I just really need to tell you how I don’t have time to write this newsletter, but how, simultaneously, I really want to write this newsletter. We had such a good run there in 2023. It was a big launch I couldn’t have expected and the readership continued to grow through about September of last year, with a few speaking engagements supporting meaningful spikes. There was a whole season I felt like I could finally call myself a writer and mean it. I’ve mentioned before, I began this project to hold myself accountable to write. At first I planned to commit bi-weekly, but as I prepared to share Behold with the world, I recognized I wouldn’t actually write until it was time to write anyway so I’d do myself a disservice. If I say it’s a weekly publication, I’ll write every week; if I say it’s bi-weekly, I’ll only write every other week.
Well, here I am then, before dawn Sunday morning (a day late already), having false-started three times earlier in the week, and hoping I can send this off before you wake. It reminds me of the reader who observed in a recent email, among other encouraging and insightful reflections, that sometimes I seem “to be doing too much and overcomplicating things.” Let’s all agree to agree.
After sifting through an array of other potential topics, I finally asked myself: “How can I spiritually companion my readers this week?” Maybe you thought I already asked that question when I come to the page, but alas, no. It’s more like: “Hmm… what could possibly be said that hasn’t already been said better? Ah fuck it, here’s a list of other people’s writing I read this week.”
Today, however, despite massive resistance and all sorts of self-deprecating little i’s, I am putting forward three aphorisms from the Work I use all the time to stay awake, remember myself, and exercise love. I pray they are useful to you as well.
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Like what “It” doesn’t like.
The Work teaches that inner transformation is a process of growing our Essence (the seed of God we arrive on earth as) by way of consuming our Personality (the conditioned thoughts, feelings, and behaviors we learn after our arrival). The Personality is understood to be food for our Essence the same way an egg white is food for the yoke or the cotelydon is food for a seed embryo. “It” in this aphorism is our Personality, the collection of mechanical patterns. The idea is that every time we make a conscious effort to accept or surrender to something or someone we do not usually like, then Essence takes a sweet lil bite out of Personality and metabolizes it to grow. Normally, our Personality is the active force in us, controlling all our interactions and experiences in the world, while Essence is passive, underneath the rich layers of personality but still waiting to germinate.
For a student of the Way, our aim is to flip the operating system; we wish to make Personality passive and Essence active. Under this new arrangement, we engage ourselves, one another, and the world liberated from rehearsed and habituated ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, while still able to consciously don the personality as it’s useful.
The invitation is to find one circumstance you can consciously choose to like today, when you usually would not. As for me, I am taking my morning supplements and staying committed to this 90 day cleanse process even though I generally loathe swallowing a pile of pills and really want a block of cheese. I’m drawing my wooden sword for endless living room duels with my little boys when I’d rather read my book. I’m staying up for Andrew’s reflections on his day, when I’d rather disappear under the covers. Perhaps for you it’s traffic or a co-worker or wearing your least favorite pants; whatever comes up, you can lean on this aphorism like a mantra to remember that “It” is not the Truth of Who You Are and conscious surrender is always a holy act, even in the smallest ways.
You owe me nothing and I owe you everything.
The Work urges us not to keep accounts. Of what use is it to the Kingdom of Heaven to ensure I receive what I perceive is owed to me? At what point did Jesus, for example, ever suggest we ought to get ours from another person. And yet how often do I spaz around my house, frantically tidying while reciting to myself how much I think I do compared to my partner?
Can you imagine a world in which we all assumed we were owed nothing, but owed one another everything? How would we care for each other? How little would we need to think of our own needs because they were constantly being considered by our community? How liberating it might be to entrust ourselves to one another with such abandon; how liberating to assume nothing, expect nothing, and yet be willing to give everything. Among other revelations, this is certainly a revelation of the Cross. Consider again the Prodigal Son. And in case you need it, let us not gloss over the Reality that we must lose our life to gain it. What seems like death or humiliation or loss to the Personality, is resurrection for our Essence.
Practically applied, we can lean on this aphorism in all our exchanges with other human beings and God themself. We can call on it when we catch ourselves striking another tally mark against our friends; as with any Work aphorism, the remembrance of it is itself a return to Presence - deliverance from the mire of our inner considering.
If I truly understood, I would not disagree.
Continuing with the refining fire of our interpersonal relationships, the Work teaches us to enter one another’s experience. We’ve always been told to do unto others as we would have them do unto us and to love our neighbor as ourselves and put ourselves in another person’s shoes, but how often do we take our understanding to the point of agreement. If the current social-political climate is any indication, well. We are willing to endure another person’s disagreement, willing to agree to disagree, but are we willing to see through another person’s experience with enough attention and perseverance that we wholeheartedly realize how they could feel the way they do? Because if we are, we could not disagree.
For me, this doesn’t mean we actually convert our opinions to those of someone else upon seeing how they hold an opposing stance. But it does mean I cannot continue to sustain a negatively charged engagement with them, I cannot continue to think I know best, I cannot continue my efforts toward converting them to my way. And quite suddenly then, I am overcome with tenderness and compassion and the unshakable recognition of our shared humanity. Consider the kaleidoscope. Every turn produces a different vista, infinitely, and yet it’s one instrument, with a single set of gems. Perhaps if we understand that, we understand one another.
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For further reflection, I’m also sharing an inspiring interview about the Work. You may recall that I lead weekly wisdom circles for women magnetized to the Fourth Way, and this year we’re reading The Reality of Being by Madame de Salzmann - Gurdjieff’s closet student and the one charged with carrying on his lineage. This article interviews Madame’s grandson, Alexander de Salzmann and offers us rich little nuggets like:
Gladys: You said we need to always renew a real inner relationship with ourselves as a foundation, related to trying to keep the inner work’s current alive... Could you tell me about that renewal we must attend to in our work and in our search for Being?
Alexandre: It is simply not to fall asleep in the certainties that we believe we have understood—“once and for all!” Renewing is living the fact that truth cannot be captured and locked up in one of our mental boxes, but it must be rediscovered at every moment. It is accepting to stay on the razor’s edge in search of an unsteady balance.
MAY YOU SURF THE BLADE TODAY, LIKING WHAT YOU DON’T, GIVING ALL YOU GOT, AND TRULY UNDERSTANDING UNTO THE POINT OF UNCONDITIONAL LOVE FOR ALL BEINGS EVERYWHERE.
Amen.