Being a Real Idiot

   

March 16.

Going back over the things I write, it occurred to me yesterday that I have shamelessly complex thought processes which most others are (perhaps, after all, for the best) not interested in following. 

For this, I apologize. Writing of that kind is an indulgence; and it’s probable that I engage in it far too much. Yet for me, it’s a kind of exercise. The workouts are intense enough that sometimes even I can’t quite comprehend them once they are done. Exercise in one moment looks quite different when one is outside of it.

It reminds me of CrossFit.  The daughter of W., a good friend of ours, is very good at CrossFit training and I did a series of sessions with her before Covid struck us all and everything shut down. While I enjoyed the exercise and found it interesting, it quickly occurred to me that this is a whole world of very great intensity, and I'll never be fully immersed in it. 

There are realms of thought that put equal demand on the mind.

If you wish to read one of the essays that is, in my intellectual world, “CrossFit training” be sure you’re prepared. That’s all I can suggest.

I think the point is that we need to put a demand on ourselves. There are many people who want to approach the Gurdjieff work with almost no thinking; they believe that everything can come from the body and feelings. While an intelligently intense focus needs to be placed on the body, no doubt, if one tries to approach this work without careful and structured thinking one becomes a “work idiot.” 

It's equally possible to approach this work with too much thinking, all of the wrong kind, which tries to direct everything and become the authority. People like this are “work geniuses.” 

Then there is a third type, the “work feeler” who interprets everything through emotion and tries to line up the other two centers to correspond accordingly.

Work idiots are unable to think and avoid any challenge that demands that the mind be disciplined. Work geniuses do nothing but think and thereby think that they know how to sense and feel. Work feelers act almost exclusively through an emotional center of gravity that emanates a kind of naïve intelligence and makes everything touchy – feely.

Every one of us fits into one of these three types. This is how we are now; and if we see it carefully, we see that each type is woefully deficient in one way or another. Only by pausing and collecting ourselves do we have any hope of getting the types in touch with one another, seeing their weaknesses, getting them to support one another. If all three of these parts were in any kind of harmony with one another, already our work would be much more intelligent than it is. The difficulty is that each of us is automatically, mechanically, habitually and unconsciously invested in our primary work type. 

...Let me just mention here that people generally think the mind is too strong, but in fact it is quite often the very weakest part in a person. This is why it dominates the other centers, precisely because it has no discipline and no proper strength of character. Consequently it runs around all day long like a March hare.

Anyway, there's always some predominant center that believes it knows everything. If the three centers ever come together, the first thing they notice is that they actually know nothing; and if one finds oneself there already this is huge progress, because then one has become a real idiot, and you have to be a real idiot before you can be any other kind of idiot.

Sometimes I am a real idiot. This is where my potential lies. It involves reminding all the other fools in me that they don’t know what they are doing. 

Only a real idiot can have any authority over fools.

 May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.