I’ve just received good news and am suddenly wondering what to do with it. My daughter-in-law, Michelle, had a cancerous growth removed from her liver with clean margins. News to be thrilled about after two long years of heart-breaking worry. But what do I do with this good news? I’m used to working with feelings … Read more
Digging deeper in myself has brought a new dimension to digging in my garden. Several years ago, I began recognizing the fact that no matter how much attention I paid to body mechanics, I invariably threw my back out from digging. Eventually, I turned my vegetable beds into wild-flower gardens to avoid injuring myself. This … Read more
A struggle with my own patterns and those of Gurdjieff’s Dances epitomized my work during the recent ten-day International Movements Retreat at Claymont. My aim entering the retreat was to allow my body to learn the movements and to minimize thinking. However, there came a point, several days in, when I realized my head needed … Read more
The following journal entries are part of my memoir, Real People, about the inner journey of discovery I went on during J.G. Bennett’s Second Basic Course at Sherborne House when I was in my early 20s. Journal Entry December 2, 1972— Something in me is percolating. Like air bubbling up through the muck of a … Read more
It all started with The Master Game, by Robert de Ropp, who threw out the first crumbs about the Work that kids in the 1960s picked up on. De Ropp was associated with Timothy Leary and other UC Berkeley professors who were beginning to experiment with mind-altering psychedelic drugs. The scene in my book, Real … Read more
How can we tell if we are following the path that we’re meant to be on? I’ve come to believe it’s a matter of listening within. When we follow a practice, there’s a stage where we begin to recognize a state of balance in ourselves. The first taste of this for me came after returning … Read more
I always thought language was about words. On a recent seminar in West Virginia, hosted by the Society for Continuous Education at Claymont Court, I learned otherwise. Elan Sicroff, a trained classical pianist, has a long and deep experience with Gurdjieff’s Movements and Thomas de Hartman’s music. Through his search for inner meaning, he brings … Read more
What has Being Ready come to mean for me? Well, it started with the Gurdjieff Movements but hasn’t ended there. In the beginning, there was the injunction in movements class not to fidget. To resist the urge to straighten clothing or scratch one’s nose between dances. The idea was to use that time to relax … Read more
Holding Space, a month-long course I am just now completing, suddenly became real for me the other night. An unexpected text from my cousin conveyed that his sister had lost her battle with cancer and was facing imminent death. I’d felt close to my cousins but rarely saw them as they lived on the west … Read more
