three lines of work, Fellowship of Friends, Robert Earl Burton, FourthWayToday

Ouspensky on The Three Lines of Work

Three Lines of Work in a School The following outline is from Ouspensky’s The Fourth Way: The first line is work on oneself: self-­study, study of the system, and trying to change at least the most mechanical manifestations. This is the most important line. The second line is work with other people. One cannot work by […]

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FourthWayToday, Fellowship of Friends, Parthenon, Robert Burton

The Concept of a School’s Task

In Search of the Miraculous Why, when we travel or study, do such monuments as the Sphinx, the pyramids and temples of Egypt, the Parthenon, Delphi, and statues of Greece attract us emotionally and psychologically?  Because they are miraculous. Monuments like these tell us stories and show us truths beyond our scope. They bring a clarity […]

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Fellowship of Friends, Robert Earl Burton, John Belbas

What Do You Want?

The Question “To be or not to be” may be the question. However, what do you want?  Reading this, likely you have a sort of awakening aim, in whatever terms you couch it. You have your aim: you want to wake up, be more awake, be self-aware, conscious. That aim is in place, with subsidiary aims, likely. […]

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real life in a fourth way school, Fellowship of Friends, Robert Earl Burton, Walther Sell

Real Life in a Fourth Way School

What is the Aim of a School? The aim of a Fourth Way school is to help people to awaken from the state of sleep in which they spend their whole life. The first step is becoming more deeply aware of this sleep in one’s daily life. Ouspensky said, “Schools exist only for those who need […]

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Life in School, meeting

Life in School

A School Requires Special Efforts It is not necessary to awaken to satisfy all the demands of life on the planet earth. Consequently, awakening requires that one make efforts beyond those one would make in life. This is the idea of “super-effort.” Ouspensky describes, in In Search of the Miraculous (page 347), when a man, after […]

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inner conflict, multiplicity and unity, Robert Burton, Fellowship of Friends, Fourth Way Today

On Inner Conflict

What inner conflict we can expect to experience when we begin to work on ourselves with an aim to unify our state? “Blessed is he who has a soul, blessed is he who has none, but woe and grief to him who has it in embryo.” – Gurdjieff Is Awakening Harmonious? When we hear about […]

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Fellowship of Friends - Fourth Way Today - Zen circle

Quotes on Unity and Multiplicity

Quotations from Fourth Way authors Gurdjieff and Ouspensky on unity–and our innate multiplicity. Acknowledging Plurality Man has no individual I. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small I’s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each […]

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Forging oneself - iron ore

Forging One’s Being

Recently on a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York I wandered into a room full of Katanas. Katana are Japanese samurai swords, exquisite objects that seamlessly integrate lethal utility and beautiful design. I read a little about the labor-intensive process used for forging these blades. It occurred as an obvious analogy […]

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Contradictions on a string

Dealing with Contradictions

How to deal with contradictions on the path to awakening? The Fourth Way describes the lack of unity of man, and his many contradictions. What  challenge does this fact pose on the path to awakening? “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself.” – Walt Whitman These words from Walt Whitman have long […]

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Many 'I's

Observing the Many I’s – the Lack of Unity

Are we unified?  Or are we a multiplicity? It is the greatest mistake to think that man is always one and the same. A man is never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the same even for half an hour.  ~ G. I. Gurdjieff, writing on the multiplicity of man […]

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