For the Week of October 22 - 28:
Work for Knowledge, Being, Understanding
The Way Draw Draws Us Deeper, October 2020
Does not Wisdom call, and Understanding raise her voice? On the top of the heights along the road, at the crossroads she takes her stand; by the gates at the approaches of the city, in the entryways she cries aloud: "To you, O people, I call; my appeal is to you mortals, you naïve ones, gain prudence, you fools, gain sense. Listen! For noble things I speak; my lips proclaim honest words. Indeed, my mouth utters truth … All the words of my mouth are sincere … All of them are straightforward to the intelligent and right to those who attain knowledge. Take my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold. ... Happy the one who listens to me, attending daily at my gates, keeping watch at my doorposts; for whoever finds me finds life …"
- Proverbs 8:1-10, 34-35
I ask you today, "What help do you want from the Work?"
I want to expand my knowledge …
I want to expand my being, my understanding …
I want to achieve inner freedom …
- John Fuchs, Forty Years After Gurdjieff, p. 93
In our exploration of the Way we have acknowledged that this Way is a commitment of immense proportions and requires an eminent trust that God will bring us where we hope to go – no matter how many difficulties there are, we surrender to God's transforming process (Thomas Keating). It is a kenotic path with twists and turns through the energetic movements of affirmation – wish, aim, will, study, devotion, service – and receptivity – stillness, consent, acceptance, sacrifice, non-identifying and surrendering.
In this session we will explore the twofold Work for knowledge and for being which together meet in understanding, the first step over the mi-fa interval in the Work Octave.
Work for Knowledge
To know means to know all.
Not to know all means not to know.
In order to know all, it is only necessary to know a little.
But, in order to know this little,
it is first necessary to know pretty much.
G.I. Gurdjieff
In the Fourth Way it is knowledge that must precede change of being. "This Work has two sides to it, the cosmological and the psychological teaching. The cosmological side of the teaching refers to the world we live in; the psychological side refers to our inner world. When I say that the Work has two sides to it, cosmological and psychological, I mean, that unless two sides operate on a person's mind together, that person will not be able to change. Unless you can transform the meaning of life on this Earth as well as your idea of yourself, you will not be able to change. Most people think that it does not matter what they think about the world, the Universe, and that therefore they need not bother about this side, but can, through self-observation and doing only the psychological side of the Work, such as not identifying, change themselves. … All the ideas of the Work, whether referring to the cosmological side or to the nature of yourself, can give force. At times they give very great force. … We have also to think as to where we come in the gigantic scale of the Universe. We have to think of our position in the Ray of Creation and this can give right emotions that can conquer self-infatuation." (Maurice Nicoll, Commentaries, "Transformation of Being," Vol. 4, pp. 1292-1294).
In the School we are given many sources of teaching to aid our Work for Knowledge. Perhaps heretofore you have focused on one or two aspects of the offerings of the School and ignored others. Look over the following list and consider partaking or moving deeper into ones for which your attention has been limited:
Reading the Thursday email multiple times during the week, engaging the ideas, jotting notes, keeping a journal or notebook of ideas that came to you. By writing, you are engaging another center, imprinting and moving deeper into thought and perhaps directed imagination.
When a Commentary or other source is referenced, read the entire Commentary.
Study the highlighted words which are expounded upon in the glossary; ponder their meaning and application.
Attend the Thursday night class wherein new ideas, nuances and sharings can enliven your valuation for further study and application, as well as foster a sense of belonging to a community of others who wish for transformation in and as Christ, our divine-human destiny. You would be helping build an accumulator of conscious influences on Earth by your presence and directed attention and intention.
Read and study Work and other contemplative teachings on your own based upon attraction; allow your mind and heart to further be fed with conscious influences.
Work for Being
Our being attracts our life.
Maurice Nicoll
"What do we mean when it is said that our being attracts our life? Here, for example, is a person who attracts people of a certain kind. What is it that attracts these people? What attracts these people is that person's being. … What we do not understand is that the sphere of this person's being attracts only certain things and repels others. …
"Now let us think that being exerts a certain sphere around it. This sphere has its own kind of intelligence. Let us take, for example, the sphere of being of a pigeon. Included in this sphere of being is its power of finding its way back from great distances. Or, again let us take the sphere of being of a dog; it can pick out its master from among a crowd of people or it can find its way home when its master cannot. This belongs to its sphere of being. … Every animal possesses a sphere of being which is, so to speak, its life, and through which it is acquainted with regions of the world that a man does not know anything about. Then also in connection with the particular sphere of being with which they are endowed they have their own forms of happiness, their own forms of pain, distress and so on. We must imagine, therefore, in reflecting on what being means, that it is something that surrounds a person like a sphere. …
"How then can we change being? By applying the knowledge of the Work through self-observation [non-identification and Self-remembering] to ourselves. And remember that you do not change by being told what to do. You can only change through seeing what you have to do when you realize what your being is like."
- Maurice Nicoll, Commentaries, "The Sphere of Being," Vol. 4 pp. 1440-1442
"Do you be what you know? … It is necessary to be what you know by working on yourself. Now, to come to the knowledge of the Work and change of one's being. … All this brings us to the 'Octave' of the Work, one note of which is the application of the Work to your being. This leads to new being and its refreshment. The subject of the Work, for each one of you, is yourself. So, unless you observe yourself, there is nothing to work on. The link between the Work taught [through emails, Commentaries, etc.] is self-observation, without which you can never join the knowledge of the Work to your being and be it. … Can you be the Work? In short, can you live the Work, not merely remember it? If you try to live it, it will feed you all your life."
- Maurice Nicoll, Commentaries, "Knowledge and Being," Vol. 4, pp. 1403-1404
Work for Understanding
A man is his understanding.
Beryl Pogson
"Faith cannot be given to man. Faith arises … and increases in its action … not as a result of automatic learning, that is, not from any automatic ascertainment of height, breadth, thickness, form and weight, or from the perception of anything by sight, hearing, touch, smell or taste, but from understanding.
"Understanding is the essence obtained from information intentionally learned and from all kinds of experiences personally experienced. For example, if my own beloved brother were to come to me here at this moment and urgently entreat me to give him merely a tenth part of my understanding, and if I myself wished with my whole being to do so, yet I could not, in spite of my most ardent desire, give him even the thousandth part of this understanding, as he has neither the knowledge nor the experience which I have quite accidentally acquired and lived through in my life. …
"Understanding is acquired, as I have already said, from the totality of information intentionally learned and from personal experiencings; whereas knowledge is only the automatic remembrance of words in a certain sequence."
- G. I. Gurdjieff, Meetings with Remarkable Men, pp. 240-241
A Meditation
"'Man' – this is a proud term, but we must ask ourselves what kind of man? Not the man, surely, who is irritated at trifles, who gives his attention to petty matters and gets involved in everything around him. To have the right to call himself a man [divine-human being], he must be a man, [divine-human being] and this 'being' comes only though self-knowledge and work on oneself in the directions that become clear through self-knowledge. … The person who undertakes this task must put it first in her life, which is not so long that she can afford to squander it on trifles."
- G. I. Gurdjieff, Views from The Real World, pp. 44-45
Homework
- Consider Work for knowledge: in the coming weeks, where is a place to deepen your work?Do you be what you know?" Where is an area of renewed practice? Remember time is measured in the Work; there is an urgency and importance to this Work now.
- Beginning this message is an excerpt from Proverbs 8; during the week, go to the complete text and read it, take into your heart and receive it as food for being. You may wish to do this daily. What came to meet you? Perhaps you would wish to write this down, making a small prayer card for yourself.
- Every day, self-observe, non-identify and Self-remember. Consent to God's love, presence and action during Centering Prayer and within all aspects of your life.
A Special Invitation: Thursday evening, November 5, we will be blessed by Vincent Pizzuto, Ph.D., Episcopal priest and Professor of New Testament and Christian Mysticism at the University of San Francisco, as our guest speaker. A dynamic speaker and weekly presenter on the Meditation Chapel, Vincent's being and his talk, Expanding the Hermitage of the Heart: On Being A Contemplative in the World are sure to enliven your mind and heart. Please plan to attend this special evening.
Attend tonight's class: 7pm Central Time via Zoom only.
Click on this link and Zoom should open automatically on your laptop or tablet, or
Open Zoom, click on Join Meeting and enter this meeting ID: 996-101-9778. When prompted for a Passcode, enter: CCH.
The Journey School Archive: The class content archive is organized by class and class date and includes free mp3 recordings of each class. The complete email archive may be found here. The glossary of terms may be found here.
