Redux of Fourth Way Introduction @ UCSB

There's a story involved which represents my introduction to Gurdjieff's Work, called The Fourth Way. As freshman at UCSB, I was in the book store early and often. I ran across a small compilation of lectures by a man named Ouspensky, perhaps Gurdjieff's most famous student, and a huge intellect who eventually wrote a book called The Fourth Way, really a compendium of G's lectures which are considered the basic layout of his Theory of All and Everything.

But to introduce this work, Ouspensky would say there are 3 basic ideas necessary to understand in order to even stand a chance of being in the Work. 1: Man cannot do. 2: Man lies about everything 3: We are not 1, but we are legion (meaning a person is not properly identified as a single individual, but a legion ~ an alignment with many others including those who work with the Enneagram which was one Gurdjieff's principle tools used in self-observation. ...

Now, I stood there and read his Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution, and at the end was a challenge give regarding a reader personally verifying their being awake or not, present or not. Given any destination mapped to time and space, one simply commits themselves to staying conscious the entire trip and then when they actually reach the destination, and if a person is awake at that moment, that's a fairly rare and humongous achievement. So, the trip back to my dorm was as short 1/4 mile past all the other dorms and the eucalyptus trees which form a forest in which UCSB is built, right on the coast, at Goleta Point. My dorm wasn't more than 100 yards from the ocean.

And so I set out, and then 2 weeks later, I suddenly had the experience of waking up, or being conscious, as Gurdjieff puts it as Self-Remembering. I've been in this work now for 35 years, and believe when I say that is a beast (story) of a different nature. At any rate, Self-Remembering simply means a conscious effort at retaining a small percentage of one's attention to be directed by one's will and that direction inward to one's self. For everyone, this begins with a persistent failure with maintaining the state. And that is what Gurdjieff tells everyone, that somebody could ask men if they were awake and the very asking of that question produces a shock to the mind, in effect waking them up. And for a short moment or two, that person looks and in looking finds he/she is awake and thus responds I"m awake only in the very next moment they cease being awake and go back to sleep.

The point here is that being awake is a specific conscious choice and effort. Evolving one's consciousness to a HIGHER level or state, requires some consciousness to being with, and makes sense that it would require a higher conscious effort than currently being made in order for any positive results to occur. And finally, this is what all that other stuff is designed to support. It really is the only value that means anything in life, because if you're awake, what are you? Well, most people exist exactly as that, as a machine. The point here being that I certainly made it home that night in UCSB. How did that happen if I was asleep. We're all machines with mechanical functions to move, emote, think, etc., but none of which have anything to do with consciousness or Self. G called us 3 brained beings. But, the first step in G's work, is called Self-Observation, but that is only valuable insofar as a person builds up a psychic photo album of themselves expressing various different identifications within their own minds. This will possibly give rise later to a series of identifications leading ultimately to a permanent "I".


So, that was making a long story short! LOL Hope it helped you understand my earlier words, thanks for asking for this clarification.

My Ineffable Leanings Today

As a longtime student of Gurdjieff's work, at one time enthusiastically participating in what I persuaded myself was a real esoteric school of the fourth way with a conscious teacher in place, discovering my mistake was easily the greatest shock in my life since the original shock I received after awakening from my sleep a short while after finding Ouspensky's, The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution. That first shock was understanding the truth about how little truth and reality actually figured in my psychology, a humbling failure to simply stay conscious for a short walk from the bookstore to my dorm at UCSB was all it took. After rejecting outright my upbringing indoctrination into the Lutheran Faith not a moment after being confirmed, there was no easy way to relapse or lose the sense of gravity which that choice was based on. To renounce any of portion of the automatic inculturated programming which our youth absorbs and believes unconsciously and without critical discernment, nevermind such a massively moral code like religious faith requires a level of fearless ferocity in relationship to one's own mechanical need of comfort and approval that without at least some modicum of support from one's guardians or parents the possibility feels altogether imaginary. I happened to be graced by a Mother whose wish for me to be completely free to become my own man and make my own decisions, achieve my own successes and failures, was steadfast in her being my mother. This required some huge suffering of her own to achieve growing up, as she rebelled against the hugely indoctrinated and moral code of her parents by running away from home at as young teen before the age of adulthood with a muscian to live away from the oppression and feeling servitude which she experienced as a result of her brother being a prodigy despite being blind and taking away all the attention and support that she genuinely deserved but didn't feel coming and took this circumstantial situation as the gravest form of suffering any child receives short of actual harmful abuse. Children need to be cared for properly with vital aliveness of the best in us, at least, don't you think. Negligence of children is to cripple the best in them in both their happiness when young and throughout the rest of their life. She ran away from home with a young pianist studying with her brother because he gave her the attention she so badly needed. When his short sabbatical here ended off she went with him back to his home in Mexico City. Her recovery was I suppose at best something one might call civil in terms of relations, but looking back at my her parents and my experience of them growing up I can immediately recognize the undercurrent of negativity which to mom's credit was kept in check through a resurgent dedication as an obedient and grateful adult. With this perspective then one may be able to appreciate just how lenient and careful she was with me to always be there for me and yet do her best not to micro-manage or pass judgement as a parent since she knew first hand the kind of pain that way of being towards a child can create.

Interestingly enough without going into a long story about its arising, this commitment and stand on her part did not prevent her negative programming which her parents unconsciously dumped on her until she completely rebelled and ran away from homed from inciting me to do the very same thing during my senior year in High School. My sojourn was quite short however and not so far as to keep me from finishing school.

The important issue here was that to her credit there was enough conscious work at NOT being oppresive the way her parents were that I actually developed some level of understanding about my role and how it related to her actions in terms of what they made possible as a result. That with a protracted illness my father suffered, dying in my arms shortly before entering the confirmation process, and I was primed and prepped to act out radically in honor of these experiences.  Experiencing my father's death so intimately sealed in me the gravity which my mother's wishes for me might not otherwise have made much of a difference. But after he died, not a day has ever passed that I have not contemplated death and life's fragile uncertainty.

So, when I participated in an exercise suggested by Ouspensky in his introduction to fourth way work designed to produce the first shock which has to do with GETTING one's inability to do or remain conscious, I knew that I had found precisely what religious faith, morality, and teaching lacked,. Authentic possibility and experience vs. a story. That first shock was internal in perspective and quite hard to share. Talking about it, and sharing it I've found does not induce in others the same experience that I had back in the beginning, due in my opinion to what I've shared here leading up to this point regarding specific conditions present in my childhood, shaping and influencing my process as it did. The next shock however, is an external one that I had when I realized the lack of integrity and proper care given by the conscious teacher I had adopted for several years. The disappointment was devastating, and my satisfaction in the work has never recovered yet to the point of finding a truly authentic conscious teacher to work with. Having been so taken in only to find my gullability irrevocably established upon the "teacher's" lack of conscious being reflected in his inappropriate and harmful exploitations of and abuses of his students for sexual and thus completely narcissitic and sociopathic gratifications, I have at least been ferocious in my assessments of everyone hence. There have been many teachers and yet none have succeeded in impressing me consciously at least as fourth way teachers of the caliber of Ouspensky or Gurdjieff. I don't deny that history is replete with such masters, but none of them remain beyond their aesthetic appeals and artifacts  paying homage to their enlightened state and its capacity to produce higher impressions. It's only necessary to think of the Poetry of Rumi for example or the writings of Lao Tzu, or the Buddha to understand the nature of this higher energetic impression such master's works and remaining arftifacts communicate and create for those able to receive higher influence.

While I haven't actually run across a charismatic false prophet like the one that fooled me in the beginning, everyone since then while at times well versed and even charismatic in their self-expression and passion for the work only get as far as proclaiming and telling the story over, which I've developed a very sensitive "taste" for by its interpretive color and trapped design given by today's culture and way of doing things.

It's nothing short of such sorrow that I almost cannot bare to share, only that I am aware that such thought is unrelated to the reality of listening and response which others will actually have. In a culture of impassioned commitment to looking good, this change of heart and attitude is unexpected except for the fact that I continue to study the master's and fourth way ideas though without disipline or confidence that one would necessarily expect from having an authentic teacher to consult and learn from.

I'm still alive, despite many instances in which I could have easily expired and died, and as long as I'm still alive I will remain grateful if just for my magnetic center and its level of gravity which continues to bring me over and over back to a proper first shock with gratitude and evermore acceptance.

Fourth Way Essay: Going Beyond Higher Consciousness

Going Beyond Events of Higher Consciousness

For the longest time my mood has been depressed and my response was just to sleep. But the truth is that there is a higher level of conscious humanity existing in non-physical realms that spend their EFFORTS on such opportunities, we as evolving newbies with respect to spirit, give them. There is a truly paradoxical character to this connection and flow that we have in us to create with higher consciousness. I almost hesitate to say it because of its simplicity, however; the truth (when dislodged from any finite loci, center, or nexus even) freed from bias and position does in fact account for everyone, unifying the essence of men at least in theory, although language still fails to communicate that unity properly. Thus the residual discord when Christ says, "Except that you accept me as the way, you will not step one foot into  heaven."  (paraphrasing his remark there...)

Unless one can separate that truth from the man, the finite shell now returned to dust, such statements are statistically I think bound to annoy most (except of course for those who "believe") intelligent people. But consider what his way was essentially, what his attention focused on ESSENTIALLY, where he came from ESSENTIALLY, which was interiorly/inward/into his conscious being. The external/outward appearance which everyone pays attention to in life, is a dead end and where most come from, their "sense of I" fabricated and identified to circumstances present arbitrarily in relationship to them via the external world, physical world. Part of the Fourth Way Teaches this very important point as a key to evolving one's being. Conscious influence or help from conscious humanity for one's evolution must be understood to come from within. What happens in the external physical world which we label as synchronicities, unfathomable convergences and miraculous manifestations, are all created by our own being in the world. Such events, as they more or less may be called supernormal by us personally are actually reflections of higher influence at work in our own being and finally finding their way into the physical world on spiritual levels within the this realm, such as harmonics in energy fields and flows, synchronicities, symbology, archetype, etc.

There is an easy mistake to make right here by once again pushing our egoistic I of self-importance forward in understanding such miraculous events that at least for me have taken place throughout my life (both even and mistake to be sure), like the first time I had the Lord's prayer explained to me for its esoteric meaning and how that meaning directly reflected the fourth Way's Work in its being a daily reminder of my relationship to higher influence. In the days following my introduction to this esoteric side of the Lord's Prayer I was playing golf when I decided upon confronting an 80 foot chip shot to the hole from just off the green to say the Lord's Prayer knowing and understanding in the living active context of my fourth way Work, the golf shot to be a reflection of that Work in terms of aim and hitting the Mark, etc. After my recital silently and inwardly, I proceeded to chip in my shot which had such a high probability of not going in as to be close to the odds of winning the Lotto, but in association to my recital and attention, one can only marvel at the POWER of higher influence when out pops manifestations as miraculous as the one I've just described. And for a man to heal others as Christ did, by simply saying, You're healed! With a report following, that recorded the person in fact healed (at least so far as we believe the Bible to be accurate, however that's problematic at best). The truth of his spiritual power was NOT in how he said it, or how virtuous or skilled he was, or how sincere and loving and intentional ... his power was his attention permanently planted inwardly and aimed at higher consciousness to the point of being one with that infinite source which I think it is fair to say CREATED all that exists. That shift and transformation of one's attention which has been habituated to the physical sensorium is precisely what is most key to the Work of the Fourth Way, called Self-Remembering.

Now the truth of that is so simple I dare not repeat it again. It's no more complicated than being transparently focused inwardly with our essence and attention at the same time that the external world continues to flow through our lower centers of function. This is the Work, struggling to stay awake and exercise our conscious choice and will to raise our level of consciousness, this way of being.

May you have the One Taste which imbued with grace and divine light is now familiar to you so that you can always recover and return to the one true spirit which is your creator 8-)

There's a deeper layer that I think deserves some further exposition - on having to do with moment to moment flows in attention and that with respect to the external world how it is in our interest with respect to the descending octave of higher conscious C influence as it flows through humanity devolving materially into B influence commonly regarded as higher forms of art, literature, science, philosophy, etc., that can due with some greater elucidation here with emphasis on how to use this aspect of the external world to support and help cultivate higher energies within us. As we take in these higher impressions around us, the basic impact of such physical manifestations or artifacts to those with enough understanding to benefit or raise their energy by attending to such physical impressions is critical. It is right here as we confront the struggle inwardly that certain keys to the Fourth Way can be verified, such as centers of function and the multitude of "I"s, some of which want nothing to do with higher truth and simply want to "turn" or "play." This use of 'play' is however in distinct opposition to more creative notions of "play," of which I am not referring to. Play here is associated with recordings of internal memory which we to some extent more or less in our unconsciousness identify with and play over and over, without choice, out of complete mechanical habit, due to our attention being imprisoned there through identification and false personality.

However, the benefit that comes from even the slimmest conscious attention given to B influence in the world is the experience of a shock to our being. Such moments of attention return us to an interior space of presence, consciousness in moment (attending to this requires an effort of will and intention and the moment we stop giving this special inward attention, this level of consciousness of our being vanishes). There is some degree in that moment of feeling our presence including higher functions, speed, and cognitive power, which is a NON-SELF Field of presence, that responds to the power of our will to intend and attend inwardly. All to quickly, all of us fall asleep to this possibility and our attention returns to external stimuli which is processed mechanically, registers in our memory mechanically, and so on and so forth. Understanding this slope outward and how to keep from being taken away by it into a slide back into rational materialism and subjectivity, self-delusion, etc., is one of the biggest 'battle-fronts' for me in my Work at present.

In conclusion, succeeding to create this inward connection and attention on higher consciousness can only happen by annilhating lower identifications and the attention and energy those identifications link and anchor in the physical external world. The closer and more conscious we become of consciousness itself, consciousness which comes from the original source of ALL that is, will continue helping our evolution by providing clear insight into that Source's Will, our evolution at this point traverses a scale from self-will to doing the will of the ALL, whatever that means. The idea that one's integrity, to the extent that it is committed to evolving consciousness and love for that Will, is our only tenuous hold on ascending in our efforts impresses me as troublesome only insofar as I continue to identify with lower "I"s with no sense or interest in higher truth and possibility in life. All that said, however, the main dictum which remains in force and relevant as asserted in the Fourth Way is never believe anything but verify the truth and relevance of all that one hears or is told.

A Mood Uplifter

Yesterday I found myself sending the following graphics to Stephanie, with the exception of the one of her in her wedding dress. But each one represents one of the fundamental centers of being in the Fourth Way. Having created this range in such a way between her and I, while it wasn't something I was consciously thinking about today, has certainly been on my mind at times in the past and suddenly today I find quite a remarkable snap of intent to see it through...

The centers of function here are moving, emotional, intellectual, and sexual.

Understanding Degrees of Difficulty

With respect to Gurdjieff's view of man, that part of us that believes we can "do" is false, and yet due to our mechanical identification with it we not only protect it with all of our being, we are powerless to progress in the work of self remembering. And we respond negatively to our feelings of effort which do not achieve any penetration, insight, or result. On top of all this, this false self based on belief and imagination rather than truth, resists any effort to verify the truth about being, beginning with the idea that in our current state we cannot do. What this false personality creates is a reasonable saga to explain why things happen the way they do. This brings us to another layer of difficulty having to do with imagination once again insofar as given objective knowledge and even some degree of insight false personality grabs ahold of the idea and stops any and all action which might assimilate that knowledge, effectively shutting down and negating the possibilities that were present. It's as if we are mechanically programmed to accept the idea without verifying it, like being told where the door outside is without actually stepping through it - when the main objective is to go outside!!

Fragmentation a Syndrome of Sleep and a Bitch

I'm counting on most not reading beyond the title of this entry post. The real story is that in men I don't find fragmentation the same way I do in Women who bitch. Men are more apt to whine or quite often resistance across the board makes the whole of them asses. The problem is just as much an issue with women but not spoken about with as much tolerance. Women don't tolerate other women or themselves speaking about fragmented women going over the top when it comes to behaving decently.

Their negativity exists in their having killed the segue in their intellect.

Non-fragmentation can mimic this condition when the woman is anti-partriarchal (every woman by default who never experienced one positive male role model growing up in life ). This leaves lacking precisely that kind of function in her being which men are gravitational at intellect. Beginning with the simple make wrong act or role in the simplest mind and ending with literary masterpieces transcending whatever genre they manifested evolution in. With the grey inbetween filled with intellect of such color along the gradient going from black and white through (infinity -1) colors.

Understanding how math relates to language for instance is a question of intellect which would never be found fragmented, assinine, asleep, bitchy, unkind, or otherwise insensitive. Actually stepping it up a level to transrational thinking, in observing how Math grew out of being an thus it's dialect might be called Being.

In the flip side of this, using words for their mathematical principles and relevant structure objectified in symbols. But words, can represent infinity in a way perhaps only a shadow at this point but something which mathematical computation breaks down when articulating the relation. The equals sign means relation however infinity = nothing in classical math which quantifies. In order to fully understand how language can communicate to a mind still ignorant that dimension of experience that relates to infinity, the shadow of words ie math, must be placed at the floor, b&W and fragmented. This involves our being as I've already suggested, when I made gender an issue for distinction. In our being, ignorance is controversial, the main issue for those a step up from being complete asleep, that rise in consciousness reflects in parallel and encompassing one's being. Leaping ahead to the point then ...

Almost a ceiling, which itself remains objective consciousness for me, being able to link parallel perspectives on present circumstances is a question I was in earlier tonight, before the pressure of corresponding became dominant.

My insights tonight were inspired by the recognition that placing spirituality before and above anything else dimensionally to one's being, removes all attachments and connections to the floor. Once one frees oneself from anykind of static relationship to themselves, one is able to know their spiritual possibilities and start actualizing their potential. One is not free however to respond to freedom by increasing one's ego.

Today, I observed myself chasing self satisfaction and saw the ego for what it was. Dreadfully seductive and the site of expectation. Such is the nature of all expectations, that they are really just one of a number of pillars holding up the ideal which was the seed of our indiviuality and the extent of our belief in it. While this could be called the Psychological dimension of our being, distinct from Spiritual, there is a fundamental principle regarding decency of behavior which correlates in the Spiritual. It is a pillar because it is much more than this or that but achieves appropriateness in relationship to present circumstances and conditions. These words all have a dynamic operational bias and that bias is relative with the balance between almost all static and all dynamic makes sense when one integrates physical correlates.

At any rate...the question right now is whether or not enlightenment which is universal and absolute can be articulated without the disclaimer regarding words having significant relativity yet in our being to succeed in that articulation?

Making the Separation

I'm finding ways to seize my awareness on separate parts of my being. The secret to it seems to be developing at least one neutral ongoing higher aim which can somehow be kept active collecting portals to fashion up the lack of integrity with the innocence of starting anew in the question over being confused on how.

I am bubbling over with disappointment over being unable to empower a response by my muse to write some poetry with new purpose. It's all about revealing quiet within subtly, and I'm not even in the ball park yet I don't think.

Word of Lord Pentland

Inwardly as I follow the questions and look for answers, there is a new alignment possible. That's always been my experience. Man, woman, and child all suffer from this essential condition in the beginning, where one's being unified is a lie and false, and illusion of our own design to hide.

I am slowly resurrecting some positive feeling for the work of the fourth way and it must be said undoubtedly Lord Pentland is the fault.

The biggest shift in understanding I have gone through recently now has to do with Self-Remembering being quite misunderstood in general, I am definitely developing a 'taste' for. The second issue which is entirely new for me has to do with my appreciation and insight into the essence of my attention. So many, fragments remain in my daily flow and beyond. Anytime, like just now when I completely lost hold of the thread of my higher consciousness while awakening, falling to sleep ... I've spent many years getting used to this idea, being open and humble in relation to it, letting go of my inhibitions regarding lustfulness.

My insights today regarding understanding being higher when expressed in the negation within the dichotomy. Thus, being aware of your lack of understanding is actually a higher form of understanding because of its transformational power fo completing the polarized circuit for its integrity.

The work now emerges as intentionally remembering myself to first and above all BALANCE the higher subtle and vital energies of my being on which I depend on my sanity.

In closing this entry, I will be refocusing my attention on poetry of at "the cage-unhitched" and I've got the next two days to quietly explore things further, thank you universe, for that!

The Paradox of Man's Evolution

I remember Ken Keyes Jr. speaking about this issue when I workshopped the pathways for more than a month with him ‘back in the day.’ He was very emphatic about the pathways being an intellectual reformation. There effect when repeated consciously over time in association with ‘machine like’ behavior is to succeed in ‘aiming’  or ‘pointing’ one’s field of possibility in the direction where liberation may ultimately become real on the horizon. However, the pathways do NOT extinguish or stop or liberate one from being mechanical but are rather antidotes of the mind in the classic buddhist sense, I think.

The statement below is an example or proof of this as being nothing more than a mechanical production caused by incorporating the pathways as part of your associative memory. Before we get snagged on the semantics of liberation, let us understand liberation to be the cessation of ignorance. Ignorance is the gravity or the specific condition present which results in addiction. Addiction is a complex of mechanicalness such that a disease emerges from the knotted dysfunctionality and the corruption it presents to one’s energetic system. One can recover from addiction. There is no recovery or ‘program’ allowing a human being consciousness which is free from mechanical behavior, emotion, and thought.

I could continue this thought on liberation regarding the PROCESS in which it is attained, but I think I have already shown the defect in your idea of liberation, especially as you have it related to the idea of addiction. But, just for your consideration, may I say that Liberation or the freedom from Karma and Reincarnation cannot be programmed. There is no ‘genius’ level of thought or wisdom that one can program the mind with resulting in liberation. If this were true, then the Buddha’s teachings would be producing Liberated immortals 100% of the time, or at least that is what I infer would happen based on what Buddha said about his Dharma. Over and over, he says that the doctrine of his teaching was perfect and complete. However, at the very end what the aspirant practices takes place beyond doctrine and the mind. It is nevertheless a ‘space’ one must make the effort to produce, and yet nothing can be said regarding the exact essence and nature of that effort. So is the Buddha a fibber?

There is another angle to this situation representing the final penetration through veil of illusion and mechanical or non-liberated states of consciousness. This insight comes from The Fourth Way, more specifically Ouspensky rather than Gurdjieff, at least for me. The principle states the situation rather plainly regarding how higher consciousness is possible for man, and how it is produced. But throughout all my fourth way study it was a consistent idea that after a certain level of evolution by man, the ‘system’ is no longer of any value and cannot take the student any futher. This is often referred to as the beginning of the path. It is centered on how only through a man’s CONSCIOUS EFFORT is he able to generate higher consciousness, which presupposes that he already has higher consciousness which he doesn’t. This little paradox is so elegant in its representation of the reality it’s poetic.

There’s so much I am not saying which is crucial and given within the fourth way for example helping the student to pass the elephant through eye of the needle, but is far outside the scope of my response. Suffice it to say then, Liberation remains only an idea and in reality it is only by NOT following a pathway, ANY pathway, that one has the possibility of making their first step on the PATH of LIBERATION.

~The Jig of History

Oh Goddess have patience
see film, inglorious bastards
brad pitt slays nazis
witten killers

The Jig heads the highway
angelic on the beach
makes no mistake
is higher

Enjoy self in moderation
work the shadow
heal the path
forward

Don't forget posterity
USE a wicked wall
for the beyond
afterward

The Jig keeps the game afoot
from fades that recede
in ascending octaves
over time.

I know that I am worthless
call it the will to resist
affinity in conflict
or some such

Practical Magic?

1/2010 rjduberg