Ascending a stairway to higher degrees of work
We might say there are five stages, or levels of work, involving separation in the Fourth Way.
First level: Trying to remove the problem
In the first stage, one takes the situation on its own terms and looks for ways to change it. In other words, one accepts the ‘problem’ as ‘real’ and makes efforts to alleviate it. There are certainly benefits to doing this: it can make one’s life less unpleasant, reduce negativity, and help to introduce the work into one’s activities. However, its greatest value is that in time one will come to see that changing the stimuli to which we are subject—which is what this kind of work amounts to—does not represent real change of being. We remain stimulus-response machines whose states are at the mercy of external forces.
Second level: Changing our attitudes about the problem
This leads naturally to the second stage, attempting to reprogram the machine instead of attempting to change the environment. We can bring ‘I’s to the situation which counter the mechanical, negative way of viewing it. For example, one might introduce scale by “counting one’s blessings” or by considering that our situation is not all that bad compared to conditions in other times and other places. However, all of this is limited by the fact that it still focuses on the machine. It still represents an attempt to solve the machine’s problems rather than separate from them. And so, like the first stage, it too is tied to the level of mechanicality and cannot produce true change of being.
Third level: Separating from the problem
Seeing that changing the situation externally or internally is insufficient to effect real change of being brings one to the next level of work. This third level involves separating from the situation rather than changing it. This can occur on several scales. It usually begins with effort to control one’s mechanical reactions to the situation. One can use practices such as dividing attention to withdraw energy that would otherwise be lost in identification. One result is that, being less identified, one takes the situation itself less seriously, rather than a real problem.
Viewing one’s life as an arena for practicing the work marks the beginning of real change of being, for it is one of the distinguishing characteristics of a mature man number four. Gradually, however, one begins to see that it is not really the externals from which one is separating; it is simply oneself. Circumstances or events are not problems in themselves. Rather, it is our opinions and attitudes which make them into problems, such as the attitude of our own self-importance. The truth is that we look at everything from our own self-centered point of view; everything begins with “me, me, me.”
The sense of self that is an obstacle
Nevertheless, this self-centered view is so much a part of the psychology of men numbers one, two, and three that for a long time almost all of a man number four’s efforts to awaken are based on it. One can see, in the first two stages described above, that the aim is to make the situation better for ‘me.’ In the end, however, doing things to improve externals or reprogram our attitudes is like giving drugs to an addict. It alleviates the pain but does nothing to reduce its causes. On the contrary, it reinforces the causes. For behind such efforts lies the attitude that the world should accommodate itself to ‘me.’ This is exactly the self-centered view which, at the fourth level, one sees as one of the major obstacles to evolution.
Fourth level: Separating from oneself
The fourth level of separation is to separate, actually, from oneself, as one grows to understand that the ‘I’s are not real. This level of work begins by observing the machine without judgment and accepting it as it is in that moment. After that, it may be possible to direct the machine’s attention away from the unpleasantness of a situation. One does this not by trying to change the I’s or by battling them as if they were real. One simply recognizes the unreality of the I’s, allowing them to leave, and then waiting for different ones to fill the space.
The major obstacle to doing this is our identification with ourselves. Our self-importance and self-centeredness lend an air of significance to our I’s—and, for that matter, to all our mechanical reactions—which makes it almost impossible to let go of them. Fortunately, the Fourth Way provides tools for overcoming just this difficulty. The most important of these is the non-expression of negative emotions, for negative emotions constitute by far the most numerous and most frequently used buffers for supporting our illusion of self-importance.
The use of voluntary suffering
Another extremely valuable tool is that of voluntary suffering. The idea is to remind oneself of the need to separate from suffering—to sacrifice it, in Mr. Ouspensky’s words—by creating suffering for oneself without waiting for life to create it for one. At the same time, this must occur in such a way that it establishes a right attitude toward suffering. This is one reason that it is best to work with voluntary suffering in small, unobtrusive ways—it keeps ‘me’ out of it. One can try using minor instinctive irritations or moving-center inconveniences in this way.
This practice reminds one how to suffer, for, having created the voluntary suffering oneself, it is easier to separate from it, or more precisely, to separate from one’s I’s about it. One can then carry this effort to other suffering, making it easier to give up one’s identification with it as well. The resultant state marks a separation from suffering, as acceptance of suffering, and/or as intentional suffering. Whichever way we look at it, once we identify less with ourselves, the suffering ceases to be a ‘problem’ and simply becomes part of the denying force of life in general.
Fifth level: Turning our attention to something higher
This brings us to the fifth stage, which I can best describe as the recognition of higher forces. This is very different from the initial response most of us have to the idea, when it seems perfectly natural to our self-centered view that higher forces should wish to help us awaken. Instead, it is something one comes to at the end of questions such as “Once I have separated from ‘me’, where am I?” and “When there is no longer any ‘me’ to do things, who does them?” It is a state of being which has enough scale and relativity to render our personal desires and activities insignificant. This only occurs when we truly understand our relation to higher forces. As long as no one takes the suffering seriously, it will not be rewarding. Meanwhile something else is present, and continues to bask in the radiance of Influence C.
Levels of work build on each other
These, then, are five levels of work with a ‘negative’ situation: (1) to change the situation; (2) to change the machine’s reaction to the situation; (3) to separate from the situation; (4) to separate from oneself; and (5) to turn the focus of one’s attention toward something higher. They do not replace each other but rather build on one another. Without the lower efforts, the higher ones have no foundation and will collapse at the first new stimulus. Thus, work on all levels is necessary, and no effort on any one of them can be wrong or wasted. And when they all occur together, each in its proper place and rightful proportion, one cannot mistake the fact that one has truly touched the miraculous.
Girard Haven is a Fourth Way author and teacher since 1974. His books are available on http://robertearlburton.org/bibliography and Amazon.com. He has written other articles for the FourthWayToday, including https://fourthwaytoday.org/will-consciousness-and-being/ and https://fourthwaytoday.org/awakening-as-the-third-state-of-consciousness/.