In the world but not of it-5 ( Quarta Via)

Essence is in the world but not of it. It is not sensations, feelings or thoughts. Sure, it’s “in the world”. It’s like gold in a rock, it’s not the rock, but it is in the rock. Essence is in sensations, emotions and thoughts, but it is not any of them. This is how it is for the Essence in you: it is not your body, nor is it your thoughts and emotions, but it is embedded in them. It is like a precious stone hidden in the depths of the earth. That’s why you can dig within yourself, find your wonderful Essence and help it to mature, giving it the right amount of oxygen, which personality had deprived it of until now, growing out of all proportion, robbing it of the light and air that it needed to grow.

To begin this exploration, a good start is work on the body, work that will allow you to increase your perception of your body. This could show you that the Essence is there, it has always been inside your body, because the body is the prime tool for working on oneself. Many who approach the teachings of Gurdjieff seem not to realise that work on ourselves is above all work with the body. Where is the body of the thinking philosopher? How does it move through space? What kind of awareness does he have of himself? Awareness of the body is awareness of the self. Awareness of the self cannot exist without a deep awareness of the vessel in which we live. To be in the body without being of the body, without being completely identified, absent to the body; and the body absent for me. Your Essence is contained in your body, like a pearl in a shell. That is why we focus strongly on developing specific exercises for the body that can help to reawaken the essential energies.

But these exercises are not enough. This work must also be supported by the search for the essence in the emotions, through specific work which is different for everybody. A life’s work dedicated to this. You may have begun working on yourself a year or two back, joining a group or working with a master, and some changes may have taken place. Your heart may be more open, and you may be clearer. You may say, “Oh, my heart is open. I’ve met this wonderful person, she’s really fantastic. I feel open to her, like never before”. This is not the fruit of essential work. If you misunderstand, you are lost.

If you think you are open just because you have met a wonderful person, or if you say that your “kundalini” has ascended because someone massaged you in a particular way or with some strange cranio-sacral technique, you may only think that you have worked on yourself without actually having done so. “But I felt my heart grow warm in that moment!” Believing in physical sensations, in the “warmth” of certain perceptions as proof of years of work on yourself, is not only stupid, but dangerous too. I am saying this because I have often met people like that. They don’t realise that the warmth they feel may actually be the prelude to the heart closing, to new resistance. If you don’t begin to work on yourself in a real and Essential way, if you continue to lose yourself in this nonsense, you will deprive yourself of the chance to evolve. Until you realise that the only way you work on yourself is using the power of discrimination, starting to remove that which does not help you to remember yourself, you won’t make much progress.

If you believe that the master does the work and you can just sit back and enjoy, you can only experience growth in fits and starts, random, controlled by sensations. You have to respond to love, sooner or later. Even if that love doesn’t need our response in order to give, always freely and fully…

(CONTINUED) ( 15 March 2007)