others, and yet an enormous amount of the way each one of us lives turns out to be a life in which we want to serve ourselves first, and others second. Any reasonably incisive degree of self remembering or self observation will quickly reveal how many tens of thousands of instantaneous turns of thought go in that direction. If we want to see anything about ourselves, it would be most useful to see our selfishness; and yet we don't.

A person needs to find a quiet place in themselves in which they can sit down at all times and see what is going on. Everything still has to go on; but one must also be sitting down inside themselves and asking questions. One can't stop things from going on, or try to alter the circumstances, because if one does so, one interferes with the behaviors one is attempting to learn about; so one must, in a sense, violate the basic principles of inner decency in order to understand why there is a violation in the first place. Patching it over won't help.

I think we are all put here to develop this quiet place inside ourselves, from which we can see what we are. The noise and distraction of life very nearly prevents this from happening in human beings; only an intentional engagement, the undertaking of a life with a meditative practice, can begin to form this quiet place. Even then, it is constantly disturbed; because we interfere with everything, the moment there is a quiet place, well, we want to interfere with that. Nothing can be left well enough alone, even though this particular place ought not to be touched. The resident should sit down in it very quietly and be left alone to do the work that needs to be done.

If there is any sense of the sacred, any sense at all that there is something more precious in life than the battering of each other for wealth, sex, fame, and glory, it needs to have this quiet place which isn't interfered with. The development of the soul needs to be an untouchable action, off limits to our ordinary being.

May your soul be filled with light.

Applying Inner Energies

I suppose if one wants to discuss joyful manifestation (which only becomes possible through the toleration of a great deal of suffering) one also ought to consider the question of applying inner energies.

What is the point of opening to a higher energy? Do we want to attain freedom or liberation? If so, what do we want to be liberated or free of? And why should we be free of it?

Opening to a higher energy cannot just be a form of inward narcissism, in which one blissfully merges with the Divine. There is a direct responsibility to mediate the inner forces of higher energy with outer life, and to offer them generously and unstintingly to others. This does not mean we dissipate ourselves, or spend energy foolishly; it does mean we learn to actively act with kindness and compassion, that is, actively in the sense that we attentively come closer to the Divine kernel within ourselves, bring it into relationship with the ordinary body and our personality, and express it outwardly in a natural and gentle form that considers others.

You can tell how much people are working by whether or not this is taking place in them. Every kind of cruelty, criticism, or faultfinding that manifests is the result of a failure to correctly channel a higher energy into a situation. These manifestations masquerade as some kind of authority, but each one of them is a falsehood. The truth is discovered within the loving manifestation between human beings as they encounter one another. A manifestation that is not loving is, at its essence and ultimately, untruthful. It does not acknowledge the higher; it falls into the lower and consumes itself. When Gurdjieff said that we all live through lies, this is what he spoke of.

One might think that this sets an impossibly high standard, and from the point of view of this level, it does. But we are speaking of levels here, and the truth of a higher level has this standard as its ordinary condition, not a special one. We measure everything by this level — as I said before, we live in the age of false measurements — and thus we do not understand what the manifestation from a higher level consists of. There are so many within our society posing as ones with authority who do not manifest properly that one can't even count them. This includes spiritual as well as political and social leaders, artists, and so on. (It's often the simplest and most unpretentious of people, the ones who aren't trying anything special, who most effectively get out of the way of a higher energy and allow it to do the work it is supposed to be doing. The irony is apparent.)

In attending to my inner energy, I asked this question of myself constantly, because I must suffer, tolerate, and interact creatively with my negativity in every step I take. It is ubiquitous and unyielding; if I go against it directly, I can't find a way around it. I have to be a sly man, a clever man; I need to ignore it, in a certain sense, and to even actively tell it to go back down to the place where it came from, recognizing that it is not me. So, as I converse — I am taking a real example here — at dinner, and see one selfish or unkind thought after another arise, produced by the machine that generates these things, I tell each one of them quietly, responsibly, and gently to go away. I don't have to believe in them; they aren't me. But I do need to take the energy of Grace that I have been gifted with and actively use it to wag my finger and say "no" to each of these little demons as it arises. There are times when they are going to be stronger rather than I am; but the more I come into relationship with an energy that informs — that inwardly forms — the more I am able to say no to these things.

And I have to be innocent myself. There is a need to show up in the midst of life, untouched by my own paranoias, concerns, and the usual nonsense I dream up about how everything is wrong, and just ignore all of that stuff and be with the people I am with. 

See them as human beings. Who are they? What are they doing? 

They want to be touched by something positive, and I may be able to give that to them, if only I am a little more attentive. I can help them by offering some of this energy I have so carefully cultivated and tried to become open to. It wants to be with everyone; it doesn't belong to me. It is my duty to share it. 

But first I have to be there, and then I have to see that I must offer it generously, without attaching it to my negativity.

This, in any event, is how I see the practice. Others may disagree.

May your soul be filled with light.

Manifestation with joy

Although it is objectively true that we need to intentionally suffer ourselves, we have a parallel responsibility to manifest joyfully. This is a difficult task, because most of us manifest according to our emotional attitudes, and most of our emotional attitude is negative.

Nonetheless, opening to an energy that is selfless — available through the offering of oneself in a simple and natural way to the conditions of life — can help us to open to the possibility of joyful manifestation. This means not thinking of ourselves, but thinking of others, and of acting directly through the best kind of compassion and kindness that we can find available within ourselves. In these instances, we are transparent; we aren't asking for anything, all we are doing is offering ourselves, who we are, the way we are, to the other.

This kind of gentle and attentive correspondence to others, in which we consider their well-being and offer a kindness of one kind or another, can be transformative in itself. In this kind of attention is the essence of what Mr. Gurdjieff called outer considering, a practice which he appears to have mastered (along with many other remarkable personal manifestations which were, to say the very least, unexpected.)

In any event, there is much to be said for showing up in life and just trying to be joyful. We need not be overly earnest; the first requirement is to be gentle, and to see the other person. Ideally, in encountering another person, we put aside all those nasty little prejudices which we nurse so assiduously to our bosom when we are thinking in private. We have all these bad parts, to be sure; but they are not necessarily an essential part of what we are. They are incubi and succubi, evil sprites that can be rightly banished to the lower hells of our being if we are attentive and know them for what they are. 

In this attentive inner banishment of the bad, and intentional inner turning towards the good, we do our best to discover our inherent and natural good feelings towards others; to value others, to offer them everything we can of a joyful exchange, a positive exchange, one based on friendship, support, and brotherly or sisterly love. This doesn't have to be some idealized exchange; it's quite simple, and can only take place in the moment, uncontaminated by our ideologies, politics, or religious beliefs. It's just two human beings, being human.

 Because human beings are vicegerents, or earthly representatives, of God, the natural human state, stripped of all the egoistic pretensions we carry in us, is one of selfless and loving expression. If we were to abandon our own will and inhabit the will of God, this is the only kind of expression we would be capable of. God, after all, is merciful above all and loving above all; and he expects us, acting at our best, to express exactly these qualities, and none of the evil or petty qualities that we are usually filled with.

I've spent some time on this trip (I'm writing this in China, although it won't post until well after I am back) contemplating the enormous amount of gossip, pettiness, and outright ill wishes that we all harbor in even the most casual exchanges amongst one another. We forget ourselves; and in forgetting ourselves, we don't manifest joyfully, as an offering towards life. Instead, we manifest selfishly, according to our inner considering.

I keep encountering difficult situations during this trip, and I keep reminding myself over and over again that my job is to tolerate and suffer the conditions, and to move forward in an effort to manifest the positive. This requires a constant vigilance and a constant application of the inner energies acquired through work to intelligently navigate life without damaging others, and finding good solutions. It's like shooting the rapids on a river; and one does hit rocks, there is no question about it. Every day, I slip and fall; I find myself being a slippery political animal instead of a straightforward and decent human being; and to be true to the matter, business sometimes requires that, no matter how unsavory it may be. One learns to be flexible; one learns to change one's direction over and over again as rocks appear and one must maneuver around them, but one attempts to remember not to do any harm — above all, to do no harm.

I don't know of any better action one can offer in life than to be decent, kind, and loving towards others, no matter the circumstances. It is the individual and collective shame of every man and woman — and I emphatically include myself in this category — that we fail so miserably in this effort.

We must try — and try — and try.

Our work expects nothing less of us.

May your soul be filled with light.

All of Christ

I find it necessary to write another post following up on this question of Christ, which is the essential question for every Western religious person, if not the whole world, and which ought to be at the center of every sincere follower of the Gurdjieff method.

Understanding on this question has been degenerated over centuries, and because human understanding no longer corresponds to a rational (what Gurdjieff would call three-centered) understanding, people are unable to sense a right position in regard to this question, even if they profess to be Christians. This includes radical Christians and fundamentalists, who are just as mistaken on the issue as those they believe themselves superior to.

As I said in the earlier post on the subject, one cannot pick and choose in this matter. To paraphrase Gurdjieff, if one thing is true, everything is true. In this sense, one cannot just take a part of Christianity, the part one prefers, and have it be whole. Even one single fact which constitutes actual inner understanding that reveals the truth of Christ verifies and renders the entire question of Christ true. One cannot have part of Christ or the Christian story; it's an all or nothing proposition. So let us begin by understanding that we cannot make compromises on the matter.

This is not a proposition that manifests or can be found in the outward world. Although all of the outward manifestations are, in one way or another, real reflections of the Dharma of Christ, each one is just a fraction or a fragment. The entire truth of Christ is found within the living heart of human beings, in the Divine center that was mercifully given to each being when they were born. This Divine seed is a mystery that every human being carries in them that can be born into the light of Christ. But it is not opened unless it is properly tended to.

We are all separated from Christ by our entire nature; and it is our entire nature that must go if we are to become open to Christ. Even the most earnest and ardent seeker must spend decades and perhaps even lifetimes before that opening becomes completely possible, because it only takes place on a level where we have completely subjected ourselves to the humility of the Christian practice. That is, we must entirely and completely admit the whole of Christ into our heart, not just the fraction which we are pleased with or which satisfies us.

This idea of pleasure and satisfaction is exactly why Gurdjieff rejected the idea of pleasure, calling it "shit." Our pleasure — and this does not just mean physical pleasure, it extends to the entire idea of pleasure in all three centers — is what we reward and flatter ourselves with in our effort to avoid submitting to the authority of God. We spend almost all of every day inventing little fantasies of one kind or another that put pleasurable images in front of us, and each one distracts us from the dire circumstances we have put ourselves into our failure to make dutiful and right efforts toward submission. Every human mind and soul is eternally, it would seem, preoccupied with such nonsense, which can only be dispelled by an active and—let me put it this way—aggressive practice of prayer. 

All of the Tantric and yogic practices that attempt to expunge desire from the heart of man center around this particular question. When they became attached to outward ethical and moral questions, they lost force, because they were never intended to target the outer results of our inner failings. It is the inner failing that must be addressed. The secular attempts of Western (and, let's be fair, Eastern as well) civilizations to externalize and codify these practices into laws and ethical systems have always been upside down, since it is impossible for them to manifest properly without the development of the inward attitudes that create the unethical situations in the first place. 

Nonetheless, we see man continuing to make efforts to invest the power of transformation in his institutions, not his Being. (Only a few unique statesmen such as Dag Hammerskjöld have, in modern times, begun to understand that a transformation of inner Being is necessary if institutions are ever to succeed in efforts to change conditions for human beings.)

Gurdjieff definitely understood all of this quite well, and cleverly — even brilliantly — designed an entire practice that acts on the deeper part of the Being by sidestepping and avoiding the many thousands, even tens of thousands, of ordinary parts that insist on manipulating and interfering with its development.  The development of Being is the development of the divine seed in man, and, in fact, represents the opening to Christ, which only becomes possible if real Being is acquired. To the extent that a man or a woman resists the idea that one should open to Christ, already, the entire inner work has failed in them. And only to the extent that one accepts this and understands that real Being is the opening to the Lord and to Christ (which, let's be clear, may go under quite different names,  according to culture and practice, but are always the same thing) can one progress. So you see, in regard to this question, a decisive and essential threshold must be crossed, and a human being can spend an entire lifetime pursuing inner growth without stepping over it.

Progression is not a journey upwards towards heaven. It is a journey downwards into the very depths of being, in which we progressively strip away all of the elements of ego and personhood that insist they are superior to God. It is like digging up a rock in the garden that gets bigger and bigger as you dig more and more, the further down you go. Eventually one discovers that the rock is huge and in fact so big that it cannot be moved out of the garden by one person, or maybe even a team (or group, or school.) This is how big the ego is, how hard and resistant it is to the idea of opening Christ. Eventually one realizes that one must appeal for help from an outer agency in order to move this rock.

In any event. Let me make it clear once again that one cannot have a part of a Truth. Truth is a whole thing, and one cannot carve it up into bits and pieces and selectively take what one wishes. The truth of Christ as a whole thing just like this, and it constitutes the entire Dharma and all that is.  

One must begin to see the difference between what one wants to be true and what is actually true. This is called discrimination.

One cannot embrace one's inner work without eventually embracing this understanding.

 May your soul be filled with light.

Steadfast

Christ brought the greatest esoteric teaching in the history of mankind; and billions of human beings have searched for an understanding of it for the past 2,000 years. 

There are those who might feel that one can conduct the Gurdjieff work in a bubble that isolates and excludes the question of Christ; I'm not one of them. In my experience this is categorically impossible. After years of inner investigation I've concluded with certainty that any such path is not only profoundly mistaken, but even, ultimately, aligned against the Gurdjieff work itself and all of its aims. 

The Gurdjieff work is fundamentally Christian- that is, its radical form is of Christ; and anything that is in any part of Christ is completely and absolutely of Christ, since any fraction of Christ is at once and forever wholly of Christ. One can't segregate Christ and parse Him out according to opinion, whim, or desire. 

The work therefore is deeply in, of, and for Christ; which is not to say that it stands in opposition to or in contradiction of any other religious tradition, since Christ is in, of, and for us all; as He is in Buddha, Mohammed, Hinduism, Judaism, and so on. Christ is not an exclusive Being but a comprehensive one; not a division, but a unification. To understand Christ as exclusionary is already to not understand. Despite the apparent interfaith contradiction, one must see that Christ and the Dharma are functionally inseparable. 

Attempting to understand this from the narrowly secular view of self-observation and self-remembering is simply not enough. This is a steadfast matter of the heart. Such questions cannot be approached through the atomistic presumptions of materialist foundations, no matter how much entirely valid emphasis Gurdjieff placed on them. (The matter is one analogous to process ecology; it is of the flow of energies from the top down. Interested readers should refer to the book "A Third Window" for insights into this concept.)

Hence one's work must be opening towards Christ, because, no matter what Name He is called by, the only path is through the Heart of Christ. 

The mystery of Christ is just that, a mystery; and it calls us to question both our assumptions and our understanding on each and every step of the path. We cannot know; and in unknowing, in helplessness and in submission, we present ourselves to a Grace which offers an avenue towards that spiritual home which every person seeks. 

Those who claim to already know, stop where they are and beckon others to them. 

Those who have a wish to know depart forever from this moment into the next one, and thus never have a place to rest their head. Each one who does not know travels alone on paths uncharted; and this takes the kind of courage that Christ showed in accepting his conditions.

May your soul be filled with light.

Obstacles, causes, and effects

 Everything arises naturally. What obstacle?

 In discussing cause and effect, there is a belief that cause and effect lie outside of Being. Yet there is no cause or effect outside of Being. To ascribe cause and effect to anything that lies outside of Being is to misunderstand the nature of what arises.

Everything arises naturally within Being. There are many aspects, but no obstacles. Obstacles may be perceived, but they are illusory. There cannot be any obstacles to Being. Even that which appears to be an obstacle is just another aspect of Being; thus, included.

We convince ourselves that there are obstacles, causes, and effects. Yet what arises, arises inwardly, and simply arises. The outward is simply a reflection of what arises inwardly. We think that the outward creates what arises inwardly, but actually, the situation is reversed. Within every instant of Being, all that is created is created outwardly from the original inwardness of Being itself.

 So in reality, everything is much less complicated than it appears to be.

To perceive obstacles is to fail in relationship.  If we accept relationship without assuming, the power of cause and effect becomes much less. We aren't attached to it; Being does not have a need for cause and effect. It simply acknowledges the arising of things within itself.

It's interesting to suggest that life arises naturally, and that there are no obstacles. Things simply are what they are. If one arrives in the moment prepared, nothing else actually matters. What is necessary will appear; what is unnecessary cannot appear, since the manifestation in the given moment is always sufficient unto itself. Reality never manifests in excess of need, because it is unable to.

There are times when the energy within the self is capable of aligning so that these things are naturally understood. There are other times when one is not open to an energy that can inform Being in such a way. Both conditions are also natural. One can inhabit either condition naturally, in so far as one is present; thus, even when one is not present, one can be present to that, and in this way, one already aligns with the natural and lawful conditions.

Our contradictions arise because we don't align ourselves properly with the inner energy or with our lives. Almost all of this is the result of tensions of various kinds; yet these too are lawful. I can't get away from them. I have to suffer them within myself, even as I see that this also arises naturally.

If I perceive them as obstacles, they are obstacles. If I simply inhabit the condition, then they are conditions.

In the same way, something that I feel negative about and don't want to do can be an activity instead of a burden, if I understand it as an activity. The activity is an engagement, an opportunity for the self to keep itself occupied within conditions. The self can keep itself occupied within conditions by exercising a concise observation of the conditions. This doesn't mean that the conditions need to be changed or manipulated; but one can see them, and already, this is enough work to keep one busy even in rather unpleasant conditions.

 Such are my thoughts this afternoon.

May your soul be filled with light.

The state of prayer

One of the things I don't see is that almost all of me is negative.

This can be corrected, through Grace; but it cannot be corrected by me, because the cause cannot correct itself by itself. What I am, manifested, is already in complete opposition to the Lord; and this opposition in me is unknown, unexamined, and unconscious. This complete opposition is a direct consequence of my material manifestation, which lawfully places me in a denying position relative to The Lord from the very first instant of my arising. (Those who don't understand this fundamental principle of materiality are encouraged to study the question as it's expounded at the enneagram resource.)

 To the extent that I surrender myself, my negativity can dissipate; and indeed, to the extent that I manifest such that there is no self present, to that extent, and that extent alone (through the Grace of The Lord) life and manifestation become transparent, and the Light and Will of The Lord are made manifest. This can never happen by me but only through me to the extent that I am not me; and indeed I must become other, which is only possible through Grace.

 One of my convictions is that I am positive in one way or another. I'm unable to sense the fundamental untruth of this, except by a very long and radical practice of seeing. Even that which appears to be positive is never positive at all, in any way, except to the extent that Grace infuses and suffuses it and to the extent that Christ (whose Name is Grace itself) is present.

 I am a long way from Christ. Mary's Grace is immanent; Hers is the First Grace which can be encountered and made manifest. Christ's Grace is transcendent; and although this Grace is the True Grace to which we are all ultimately called, it's only through Mary's Grace that we can approach it, and then only through long and arduous inner labors.

 To this end I pray; and in our age, the most efficacious prayer I can apply is, "Lord have Mercy, Christ have Mercy," a prayer Gurdjieff understood quite well as essential to inner work. I must pray constantly; because I am perpetually in negativity, only the Divine agency of a higher energy can deliver me from this condition.

 These are mysteries which must be lived, and need no proofs.

May your soul be filled with light.

Without precedent

 One of the things that Gurdjieff told Ouspensky was that the knowledge in ancient Egypt and Babylon came from much older cultures that we know nothing about.

Anyone who doubts his stories of schools passing down esoteric knowledge through millennia from culture to culture should read Thomas McEvilley's influential the shape of ancient thought, which details the influence such schools had on both East and West with a thoroughness that ought to satisfy serious academics as well as laymen.

 These schools exercised influence for many thousands of years, leaving traces that echoed down all the way into the late middle ages in Europe, as reflected in the architecture of cathedrals such as Chartres and paintings such as Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of earthly delights. The inner technology of spiritual work has never existed in completely isolated bubbles; undercurrents of practice and esoteric knowledge have been secretly exchanged between monastic communities all over the world for thousands of generations. It was only in the liberating light of the 20th century, when many conditions on the planet changed, that it was safe for this information to emerge into the world at large.

  While browsing on one of my favorite archaeological sites yesterday, I came across this fascinating reconstruction of a major temple building in the ancient city of Uruk.

 Viewers might opt to exercise enough patience to watch the entire video, and while they are doing so, think and ponder just how extraordinarily sophisticated the architectural underpinnings of this building are, how much the builders knew about structural foundation and the correct preparation for wall supports, sealants, concrete, etc.

It's also worth thinking about the sophisticated ceramic technology required to make the mosaics which covered the walls, and the educated and highly skilled workforce that would have been needed to put this building together.

This building did not spring from nowhere out of the ground. The people who built it had extensive experience in this kind of architecture, which, to all appearances, probably dates back to thousands of years before this building was built — yet no record of them exists, anywhere in archaeological history. Similar things can be said about the even more ancient temple at Göbekli Tepe. In both cases, a stunning architectural achievement emerges from out of nowhere, springing full-blown into the archaeological record — and displaying a level of sophistication that then proceeds to deteriorate over the next few thousand years.

The building at Uruk raises questions about ancient societies that relate directly to Gurdjieff's stories about much earlier cultures. If one combines questions raised by structures such as this one — which is truly without precedent, anywhere in the world — with McEvilley's exhaustive investigation of traditions from extremely ancient, and essentially unknown, cultures which influence both Eastern and Western philosophy and religious practice, perhaps we begin to realize that Gurdjieff was not just a spinner of tall tales. His contentions have proven himself out in both philosophical and physical research.

What remains is a discovery that would point to where this ancient knowledge came from.  While a steady stream of charlatans, hoaxers, and all-too-credulous investigators have provided us with far too many debunkable and even ludicrous claims about the lost city of Atlantis, it does appear that there is a lost culture somewhere from which what we see as the roots of both Eastern and Western civilization emerged.

 May your soul be filled with light.

The lowest servant in heaven

 We are competitive creatures;  it seems to be in our nature. There are arguments about whether it is biological, or whether there's actually some spiritual basis to it; yet despite the idea that getting into heaven is some kind of contest, the conception of spirituality as any kind of competition is, more or less, anathema.

 Yet we are all involved in a competition within ourselves. There are in fact two competitions; and in life, we choose one or the other. The first competition is to see whether we will be the greatest of Demons; the second, to decide whether we are willing to be the least of the Angels.

We are unaware of these competitions in us, even though being and life is the battleground for either one.

The ego always wants to be the greatest of demons. It is better, the ego thinks, to be the king of hell than a lowly servant in heaven, and on this level, in this life, it conducts itself exactly according to this principle. This is why Ibn Arabi called it "the evil-commanding ego;" it sees no flaw in this kind of reasoning.

Yet spiritual individuals who have a real wish begin to develop a kernel in their being that understands it would be better to be the lowest servant in heaven than the king of hell. This kind of attitude is an entirely different attitude which has nothing to do with worldly things, or the gain we can realize by pursuing them. The kernel is tiny; and because its aspirations are ones of humility — which is a delicate thing that can barely be pursued, if at all, only sensed or acquired — it appears to have little power over the forces of life or, if you will, hell. If one remains unaware of it, and does not nourish it, it is easily batted aside in the rush to get for oneself.

Yet this wish to serve is not so easily destroyed. It is strong in the hearts of good men and women; resilient, unyielding, steadfastly turned towards an inner light that cannot be broadcast over media, and is not attracted by the material. One can nourish it; and the rewards for nourishing it turn out to be so much greater than all of the rewards being the king of hell might give one, there can be no comparison, because the rewards are inner ones.

These rewards are not well known to Madison Avenue or the media. You can't buy or sell them on eBay; it might even be difficult to find them in church, because they don't stay in church waiting for you; au contraire, if you have them, you might bring them to church, and it would be grateful to you for doing so.

Why are we so steadfastly focused on outer rewards in this life, leaving us bereft and dissatisfied? We have lost our connection to an inner vision; we are too busy competing to be the king of hell. And, one can see from the way outer affairs are conducted in humanity, there is no shortage of those who want to rule as demons. They have never tasted the sweetness of heaven; and I suppose they never will.

There needs to be an awareness, a consciousness, of the fact that life is a battleground where these two struggles take place. If one just shrugs the whole matter off as a philosophical question, it's impossible to gain understanding. We need to have a direct, tangible, emotional and physical insight into this question in order to make it immediate for us.

 It's worthwhile to think about the attitude necessary for these two competitions. What kind of attitude does it take to be the king of hell? And what kind of attitude does it take to admit to oneself that one would be willing to be the lowest servant in heaven? This might define a human being, if the question were asked.

And we need to carefully examine we define ourselves, because the definition we assign to our Being may well relate to this question.

May your soul be filled with light.

In the habit of ruling — morality, part three

 So did Gurdjieff ever actually abandon the idea of conventional morality, throw it away like the baby with the bathwater?

 He did not — and we know this by way of allegory and subtlety that may not be fully appreciated without some careful examination.

In the chapter, "Beelzebub in Russia," we come across his passage about people who are in the habit of ruling. This intriguing allegory paints a picture of a world where, truly, mechanical action is better than no action, or, rather, action of an even lower nature. He even gives mechanical action the possibility of improvement in this passage; and— as always in this masterpiece of subtle understatement— the passage is an allegory for our inner state.

The hereditary rulers he cites are analogous to the traditions that the religions bring us; they may not be perfect, and they may have lost their conscience, but they at least know, even if mechanically, how things ought to be arranged. In the abandonment of tradition, every imaginable vice arises; and so one is actually far better off with a mechanical tradition than the inventive and perverse replacements we permit ourselves when we throw away the traditions.

 Conventional morality, in other words, has a distinctive value, and a definite place. Whether or not Gurdjieff was able to practice such morality himself — and we can reasonably presume he went through a long series of his own struggles (as we all do) with such questions during his lifetime — he was certainly well aware of their value. As we all ought to be.

There is no way, in other words, that one can abandon conventional morality under the excuse that some magically higher force will eventually infuse one with a correct and conscious morality. To believe such a thing is sheer arrogance; a religious aberration of the type that Alastair Crowley advocated. The idea is purely selfish; it bears a relationship to the kind of thing that Ayn Rand tried to sell us, a hobo's pushcart filled with self-love and greed which even she herself discovered she could not actually trundle down the street with any credibility.

 Traditions are traditions for a reason. Gurdjieff had enormous respect for them; and we abandon them at our peril. Allowing our sciences or our materialistic culture to dismantle our traditions one by one as though they were worthless is a perilous activity. The individuals doing these things have little understanding of real morality, or the impact that tradition has on the cohesion not just of society, but the soul itself.

 We cannot, under any circumstances, allow materialism of any kind—including a false assessment of life that excludes us from the ultimate spiritual requirements of steadfast morality and selfless action, inner and outer— to distract us. It is the duty of everyone on the spiritual path to keep their inner eye unwaveringly turned towards the countenance of God, to represent to the very best of their ability the best possible qualities in a human being.

We will fail; but our failure should be heroic, not the failure of a coward who did not try in the first place, or claimed it to be unnecessary.

May your soul be filled with light.

Inner sensation and the kingdom of heaven

Green Tara, Rubin Museum, New York

 Christ said, the kingdom of heaven is within you. (Luke 17:20-21.) He also said, if thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be filled with light. (Matthew 6:22.)

 Both of these statements relate directly to inner yoga, and the action of the heavenly spirit within man.

 If the inner eye is awakened, the kingdom of heaven becomes a constant presence within man. Man is not removed from his humanity; he is wedded to it. This is a marriage between the inner and outer parts. Like all marriages, it involves compromise, because two differing Beings form a union that gives birth to a different sense of life. Readers should contemplate the idea that the action of marriage in ordinary life is a reflection of the marriage that takes place in an inner and an outer life. Much thought and attention can be devoted to this question.

Christ explained things in these terms to the Pharisees, not because they were incapable — in fact, they were highly educated men — but because human beings tend to understand the kingdom of heaven as a psychological state.

It cannot be a psychological state; and to think of it is an unhelpful thing, because thinking already destroys the truth of what it is.

Psychological states flow from it and result from it, but the kingdom of heaven itself is an inner revolution that begins with sensation of a new kind. It is an organic event, not a mental one. The mind cannot produce the kingdom of heaven; as Christ said, no one can produce the kingdom of heaven and show it to another person.

But the kingdom of heaven can shine with light within a human being as surely as the sun shines with light in the daytime.

It is a very different kind of light. Light does not just consist of what we see radiating from the sun. Light is a substance that informs and creates everything that there is, and some forms of light are, to our organic perception (that is, our eyes) completely dark. It is this light within darkness that transforms the inner Being. The attention must be carefully attuned and intimately engaged if one wishes to understand this question of light within darkness.

 In inner yoga, we confront a mystery of Being. The kingdom of heaven is Being; and all that is Being, comes from light. All darkness-in-life — I speak here of the darkness of our ordinary manifestations — is dark exactly to the extent that it is separated from this inner light.

Men and women see and lament their own dark inner and outer deeds, but understand no connection here. That which is disconnected from the inner eye, and cannot see, can only work in darkness. To the extent that the inner eye is open, and the inward flow of the sensation of heaven reaches a human being, to that extent deeds may become more illuminated, and outward action more harmonious.

But thinking of this does one no good. One can think this into the ground without good results. The opening of the inner eye must become permanent, so that it is always feeding life in one way or another. In this way, the inward flow from the kingdom of heaven into life can raise the correct questions, gradually dissolving the hardened kernels of negativity that prevent a man or a woman from receiving their life properly. In order for this to happen, the kingdom of heaven must become an active force within life, not an idea of some magical place that is out there somewhere.

The kingdom of heaven is everywhere, and can arise and express itself anywhere, at any time — for example, right now, in you.

I was walking the famous dog Isabel  (who, alas, grows ever older) with my wife earlier this morning, and got onto the subject of these hardened kernels of negativity that people form. Most of mankind is composed of these hardnesses: crystallizations, as Gurdjieff might have called them. One rejects this; one rejects that. Politics, religion, economics, whatever you want: all of it is to be rejected in one way or another.

But above all, we reject people.  An inner eye that is closed and shut off from the kingdom of heaven can have no real honor or value of others. This is where the danger lies; because in rejecting humanity and rejecting relationship, rejecting the other, and acting without an active attitude which is inwardly formed through Love and the action of the kingdom of heaven — this is where we take our first step through the gates of hell. Heaven and hell never come later — they are both with us right now.

 This is why seeking an organic sensation of Being is such a vital act, and why Jeanne de Salzmann's work is so absolutely essential to understanding what Gurdjieff was trying to convey to us. The reality of Being — the reality of presence — is nothing other than the opening of the inner eye so that the kingdom of heaven can begin to act within a man, secretly, in the sacred place where he forms a covenant with God.

 May your soul be filled with light.

Heaven and Hell

A reminder to readers that the current issue of Parabola magazine, Heaven and Hell, features my article on The Garden of Earthly Delights, the western world's pre-eminent painting of heaven and hell.

The magazine is always seeking new readership. If you're not already a subscriber, now would be a great time to become one.

warmly,

Lee

impulse and preference

 Gurdjieff famously said, "like what it does not like."

But what is it? And what does it not like?

"It" is our mechanical impulse. Impulse arises from ego; and ego wants for its self. If one spends any time watching the way one behaves in an inner sense, one sees that there is a constant movement towards the satisfaction of ego. It manifests itself in thousands of different ways during the day; and each one of them, if carefully examined, is selfish. Impulse, left to its own motivations, almost always moves one in the direction of ego-satisfaction; a disregard for the other, in favor of regard for one's own preferences.

What the ego does not like, above all, is unselfish action — action that goes against the impulse of ego. So when we say, "like what it does not like," what we are essentially saying is that one should develop a preference for unselfish action.

This sounds like a noble cause of some kind; and it could be construed that way. But it's much more personal than going out and doing good for others in a public or community sense. What it involves is seeing one's own selfishness in every moment and action, and being acutely and uncompromisingly aware of it; uncomfortably aware of it, even agonizingly aware of it. The idea here is that one must develop a comprehensive awareness of the way that ego acts as a lever for almost every personal situation. One must see this over and over.

It's good to see this; and it takes a certain amount of organic presence and effort. But it is not enough to just see it. One must learn to say no.

This is more or less what a stop exercise is all about, in an inner sense. One says to one's impulses, one's mechanical ego manifestations, "stop." One does not do this in a violent manner; but one does it firmly, intelligently, deliberately. There needs to be an effort that takes a certain kind of strength of will that overcomes these impulses, over and over again. Of course, will isn't strong enough in us to overcome these impulses in general; we are going to blurt out angry things, feel frustrated by the fact that we aren't getting our way, and so on. Yet we need to keep exercising our attention to go against these things that happen which we don't like — these things which impact our selfish and egoistic impulses.

One must learn to say no over and over again, all day long. Because the ego is a dominant force, it needs to be refused frequently and reminded constantly that it is not the center of the universe. This intimate inner action is something that needs to be practiced over a lifetime; and the ego needs to be recruited, through training of this kind, to a new kind of patience—obedience, if you will— that can tolerate being held to heel on a leash. We develop inner strength by liking unselfish action; by going against our lower nature. Our lower nature isn't defined by the material quality of our sins; there is nothing inherently sinful about sexuality, or eating, or having an emotion. It is the relationship of that materiality to ego-satisfaction that becomes a problem — it's essentially selfish in nature. One might, if one wishes, put it in terms of Buddhism, and say that it is our attachment to it — yet that does seem to absolve us of responsibility, somehow. And we are responsible.

True responsibility consists of unselfishness. The response to our ego impulses, our mechanical wish to satisfy ourselves, must be to say no — to say no is to acquire responsibility. In a sense, we need to learn how to say no, and to like saying no. Our satisfaction needs to come from going against ourselves, not in order to punish ourselves, but just because we are able to say no to ourselves.

 One of the best places to learn how to do this, at least initially, is in battling an addiction like alcoholism — a task I undertook for myself over 30 years ago. This kind of task never ends; and once one learns that one can say no to an addictive habit, one begins to discover that one can say no to many different things, all of which are impulses that do not edify one's Being.

 This idea of unselfishness is tied to morality. Unselfishness is essentially moral; devotion to God and one's fellow man is a higher calling by far than devotion to oneself. Only in the surrender and the dissolution of oneself can one begin to discover the deep blessings and Grace of unselfishness; and these deep blessings, along with the nearly limitless Grace that flows from an increase in unselfish action, are abundant.

It seems like an appropriate place to remind readers of the ideas I offered in the concentration of being, an earlier post.

 May your soul be filled with light.

Tramps, lunatics, morality

It's quite certain that Gurdjieff said over and over again that there is no such thing as morality for ordinary men. He seemed, perhaps, to hold ordinary moral behavior, as we ordinarily understand it, in something almost like contempt; and he was certainly no paragon of virtue himself, measured by ordinary means.

Yet, paradoxically, he celebrated the values of the ordinary man, the obyvatel; and he asked his followers to respect all religions — which are, undeniably, moral institutions.

Followers of the Gurdjieff ideas have, for over a century, presumed that when he asked them to verify his ideas, they were to verify them to confirm that they were correct.

But what of the idea of verifying that something Gurdjieff maintained was wrong? Surely, he couldn't possibly be right about everything; and once we can admit that he could have been wrong about one thing, we must admit he could have been wrong about anything.

His ideas, in other words, are subject to open critical evaluation on every single point—and he would have preferred we understand it that way, both in regard to his thoughts, and our own.

This leaves it to the individuals who study his ideas to conduct a critical evaluation; to find out whether or not the things that he said were, in fact, true, or whether some of them were simply wrong, even perhaps deliberately wrong, and thrown out there as an overt challenge to those who would just gullibly believe in him. He was known, after all, to intentionally misdirect his pupils, just to see what they would do. He demanded that human beings think for themselves — not act like sheep. And, as a master of the via negativa, he not only expected people to be suspicious of him — in a stroke of sheer genius, he demanded it.

In this matter of morality, if Gurdjieff truly meant to have us believe that there is no morality, or that ordinary morality has no value, then surely, he is wrong. To believe otherwise is to invite the law of the jungle into ascendancy; and although it may well be the law we are all subject to, that does not mean we must lie down and expose our soft underbelly to it as helpless victims.

It is impossible to attain an infallible consciousness; even Gurdjieff, by his own admission, failed at that. In the same way, we cannot attain an infallible morality. Nonetheless, given the choice between a (purportedly) conscious morality, unconscious morality, and no morality, we must choose the best we can get— understanding that fallibility is inevitable. Choosing no morality is not a reasonable option; and to choose to be immoral simply because some outside authority appears to have given us an excuse for it is equally wrong.

We must hold ourselves to the highest possible standard, not allow ourselves to sink to what appears to be the lowest permissible one.

 In the exercise of discriminating consciousness, any old thing is not enough. We are expected to meet a standard on the ordinary level, as well as any higher level. Those who believe that they can meet some standard on a higher level without being capable on an ordinary level are delusional. We must stand  upright within ourselves and examine our actions carefully. There is indeed such a thing as what the Buddhists call right action; and it is our duty to sense it, as best we can.

The conditions of outer life are a reflection of our inner state. We do not have the right to be tramps or lunatics; that is, people who believe whatever they are told.

 If one practices and intelligent and active observation of one's state and actions, one will see that temptations constantly arise. This is the condition of life. One must go against this constantly; this does, in fact, constitute an inner morality, and an outer one at the same time – which is the subject of the next post on the matter.

 May your soul be filled with light.

The World-Question

"We cannot know what life is unless we know what love is."

—Emmanuel Swedenborg, Divine Love and Wisdom

"In moments like this, in front of death, and being free from the known, we can enter the unknown, the complete stillness where there is no deterioration. Perhaps such moments are the only time in which we can find out what life is and what love is.

And without that love, we will never find the truth."

—Jeanne de Salzmann

 It's in the small hours of the morning, as the birds awaken, that I go deep in myself and search for this kernel of love that has formed me. It isn't separate from life; it is life, and, as Swedenborg says, we are receivers of life. This action a receiving life is already born from love; even the worst human being, at the very lowest possible level, is a receiver of this life that has been born of love. 

If something goes wrong with it, that is not the fault of life or of love.

My paradox arises in trying to understand how things that appear to be unloving can come out of love. That's the world-question, isn't it? 

But I can attempt to understand this vexing philosophical issue directly, immediately, through my own life and my own manifestation, where I believe I am loving — in whatever way I understand that — and then discover that it isn't true. 

Even one moment of self-awareness will reveal this, and such revelations are available all day long, every day.

There is talk of loving-kindness in Buddhism, but loving-kindness must be organic; in order for me to have any understanding, I must go to the root of it and sense it within Being, before it is expressed. If there is no connection to this expression within Being before the outward expression, no love can be present.

The way that unloving things arise from love is because of a lack of awareness. If there is no relationship between the expression of love within Being, and outward life, love remains passive and inactive at the core of Being, and is unable to touch life. The capacity is only mediated by an awareness and conscious effort. But the conscious effort isn't an outwardly directed one, which seeks to manipulate or repair outward life; the conscious effort begins in sensing the seed of divinity within me. 

This is why Jeanne de Salzmann phrases what she says above so exactly.

Our inner work is a call to understand that we are receivers of life, and to know that this begins with love. To sense this intimately is a sacred task; a duty we have to ourselves, to others, and to the Lord.

 These are my thoughts this morning.

May your soul be filled with light.

Outward power: photo essays of today's Shanghai

Links to the photo essays:

Shanghai Streets

Shanghai people's square


One of the aspects of power is outer power... the ability of human beings to transform the outward. In doing so, we often forget that the outward is always and forever a reflection of the inner.

China is a country with an ageless tradition of inner effort, ranging from down-to-earth native Taoist practices and the graceful movements of Tai Chi to the subtle sophistication of the Six Great Patriarchs of Zen Buddhism (all Chinese.) The country has undergone a paroxysm of outer transformations over the last century, culminating in a massive surge of modernization that is, fair to say, without parallel in world history. The change is staggering, and absolutely impossible to convey for those who have not been there to see it happen. It represents a force of transformation so far unknown on the planet.

What that means to all of us remains to be seen; but clearly, a new level of forces is emerging here, on a vastly new scale.

This outer transformation—paradoxically, both stabilizing and destabilizing at the same time— has left any number of young Chinese far better off than recent generations.

It has also, in my experience,  left a number of them asking themselves what the meaning of life is, since many Chinese traditions emphasizing inner value have been steam-rollered and flattened beyond recognition in the process. Some few of them are now, ironically, turning back to the West in the hopes that those of us who have kept these traditions alive can help them rediscover an inner life that has, unfortunately, been eclipsed by a massive one-two punch, first of communism, then capitalism and materialism.

The country is rich. It is also, in my experience, aggressively misunderstood by westerners. The steady (and vastly unfair) demonization of China in many sectors of the US press fails to capture the vibrancy of the country, and does a disservice to its warm and wonderful people.

On most of my trips to Shanghai, I take a walk or two where I wander around the center of the city without any specific plan, recording what I see. These two photo essays capture a microcosmic sense of what Shanghai is like this week... today.

China has its share of serious problems, but the landscape and the people have a living quality, and above all a human quality, that says something about all of us.

Perhaps readers will join me in feeling touched by that question.

Confusing power and ability

We all get power and ability confused.

People who have power, whether inherited or acquired, generally think they have ability; it comes with the territory. This is especially true of people who acquire power, by whatever means; they think that because they are powerful, they are able, that they are in control both of the power and the situations they find themselves in.

This particular problem is already serious when it manifests in the ordinary level of life; a great deal of the material woes of humanity stem directly from abuses of this kind. But the issue is more pernicious than we think; because this issue lies at the root of every inner transaction we think we can broker.

I believe I have power; this stems directly from my own ego-ivestment, the manifest experience I have within life, which arises within me and is experienced as an act of agency. The fact that my "agent"—the one, as Gurdjieff might put it, who thinks he can "do"— is asleep, that is, unmindful, most of the time doesn't make much of an impression on me. My lack of presence causes me to overlook my lack of presence. Hence I believe in my own agency.

This inner attitude is very nearly inextinguishable; the outer mind can assert to itself all it wants that I know better, and yet if one examines the inner attitude in detail, one discovers that every twist in the path leads to yet another example of this belief in one's own power.

The action of remorse of conscience can gradually soften this characteristic in a human being; more often, it remains hard and is subject to occasional hammer blows which shatter its self-confidence— after which I pick myself up, roll out the evil inner God of self-calming, and carry on as though nothing had happened.

The belief in my own power leads concurrently to a belief in my own ability. I don't speak here of outer ability, which is to some extent a measurable quality. I speak of inner ability. I believe that I am able; that there's something I can "do" to align myself with higher forces, come under the eye of God.

This entire question becomes intriguing, because if I believe I am not under the eye of God, already, I think I am already somehow special and set apart; I've been pondering this lately from Ibn Arabi's point of view, in which all object, events, circumstances and conditions are inevitably and unerringly, absolutely and perfectly, under the eye of God—more properly put, technically speaking, within the imagination of God, should you wish to quibble Arabi's point—and can never "be" anywhere else.

The conundrum leads me into the texts left by both Dogen and Ibn Arabi, in which, it is frequently argued, there is nothing to be done—enlightenment, existence within Godly circumstances and conditions, is inherent and immutable. Only the perception that things are any other way is flawed; and it is only that perception which can be changed. So if there is anything that is owned by me, it is this perception... and ultimately even that itself belongs to God.

In believing that I am able, I fundamentally obscure the perception that only God is able. It's only when shorn (like a sheep) of the fleece of my supposed abilities—in a state of emptiness which does not presume—that the  inner state can receive a perception that is complete, that belongs to God- and that does have an ability, an ability, moreover, that lies outside any imaginary ability I confer upon myself.

In these moments, power and ability take on a character entirely other than anything I know; and the contrast between what I am (a dream in the mind of God, once again per 'Arabi) and what is Real becomes unmistakable.

This inner sensation cannot be demonstrated, but it must be sensed.

May your soul be filled with light.

everything happens for a reason? – Part two: the bogus comfort of platitudes

 So we arrive... on the heels of the last essay... at the contention that everything is connected, nothing is separated.  Quantum physics and every scientific study of material reality verify this; everything that arises is part of a quantum "soup."  All of existence is contained within this broth; and so, physically and conceptually,  within the limits of material reality, both what we call the good and what we call the bad are completely connected within one single expression which the Buddhists call the Dharma, and what the Christians called the Truth of God. Actually, both are exactly the same thing, if properly understood.

Everything happens for a reason.  Either it is the reason of physics,  which inexorably requires that all events absolutely follow one after another according to known laws... or it is that all things take place because of the inscrutable expression of the Will of God, which is transcendent and beyond man's understanding.

Although the former does not presuppose or require the latter, the latter definitely allows for the former, and, furthermore, explains that the former is both a consequence and requirement of the latter.

We have, once again, Ibn Arabi's exquisitely developed Islamic metaphysics to support this; and if we want to turn to Buddhism to understand their conception of the transcendent, perhaps nothing could be better than the flower ornament Sutra. The concepts are equally sophisticated and inextricably linked to one another, since they both express aspects of the same truth. The fact that human beings are unable to understand what the reasons behind things are does not eliminate the reasons. Even eliminating God does not eliminate physics and chemistry; nor does it eliminate philosophy, since even philosophy, like physics, functions with or without gods to guide it.  Hence, there are reasons.

Perhaps the question ought to be, what is the reason that there are reasons? And this is the question that one ignores, if one walks right past God on the way to the machine shop.

 Let's move on to the second aspect of the question: why is it irritating to hear people glibly say,  everything happens for a reason?

In a supremely reflexive action, I will now point out that the last essay, plus the above, underscore  how enormously complex and interesting this idea, things happening for a reason, is. Having people toss it off as a given is very nearly dismissive of the important questions it raises. Moreover, the off-the-cuff expression of this, as though it did not need to be examined, or was itself an explanation of some kind, is annoying simply because it does not pay the very question it frames with sufficient respect.

In essence, when we make statements of this kind, we make them not mindfully, but mindlessly.  Habitually. That is to say, they are pasted over situations like a Band-Aid in order to somehow justify them, instead of confronting the terribly difficult and challenging truths they represent. They are meant to offer some kind of comfort; but the comfort is bogus. In fact, as we have just seen, the idea provides anything but comfort, if examined carefully.

The careful examination of ideas leads us to discover that the things we assume to be true are, in fact, questionable; in trying to discern reasons, the limits of our knowledge are tested and found wanting. We are confronted, in the end, with a mystery; and to glibly dismiss it without examination is to miss the content and the message. If things happen for a reason, and the reason is a Divine one (as most of those who say this imply) it is our task not to just dismiss this and move on, but to make an inner effort to actively discern reasons — reasons which may, in the end, leave us profoundly uncomfortable with who we are, what we are doing, and why things are the way they are. The thinking-and-searching individual is irritated with pat answers; they seem to be insufficient.

The insufficiency comes from a failure to examine one's inner state, one's conscience, and the conditions of consequences and life, and take the lessons that these impart regarding the need for our submission to God. There is, in other words, a demand for serious and active contemplation built into everything happens for a reason; and yet we wave one hand in the air as though it takes care of the matter, allowing us to move on to more important things, like which team will win on Sunday.

In summary, perhaps it's lack of mindfulness itself that renders statements like this both inadequate and annoying. Mindfulness demands a constant sense of the Presence of God. It's true, Grace provides a sense of that Presence within its own action, a sense, furthermore, that transcends any ability we have to invoke it.

Yet Grace cannot be treated as a given; if we just sit there waiting for it to come, why do we deserve any such privilege in the first place? No, an active stance in relationship to the higher is necessary.

 And perhaps the problem is that "everything happens for a reason" is, in the end, a passive attitude. Instead of calling us to a search, it seems to excuse us from one.

 May your soul be filled with light.