The Soul's Journey Into Life

 Feb. 12 

I 've spent much time lately in the contemplation of valuation, aim, feeling, and goodness.

What do I value? Perhaps I’m not clear on this. 

But if I don’t know what I value, how can I have an aim? 

Aim must be centered on what I value. If I don’t value what I aim for, I won’t bother to work towards it. One does not work towards that which one does not value.

In this sense, an essential part of what aim consists of has been very nearly forgotten in the Gurdjieff work. People speak about aim as though it were some independent entity; and yet it's entirely dependent. It's dependent on my values as I see them now. If all of my values are derived from the food I eat, the money I earn, and the things I buy with it; and, of course, sex, which runs everything — then I can't aim for anything other than these things.

So I have to think very carefully about who I am and where I am and what I'm doing. I have to see the way my value is attracted to these things; and then I have to understand what other values I have — what metaphysical values, because if my values are attached to things, they will not help my inner life develop.

This means, ultimately, that I need to concentrate quite clearly on inner value and see where it lies in me and what it’s attached to. Inner value is quite different than outer value. The practice of self observation is designed to begin to see this question of value more clearly.

In this sense, “just seeing” how I am may be a good beginning; but it isn't enough. “Just seeing” has to raise questions; questions always have to be related to valuation: not in the sense of judgment, but in the sense of discrimination. It's possible to discriminate without judging. 

I have to make a choice about what I value. If I value my work, if I value my effort and my being, the choices that I make will always go in that direction. Until I actually understand that and have an organic relationship to it, my work and my effort will always be weak and attracted to everything around me. Game over.

It may seem that Gurdjieff set a very high standard for his pupils; yet it's entirely possible to quite clearly separate the inner work from the outer one and allow them to coexist in a friendly manner. If my sense of valuation is clear, this separation arises more naturally. Only if I don’t know what I value and what I'm doing do I feel the need to erect a powerful barrier between the two. This too often results in a rigidity that appears to be “serious” and heavy duty. There are those who project this attitude about them as though they are to be taken seriously and others ought to see them as an authority. Those around them prone to slavery buy right in. Then it's called "serious work." Such work becomes self-referential and dangerously dismissive of others; anything but humble in its protestations of "real" humility.

All this is a form of nonsense that arises when I have erected mistaken barriers between my inner and outer values. If my inner value is firm and strong, my outer value can wander around as it wishes and it will not affect my inner value. I don’t need to tie myself to the mast of the ship, because I am not so easily distracted.

Of course a lot more could be said about this. The essential point here is that I need to be clear about valuation. If I don’t begin by seeing how I am and then being clear about my values, I don’t know what my aim is. And if I don’t know what my aim is I'm aimless. If my work is weak and wanders around without a center of gravity, it is because I don’t value it. I don’t value myself; I don’t honor the sacred duty and obligation I have been given in this life.

This brings me to the next point, which is feeling. It’s all very well to strive for an organic sensation of being — and it is not only all very well, it is essential and absolutely necessary. The foundations necessary for the growth of real feeling, of remorse and compassion, in a person are dependent on the organic sensation of being. It is the earth in which feeling grows; and we are not engaged in hydroponics here. Feeling needs the best soil in order to produce the best vine and yield the best grapes for the best wine. To the extent that I prepare my sensation, so does the rain come and feed the vineyard.

This vineyard can produce grapes of unparalleled quality. Yet if I wander about like a drunken farmhand I won’t be able to attend the vines. So I once again need to be quite clear about what I am doing. Grapevines don’t grow themselves; not the kind we're talking about here, anyway. They need to be tended: they need constant attention. So my attention needs to be quite clearly devoted not just to the sensation, but in a preparation to receive feeling. There is no more sacred duty than to receive sorrow and engender compassion; there is no greater responsibility than to devote my attention to the cultivation of this vintage. The analogy with the vineyard is important because I'm not just growing the grapes of remorse, of real feeling; they are to be harvested, pressed, concentrated, bottled, aged. 

All of these actions take place from within and produce a wine from the water of the life that they began in.

In the end, all of this leads us to goodness. Meister Eckhart’s sermons continually turn us back towards goodness as the property that motivates and ennobles the inner search. It is, furthermore, that very property that is emanated by God and that we hope to come into contact with; because if we are inwardly re-formed, it is this very goodness that helps create a newly formed being from within. It's an objective goodness and an objective morality that is born not of any of my other parts, but of God within his own Being. (You cannot put new wine in old bottles.) This may seem obvious; yet its actual inward action is one of the greatest esoteric secrets of all teachings. It's the greatest and the truest of aspirations; and all the other nonsense can be left aside if even the tiniest taste of this appears in the soul, because by itself it guides, it forms, it informs, and one understands in a different and a new way.

There is no need to care about such things if all we're interested in is wine, women (or men) and song. They can be quite enough to occupy us. 

But for those drawn to a different life, the question of value, leading to aim, leading to sensation, leading to feeling, leading to goodness, is a rough map of the soul’s journey into life.

May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.