beetlemaniac said:
I am getting the feeling that the Work or at least a part of it, is like a constant cycle of creation and destruction of the ego through continual awareness/remorse arising from our errors due to emotional thinking. Along with this is the search that is a steady input of knowledge which seems to keep everything alive and interesting. I hope I'm not word salad-ing but it seems really true for me at this point.
Makes want to Work harder and harder, and I am loving it. It's wonderful! :)
I have these moments too. Before i came in contact with Gurdjieff's teachings i wasn't very remorcefull at my own misconduct and even if i had moments of awarness still, so to say self-remembering, i couldn't name the process and forget what was happening to me as sooner as possible. Now i don't forget quite easily but still i didn't change much the way as i wanted to change. But my imagination diminished somehow ( i used to lose myself in moments of reverie, inventing dreadfull or rosy scenarios about people and things) and i no longer express anger the way as i used to but i still do. All those modifications in my being ( that i hope will become more permanent in time) make the teachings to have a valid effect, otherwise is just me growing up mechanically :P and speculating result about things i just couldn't grasp.
Gurdjieff having the whole banana would have meant to have at least one student who succeded in the aim of attaining immortality, a unitary, indivisible ''I'' and a perfect mastery of the three centres. All these things after he would have followed G's instructions but it didn't occur as far as i read...
I guess Gurdjieff's mistake was that he tried in practice too sooner what he would have suceeded better in theory, by writing the books and exposing the system before training disciples at his Institute of Harmonious Developpement of Man. Theorizing the system before putting it in practice would have been a more productive avenue for what he wanted to accomplish. It is strange that he had too endure so many obstacles untill he had written it.
Bud said:
I would also caution you to be wary and critical of anyone or any group that swings to any one extreme: whether anti-Gurdjieff or Gung-Ho Pro Gurdjieff, because both states are indicators of "identification" which is something Gurdjieff elaborated on at length.
That's the reason i stick to this forum :), because is somewhere, in between, and i can find interesting perspectives and sane considerations on many topics (though the part with psychopaths and conspirations seems to me a bit exaggerate)
But i have to add that the guys on those sites that are anti-Gurdjieff talk about real groups ( i say real, meaning not on the internet) who lasted for years in San Francisco, Sonoma groups or something, conducted by Alex Horn ( a playright, actor) These groups were apparantly maintaining the gurdjieffian tradition of self-remembering, physical and mental exercises and sacred dances but were constitued by individuals who considered themself an elite and were living an outrageous and frivolous existence, seducing their students into beliving their good will, which was not the case ( if we take into consideration the opinions of the posters on rickross). But i still wonder if those guru's were just pretending, just like Gurdjieff in order to challenge the students and take them out of their ruts..
At any rate, it seemed difficult to train anyone by radical means and many attemps proved to be inefficient.
What i have also read there, is that Gurdjieff was actually a master hypnotist and was using a fake system, the fourth way, in order to induce mass hypnosis without intending to educate people in a spiritual sense. He was interested just in the experiment and in the power of his personal magnestism and was using people as laboratory rats, discarding them if they didn't prove to be receptive enough.
