Other Work Ideas

Talks by Tim White:
The MI - FA Interval: Decision

Starting the Octave with a Passive "DO"

Work Ideas

Group Work

G. I. Gurdjieff’s legacy is four-fold. He left a blueprint for a new world in his magnum opus: All and Everything, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson. The Sacred Dances or Gurdjieff Movements are a valuable and remarkable tool for self study and group consciousness, and the sacred music elicits a deep feeling of wish for the spiritual reality. Gurdjieff left a practical teaching, to be transmitted in a group or community medium, providing ideal opportunities to work towards building balanced relationships within ourselves, with others, and for the Work. Including spiritual exercises, practical physical work, psychology, cosmology, the enneagram, meditation, presence, relaxation, sensation, and service, the fourth way teaching evolves to fit time and place.

Taking responsibility

This teaching becomes manifest at times of crisis and transition in human history, and many feel that we are at such a point in time now. According to J. G. Bennett, we are at the end of a 2,500 year epoch, and probably at the midpoint of a great cycle. A new idea is entering mankind now, that we must take responsibility for our relation to nature and the biosphere. Externally we can see this in renewed concern for the health of the environment, climate change, interest in green energy, locally-grown food, and sustainability practices, but that is not enough. We each must also develop internal perceptions which allow us to act in synergy with the Higher Intelligences which guide the evolution of humankind and the earth.

Comments by Vic Garbarini

I wrote this to agree with George Bennett's comments on the Decision Exercise Facebook page, and it got a lot of responses. So, realizing not everyone in the Sherborne/Claymont page is on that site, I thought I would bother you all with it here. Thanks, Vic

I agree with George's direct explanation of intentional suffering. But I should emphasize that what I said, and Ben confirmed in B's transcripts about "holding one's arms out" was that it was not PUNISHMENT. That word is emotionally loaded and leads down the wrong path. Some suffering is involved in doing it, but I'm not arguing for it being "Intentional" or not. 

I often wonder how many of these confusions occurred from G having to convey complex, or deceptively simple, ideas through the filter of a couple of languages. 

I once asked Mr. B. in a group if I should do some difficult task, when I was tired, or something similar to make it MORE intentional suffering like. He looked at me like I was flat out crazy. No, No, No! (He later told me privately," You always make heavy weather for yourself. Victor. I know, Gurdjieff said we should make efforts, but you go way too far!" I was stunned. I thought he was going to scold me for not trying hard enough! He then told me I needed a higher, Third Force Help to find my "I" (and then he demonstrated to me exactly what he meant). 

The simplest way I've heard it, is that "intentional suffering," as George alludes, is the suffering you go through because you have - an intention - A good, conscious one! 

When asked for an example, and I THINK this came from B, the first example given was "raising children." 

As for "the way of Blame" and all that, many of us have been in higher states, or are awakened enough where we can do something like that, but only if we can be in an awakened enough place to catch that "blame" coming at us, and like judo, flip it around and turn it into positive energy, without it causing us stress and emotional anguish. 

If we don't have that ability, and such "blame" overwhelms us with pain or fear because we are not ready to do it without transforming the negative energy, we are engaging in "spiritual masochism." 

If you have a continual flow of joy or bliss from your real "I" and can transform negativity thrown at you, or do it with a reasonable but not agonizing effort, fine. But that is for that station. 

If you can't maintain Joy and Compassion while doing it, you are not ready for it. IMHO. I think confusion about this had led to despair, hopelessness, and anguish at times for many people for years. Like me, for instance.  

"Sufficient to the day are its"...whatevers. Worrying about the structure of world 12 , as a kind of Cosmic Video game, when we aren't using the tools correctly do handle stuff on world 96, is a subtle way, at times, of avoiding the stuff we can handle to help us grow closer to our True Selves. Again, IMHO.