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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Personality of pie

Essence and Personality in the Fourth Way

– The way of dividing man into three parts, personality, essence, and consciousness is from the Gurdjieff / Ouspensky system. In reality personality and consciousness can be further divided. Personality can be divided into false and true personality and consciousness can be divided into higher emotional center and higher intellectual center. These five levels can […]

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The Nature of Suffering

Suffering is a fact of human life. Some people suffer more than others, but no one completely avoids it. Have we any choice about suffering? Though a good amount of the suffering we experience is unnecessary ­­–– the result of our identifications, our sleep, our vices— much is unavoidable, part of the human condition. Esoterically […]

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