Work in Life, part I

The way that the concept of working life is explained in the classic  In Search of the Miraculous by P. D. Ouspensky is as follows:

On the fourth way it is possible to work and to follow this way while remaining in the usual conditions of life, continuing to do the usual work, preserving former relations with people, and without renouncing or giving up anything. On the contrary, the conditions of life in which a man is placed at the beginning of his work, in which, so to speak, the work finds him, are the best possible for him, at any rate at the beginning of the work. These conditions are natural for him. These conditions are the man himself, because a man's life and its conditions correspond to what he is. Any conditions different from those created by life would be artificial for a man and in such artificial conditions the work would not be able to touch every side of his being at once. (Pages 49-49)

 I want you to forget all of this for a moment and think of this idea of work in life in a completely different way.

Life is not the objects, events, circumstances, and conditions that surround us. Life is what flows into us from a higher level. That is to say, life is not what Gurdjieff described to Ouspensky above; life is not material things, it is not creation. 

Life is the force of being which flows into us.

 Life, in other words, is this higher energy that Jeanne de Salzmann so often spoke of; it is the substance of being and of God Himself. To work in life is to work from within this flow of energy into being. One must always begin there, from within the energy, in one’s work. One cannot do this through formulations — and Gurdjieff even indicated this to Ouspensky:

"The chief difficulty in understanding the idea of the way,"' said G., "consists in the fact that people usually think that the way" (he emphasized this word) "starts on the same level on which life is going. This is quite wrong. The way begins on another, much higher, level… Therefore it is impossible to answer the question, from what does the way start? The way starts with something that is not in life at all, and therefore it is impossible to say from what. (Pages 200-201)

 Of course I've edited this considerably; yet because Ouspensky’s understanding of these questions was limited in important ways by his refusal to act from inner faith— a mistake I believe he probably recognized towards the end of his life, as so many will— the version we get is what he remembers of Gurdjieff’s remarks, and incomplete. 

My edit focuses on the essence of the question; and we see immediately that the ideas here are very closely related to Meister Eckhart’s rejection of all creation as insufficient in our effort to come into relationship with God.  

That is another deep subject well worth studying; yet the point I'm bringing here is that to work in life is to work from within the energy that God’s creation manifests—

the sacred energy that creates our life itself.

Wishing the best for you on this day,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.