Readers will know I rarely break into the regular three-day flow of postings written-quite-some-time-ago to offer a writing that is of this particular moment. 

 I will do so today.

I have a friend who remarked a few days ago that despite years in the Gurdjieff work, they've never had the magical experience described so many times in the Gurdjieff work (for example, in de Salzamnn's "The Reality of Being") of energy coming down from above and entering through the top of the head.

There is such an experience. Yet that experience is not necessary for everyone, or all the time.

It's a specific thing meant to feed a certain place in a person. If it doesn’t happen, it’s because there are other things going on. Yet because this particular sensation imparts certain higher levels of feeling, those who have had it perhaps become convinced it’s the “answer.”

Energy flows according to cosmological principles far too complex to be explained even with the use of apparently sophisticated diagrams such as the yoga diagrams of the chakras. The system is three-dimensional and, if it were properly understood, even four and five and six dimensional. Energy extends not just throughout the three dimensions we commonly encounter in the spacetime continuum, but effortlessly moves through the fourth dimension of time and finds its natural habitat in further dimensions which are wholly metaphysical in nature. These include the dimensions of Divine Love and Wisdom which were such a prominent feature of Swedenborg’s teachings.

You can see from this explanation how impossible it is for human beings to fully explain these energies or how they act on us. Some of their actions come from levels so far removed from us (that is, rarefied, because in fact they are present everywhere) that they are, from a practical point of view, incomprehensible and always will be. They lie behind veils that are not meant to be penetrated while we are still alive in bodies. They are angelic, archangelic. 

The friend of mine who struggles with this supposedly “deficiency” is, like me, an older man, one who is like a brother to me and who is a man of great intellect and many accomplishments, with a relentless sincerity so penetrating that it sometimes bothers others, even me. The truth of his Being, such as it is — and it is just as real as the Being of any other person, even the Kosmic Masters here on earth —cannot be denied. 

The sad fact of the matter is that being exposed to the Gurdjieff work and irradiated with the subtle propagandas of its literature and practical teachings, he feels like he's missing something and hasn’t “gotten” it.

I would presume there are others out there in the same boat. Somehow the world wants to divide itself into the magical people who have understood, and the ones that don’t. 

Those that think they “understand” and then tell others they don’t can’t possibly have understood anything; because if they had, they would know immediately how poisonous this is and never do it. 

Never. 

Yet how many people have you yourself encountered who pull this kind of "rank" as though they were important, and not mere tiny creatures of flesh and blood?

I advised my friend, as is my responsibility and duty, of what is true. I reminded him that he's had many experiences of the energy that comes from below and supports; and this energy is in many ways much more important than the energy that comes into the top of the head or the energy that blossoms in a particular chakra. 

The energy of support is comprehensive and universal. It’s directly connected to the cellular and molecular energies I so often describe, the energies that derive from the underworld and the ground floor of divine Love and Wisdom, rather than its "higher" manifestations. These very fine and extraordinarily subtle energies are equally, if not more, powerful than the ones that “descend from above;”and I know much older and more experienced people in the Gurdjieff work, ones who actually knew Mr. Gurdjieff personally as children (anyone who knew him as an adult is by now dead) who feel that these energies are in reality much more important to our work on this level than the ones that come from above. 

People are always looking up at the stars instead of what is under their own feet, this one person says. They have been watching this habit for so long that by now, they confess to me, they have become irritated with it.

Just like energy, teachers come in many flavors, but the ones that are not bitter and poisonous come in jars that are not labeled "teacher." They are labeled "human being." There is a big difference between becoming a teacher and becoming a human being. My own teacher was a human being and never called herself a teacher. That’s what made her a teacher.

Anyway, I told my dear friend to affirm himself and his work as it is, not according to some artificial set of deficiencies that he perceives because of what others have told him. We should be working with one another within the greatest love there is, and can you see — can you see — how we fail? 

I fail, you fail, we all fail. 

If this doesn’t instill a humility so great that it leads one to bow one’s head in submission then forget about it, we have learned nothing. We are not even idiots. We have not earned the privilege of that name.

So this bit of meditation is based on a true thing that happened yesterday. Yet the true thing that has been happening most this year and has touched my soul to bring great grief, remorse, and suffering, is death. 

We do not know what we are; and we do not know what death brings. We are arrogant and presumptuous little creatures who strut about as though we were grand right up until the hammer falls. 

One would think that the fact of death would, once again, cause us to bow our heads in submission; but not us. No, not we humans; we are so important that even the fact of our own death is eclipsed by that grand nature we think we possess.

I spend my life these days touched by the simple things, the smell of a narcissus blooming in the living room which my wife forced this winter, as she does every winter. The faint shade of pink behind the blackened branch of winter outside the window of my office as the sunrises. The loss that lives within my awareness for those who have died. Aside from my children, my whole family is gone. 

It seems that honor and contemplation is due to those who have passed; it seems that honor and contemplation is due unto life and the simple perfection of its truths, divorced from my opinions or the opinions of the world.

There is a great vibration that fills the universe. Our wish is connected to that vibration; and if we find it, something new may be possible. 

It is in that search that Being is born.

Regards,

Lee