The Results of My Own Being

   

 March 15.

It occurs to me this morning that this business of quoting Gurdjieff constantly to one another is diseased.

The more we lean on everything he said, the less we demand of ourselves to understand how things are. In a certain sense, if we follow his own instruction, we should lean on nothing he said; we should reject every bit of it and assume it is ridiculous and wrong until we’ve proven otherwise to ourselves. Even if we conduct a sincere inner investigation and decide one thing he said is true, we must then decide the next thing wasn’t and begin all over again. Even if we decide 90% of what he said was true we must continue to see the other 10% as a skeptic and a cynic, not as a believer.

In this sense, his work is a work against believers and even our own belief itself as it is. 

What the work consists of is conducting an examination from within the results of our own Being.

Since we have already discovered, presumably — unless we are inveterate liars — that the formation of our own being is no easy thing and that we don’t have a clear picture of it from within ourselves, we should already understand that the results of our own being are weak. This should cause us to redouble our efforts. Our efforts can be formed around an increasing understanding of the organic sensation of Being, which is legitimate. Even a glimpse of it reveals the weakness that pervades the rest of what we call ourselves. We must make that organic sensation of our Being permanent.

Ah, that sounds like it should solve everything. 

It’s such a big thing, after all; if I get there, then I am somewhere. Yet in fact that isn’t even true. If I get there, I’ve merely gone from the end of nowhere to the beginning of it. From the beginning of nowhere, maybe I can climb up out of the hole I am in; but at the beginning of nowhere, all I can do is peer “outwards” into somewhere, a place I am entirely unfamiliar with and know, as I discover, almost nothing about. 

Well then — of course I know nothing. One can’t know anything from nowhere.

In this entirely unfamiliar place, all the signposts I established in nowhere are useless. The books I read? Useless. None of them describe the organic sensation of Being. The ideas people have sold me, which I bought like a gullible fool? Useless. 

Those without an understanding of the organic sensation of Being know even less than I, a congenital idiot, know. From the beginning of nowhere, I know I know nothing. They all think they know something; and they can't be convinced otherwise. 

So I'm alone here at the beginning of nowhere. I see that the end of nowhere was the lowest level of hell; and the beginning of nowhere is the highest. Somehow I have to effect passage out of hell and into purgatory. The organic sensation of Being can help me with that; but there is a huge transition necessary within me if I wish to leave hell and enter purgatory.

That transition consists of becoming responsible. In hell, all I ever did was blame others for the fact that I was in hell and refuse to repent for the way that I was. In purgatory, I have to accept my conditions and confess that the punishments I encounter — all of them — are just and deserved. Suddenly I realize they aren't punishments.

They are help.

Fortunately, the tool of the organic sensation of Being helps put me in just such a place. 

Maybe I can become responsible at this threshold of purgatory.

The view from here is quite difficult. All I can see from here to the horizon is suffering. I’ll have to pass through that place in order to go from the end of somewhere to the beginning; and it’s a landscape with no maps, no instruction booklet, no set of classy ethics or those priggish morals I’ve been educated with to guide me.

At the same time, there is an inexorable and lawful ethic and morality to somewhere. I sense this. So I’ll have to learn it. It isn’t in the books or even anywhere else; in fact, even Gurdjieff’s teaching is misleading in this regard, because it is a created thing and what I seek is metaphysical in nature. It hasn’t been created yet in me; and until it is created in me, as far as my own universe is concerned, it doesn’t even exist. In this sense I am an utterly amoral and even immoral creature.

To the extent that I sense any of this, I'm beginning to be attentive to the results of my own Being. Maybe today I can be a bit more honest with myself. Maybe I can see where I am through this faculty of the organic sensation of Being. If this doesn’t remind me of my nothingness, then I don’t understand the organic sensation of Being and I don’t understand the question. The minute that I think I’m already something I’ve taken a step backwards away from the threshold, back into hell.

Perhaps this is too difficult. All the garbage I have swilled throughout the course of my life has made me remarkably unreliable; I change my mind about what I believe every five seconds and I'm far too easily influenced by other people and the things they say. I have little integrity; I have little determination to be as I am. I always want to be something else; and yet it is only by being what I am that I can get from nowhere into a somewhere where I can begin to take responsibility.

May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.