The Fourth Way and Esoteric Traditions
Identification with our thoughts, emotions, pains and sufferings diminishes as the scope broadens. Acceptance and humility overtake any resentment and self-absorption. The manifestations of the lower self can actually serve as fuel to this state. Transforming these into presence can propel a higher state into even greater heights.
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We lack attention. Are we asleep or aware of our state? And to what degree? The ability to balance the functions of our five lower energy centers leads to a higher scale of harmony for our body, soul, and spirit.
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In the faces of men and women I see God and in my own face in the Glass. ~ Walt Whitman
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It was as if everywhere he looked was illuminated by a bright light. Inexplicably, every impression he beheld glowed and seemed to present itself in its entirety. He was dazzled by how completely he perceived the minutest detail of all he saw. The world around him was no longer shrouded in mystery.
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We imagine “freedom” means being able to follow whatever ‘I’s the machine happens to have, and “will” a way to actualize any desire that comes into the machine. In reality, however, freedom and will begin from being able to separate from the machine, and this separation begins with the ability to do what it does not want to do.
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We need to construct our lives around the effort to increase consciousness, or presence. We do this through working to deconstruct, transform, and transcend whatever within us resists or distracts us from acceleration into higher worlds. We come to realize, with time, that every moment of presence is a triumph, and a reason to be grateful.
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What do Fourth Way authors say about going beyond knowledge, going beyond the system, and changing the location of our sense of ‘I’? From Views from the Real World, Gurdjieff: Beyond this world, beyond the limits of our knowledge, there lies a world, incomprehensible for us, of noumena—a shadow, a reflection of which is the […]
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So often, the work on the Fourth Way stays at the level of the steward. However, at a certain point, this work does not lead any further. This kind of work can begin, in a subtle way, to strengthen our sense of ‘I’ in the four lower centers. In truth, Real ‘I’ can only belong to higher centers.
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“The balance between knowledge and being is even more important than a separate development of either one or the other. And a separate development of knowledge or of being is not desirable in any way. Although it is precisely this one-sided development that often seems particularly attractive to people. “If knowledge outweighs being a man […]
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When students work only on the first line, it is a form of identification with themselves. The idea is that “I want to wake up,” but that ‘I’ cannot wake up. Something has to take us out of ourselves and into a larger scale than “me, me, me.” The danger of working only on the […]
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