I love this blog because interesting things get sent to me that I would never hear of otherwise. Thank you very much! I’ve got angels and helpers all over the place.

This just fell out of clear blue skies:

G.I. Gurdjieff (1866-1949) and The Fourth Way.

Gurdjieff taught people how to increase and focus their attention and energy in various ways, and to minimize daydreaming and absentmindedness. According to his teaching, this inner development in oneself is the beginning of a possible further process of change, whose aim is to transform a man into what Gurdjieff taught he ought to be.

From the Gurdjieff Foundation in California:

Man, Gurdjieff taught, is an undeveloped creation. He is not really man, considered as a cosmically unique being whose intelligence and power of action mirror the energies of the source of life itself. On the contrary, man as we encounter him is an automaton. His thoughts, feelings, and deeds are little more than mechanical reactions to external and internal stimuli. He cannot do anything. In and around him, everything happens without the participation of his own authentic consciousness. But human beings are ignorant of this state of affairs because of the pervasive influence of culture and education, which engrave in them the illusion of autonomous conscious selves. In short, man is asleep. There is no authentic I am in his presence, but only an egoism which masquerades as the authentic self, and whose machinations poorly imitate the normal human functions of thought, feeling, and will.

Many factors reinforce this sleep. Each of the reactions that proceed in one’s presence is accompanied by a deceptive sense of I—man is many I’s, each imagining itself to be the whole, and each buffered off from awareness of the others. Each of these many I’s represents a process whereby the subtle energy of consciousness is absorbed and degraded, a process that Gurdjieff termed “identification.” Man identifies—that is, squanders his conscious energy, with every passing thought, impulse, and sensation. This state of affairs takes the form of a continuous self-deception and a continuous procession of egoistic emotions, such as anger, self-pity, sentimentality, and fear which are of such a pervasively painful nature that man is constantly driven to ameliorate this condition through the endless pursuit of social recognition, sensory pleasure, or the vague and unrealizable goal of “happiness.”

According to Gurdjieff, the human condition cannot be understood apart from considering humanity within the function of organic life on earth. The human being is constructed to transform energies of a specific nature, and neither his potential inner development nor his present actual predicament is understandable apart from this function. Thus, in the teaching of Gurdjieff, psychology is inextricably connected with cosmology and metaphysics and even, in a certain sense, biology.

How are human beings to change this state of affairs and begin drawing on the universal conscious energies which they are built to absorb but which now pass through them untransformed? How is humanity to assume its proper place in the great chain of being? Gurdjieff’s answer to these questions actually circumscribes the central purpose of his teaching—namely, that human life on earth may now stand at a major transitional point, comparable perhaps to the fall of the great civilizations of the past, and that development of the whole being of man (rather than one or another of the separate human functions) is the only thing that can permit man to pass through this transition in a manner worthy of human destiny.

But whereas the descent of humanity takes place en masse, ascent or evolution is possible only within the individual.

Only an instant does this world endure.

“This is the thought which can be used to say that death and sorrow are the certain lot of all who come here, for their joys are gone before they are possessed, or even grasped. Yet, this is also the idea that lets no false perception keep us in its hold, nor represent more than a passing cloud upon a sky eternally serene.”

I am thinking of Jennifer Hudson whose mother and brother were shot to death two days ago in their home in the South Side of Chicago. Here we have a fairy tale Princess story, rags-to-riches - Jennifer Hudson rises to stardom out of dirt-poor beginnings - only to find now she always had everything she wanted already before the Academy Award, before the movies and money.

She had a family who loved her.

And while she always openly acknowledged her gratitude for her family’s love and support, I bet she would give up everything she has worked so hard for in order to change this situation, in order to see her mother and brother one more time, and to talk with them again.

You realize in a flash that everything you ever wanted was always right there in front of your eyes to look at.

WHAT AM I TAKING FOR GRANTED THAT IS IN MY LIFE RIGHT NOW, WHILE I SEEK FOR OTHER GOALS?

All things are lessons God would have me learn.

There is always a tendency to keep striving for things, while being blind to what is directly in front of you. I find I don’t usually appreciate something until it is gone, and then it’s too late.

Only an instant does this world endure. We seek Your holy Word today. For we, Your loving Sons, have lost our way a while.

For we, Your loving Sons, have lost our way a while.

That’s good to know. At least it gives me the option of continuing to wander lost and aimlessly OR to let it be a reminder to me that I can stop where I am, and take a good look around, to pause, and find my way again.

It means to open my eyes and count my blessings. I have everything I’ve ever wanted right now. It’s all here for me today. You could give me all the money, Academy awards, honors, achievements to me and it would not add a single thing to the treasure that is before me right this minute.

What are you taking for granted?