Am I progressing?

[abeofarrell]

Nienna, your insight in why I like teaching is something I have never considered before. OF COURSE it is something I have learned and not my essence. One more thing that needs to die.

Thank you. I never would have seen it by myself.

 

[mcb]

Megan, I think you might be missing the point. It's not that he created a fb page - it's that he tried to create his own 4th Way group using facebook due to the forum not suiting the needs of his false personality. There is a very large difference.

You might be right.

 

[obyvatel]

Nienna, your insight in why I like teaching is something I have never considered before. OF COURSE it is something I have learned and not my essence. One more thing that needs to die.

Thank you. I never would have seen it by myself.

I would not be hasty in deciding which parts need to die. Teaching has been your profession and you need the profession to survive in the world. What is important is to self-observe to see how you carry your teacher persona outside of your classroom setting.

You would not know if teaching is in your essence until you understand and bring under some measure of control the dominant aspects of the false personality. And it takes long and hard work to accomplish this task. Teaching could be in your essence - and it could be the self-importance aspect of the false personality that is contaminating it and making it appear as being a "bad" thing. This is why it is important to avoid the moralizing trap in the Work. It may be useful to simply note that self-importance drove you to play teacher in an area in which you do not have a lot of knowledge.

fwiw

 

[Nienna]

Nienna, your insight in why I like teaching is something I have never considered before. OF COURSE it is something I have learned and not my essence. One more thing that needs to die.

Thank you. I never would have seen it by myself.

I would not be hasty in deciding which parts need to die. Teaching has been your profession and you need the profession to survive in the world. What is important is to self-observe to see how you carry your teacher persona outside of your classroom setting.

You would not know if teaching is in your essence until you understand and bring under some measure of control the dominant aspects of the false personality. And it takes long and hard work to accomplish this task. Teaching could be in your essence - and it could be the self-importance aspect of the false personality that is contaminating it and making it appear as being a "bad" thing. This is why it is important to avoid the moralizing trap in the Work. It may be useful to simply note that self-importance drove you to play teacher in an area in which you do not have a lot of knowledge.

fwiw

I agree with obyvatel. You don't need to kill the teacher aspect. It may very well be your calling. Just get control of the self-importance, wanting to be in control, etc. Those are the programs that need to be looked at. You can still be a very good teacher by caring about others, wanting to help when asked and knowing you are doing things in as much of a service to others way as possible. :)

 

[abeofarrell]

Laura, I am almost finished the Strangers to Ourselves book. It made me realize just how far I have to go in understanding my machine. I am just wondering how Gurdjieff's idea of essence versus personality fits in. The book says that automatic processes are earlier than conscious ones, yet Gurdjieff says that essence develops first. Is essence also automatic? When looking at my own behavior to see what is personality and what is not how can I distinguish when both can be either automatic or conscious?

 

[pstott]

Abe, my two cents FWIW - from your comments there seems to be a lot of "thinking about" self observation and working on it etc. going on when you are "trying" to perform this avtivity.

Have you ever just let go of the thinking and watched, without judging or evaluating about what you are doing?

See if you can consciously be the watcher and the watched at the same moment, you might find that a somewhat different experience.

 

[abeofarrell]

PSTOTT,

Thank you for your reply.

Actually I am practicing self-observation and -remembering daily. Laura noticed that despite that I was not picking up on many things and felt that it would benefit me to realize the extent to which my personality is unconscious so she recommended the book. I am just trying to fit the ideas from the book into my understanding of the 4th way. For sure, I see that only by PRACTICING can I really understand.

Thank you again.

 

[obyvatel]

Laura, I am almost finished the Strangers to Ourselves book. It made me realize just how far I have to go in understanding my machine. I am just wondering how Gurdjieff's idea of essence versus personality fits in. The book says that automatic processes are earlier than conscious ones, yet Gurdjieff says that essence develops first. Is essence also automatic? When looking at my own behavior to see what is personality and what is not how can I distinguish when both can be either automatic or conscious?

Hi Abeofarrell,

Gurdjieff said that essence is what is man's own while personality is what is added to him from outside - through society, culture education etc. Both essence and personality are within a man.

My understanding of consciousness or awareness is like that of a light that can be used to illuminate what is going on inside the self. A man can be unaware of the workings of both personality and essence in his daily life and in such a case both would be "automatic" in a sense. By becoming conscious of what is going on inside oneself, one starts to differentiate between what could belong to essence or personality and then go from there.

Not sure if this helps - fwiw