How does ‘being’ get created? To understand how we can create being, we can look through the lens of philosophy and through the different traditions or psychology and creativity.

Being grows as we live our life, through the choices we make, the habits we form and every belief we adopt. It comes through facing obstacles and opportunities, and, most of all, by what we experience. Difficulties serve as necessary experiences that shape and build inner strength, such as overcoming self-doubt, resistance, and fear.

For a human being, growth doesn’t happen along a single track; it is a complex, lifelong masterpiece. While a tree grows simply by getting taller and wider, human growth happens simultaneously across multiple dimensions: the physical, psychological, emotional, and social sides of our life.

There is one more step to our potential growth: the growth of consciousness, the ultimate stage of human development.

Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor from 161-180 A.D., viewed difficult times as beneficial opportunities for cultivating virtue, strength, and wisdom. He believed that just as nature utilizes obstacles to function, humans should use obstacles as raw material to advance their goals and turn problems into personal progress. He believed that challenges are not inherently bad. Rather, they are opportunities to practice virtues like patience, endurance, and self-control. He emphasized focusing only on what is within our power—our own thoughts and responses—rather than trying to control external events.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), the German-born poet and playwright, believed in taking immediate action. He wrote: “At the moment of commitment the entire universe conspires to assist you.” Goethe believed in developing the strength to battle difficulties rather than giving up.

In a school of awakening, we live our life with presence. We work to create a ‘soul,’ using everything that comes our way. We do not take events personally, but aim to encounter them with an attitude of using whatever occurs. Not resisting, but accepting and embracing whatever happens. This is how we create being: by meeting a series of experiences with self-remembering. In other words, remembering our higher Self.

Work in a school teaches how to develop a higher level of consciousness. This comes from working to observe who we are not and to become who we really are, without beliefs or fixed opinions.

Using the tool of observing ourselves with consistency, perseverance, we develop inner strength. And in this way, being is created. Being grows like a seed that we plant in order to become a tree. Nature works like that. To create being, we need to do the work; it doesn’t happen by itself. Inner development depends on efforts and consistency, as well as objectively seeing ourselves.

Change of being, according to P. D. Ouspensky, depends entirely upon the work which a man must do on himself.

Lidia Schulten has been a student of the Fourth Way for over forty years. She has directed newer students in Europe and America.