Ever Onward

Finally, it is raining. We had a wet June but an almost completely dry July; although the temperatures have been great, low seventies. The rain is welcome because the lawn has gone dormant for lack of water. It has proven to be resilient over the years, especially in the months of August past, and greens up again after rainfall. The nourishment of fertilizer in April and again in June has provided the necessary. The lawn is an analogy of one of my dailies, i.e. “I am happy with where I am and the direction in which I am heading; I have a good self image.” I take action in one part of the year to see resultsin my being in another. I do things today for improvement, however slight; then one day I realize that I hit 12 fairways and put seven irons on the green with regularity. Part of my psyche is to not recognize this as it is happening and voila, it is there.

Observing mom from a Gurdjieffian point of view, I can see the valiant fight she is waging to keep this body alive. Who is she? She is that part of the being that lives in this body to be released and find its way. That way could be another body, a respite from life as an entity, or relaxing into oblivion; the choice will be hers. She isn’t ready yet but this body is physically worn out; the boney frame is depleted, the musculature has all but atrophied, she has almost no reserve of energy, yet she isn’t ready to give it up. Perhaps there is something for which she is waiting, an epiphany of understanding or perhaps there is a fear of dying that makes her hang on. In any case she lives on as she has now for the past month and for the past one hundred years and six months.

In her spiritual life she has put her faith and trust in the teachings of the Catholic Church. This could have been a major faux pas but then she didn’t take the time to develop her understanding of life and living.

There seems to be two approaches to a belief system; one is to study and the other is to think. When one studies, he accepts what others have written and taught as their understanding of life and living. The RCC, starting in 300 AD, laid down a set of beliefs that could be studied, learned, adopted, and served as a guide for life. Islamists, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, (you name the religion) did the same thing; then offered these “teachings” as the one true way to everlasting life. They don’t say to take these as a starting point and develop your own understanding even if it leads you to a better but similar conclusion. The situation is analogous to going to school all the time; accepting what the professors says without question. The churches call it faith and it is their way of assuring continued “tuition” payments. You can question as long as you stay in the enclosure of their tenets as expressed by the bible or some other “holy book.”

It isn’t realistic to beatify or confer sainthood on G. I. Gurdjeff. It is, however, good to note that he espoused the thinking approach to this whole question. He wrote some books, P. D. Ouspensky, et al, did likewise but underneath it all Gurdjieff said don’t take my word for it, figure it out for yourself. I took his advice and have been doing it for a long time. I refrain from writing more than these notes about my thoughts because they are always developing, always being refined. When I go back and read some of my earlier notes, I see where I was at the time and contrast them with where I am now. There are few contradictions and much refinement. Any attempt at writing a definitive description of what I believe for others would be wrong. It presupposes that my conclusions are to be adopted by others and this is antithetical to my first admonition; go figure it out for you.

The starting point is Ouspensky but being careful not to accept what he wrote as gospel but rather as a starting point for further thought. Then read Gurdjieff, then as many books and letters, and notes as you can find about him, either written by contemporaries or by scholars since. Read and study the ancient texts that you can find. All of this is fiction but it is from whence I started to gain my understanding of life and living and where I am as a being. In this case the ‘I’ is the rider, the inhabitant of the body, that part of the being that is not temporal, the one who has experienced other lifetimes.

When one adopts this approach, the unfettered thought approach, esoteric meanings from contemporary and ancient religions, including those of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, myths and the whole of human history, start to come into focus and there is an endless thread of basic truth that emerges, which when followed leads us to more and more understanding; but more importantly to the conclusion that there is so much more to be understood that we can never. We are like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill only to have to start all over again when it rolls back down. The developmental task is to understand enough that the boulder doesn’t roll back down. IOW that we reach a plateau from where further spiritual development can occur; we get a new boulder and a new slope. At this point I can only go this far, I don’t know the end game.

There is a hint in the gospels; it is the story of the Transfiguration. There may be other similar experiences recorded for others who reached this level of development; I don’t know. It just seems to me to be the real end to which Jesus Christ was working, not the crucifixion.