What is Grace? Does it flow to me, and does it flow from me? I’m familiar with rare moments of grace touching me. Sometimes this happens unbidden, after some kind of inner work. Other times it comes as answer to a prayer, a heart-felt petition, or an un-named ache. But this morning, I wondered if … Read more
What do I bring to the edifice of the Work? I hadn’t thought of it like this when I committed to helping with Claymont’s upcoming Three-Month Course of Study. But this is the image Madam de Salzmann offers in The Reality of Being when she talks about group work. “I am responsible for the stone … Read more
The practice of blending is an important aspect of the Gurdjieff work. It has taken me a long time to appreciate its value. Initially, blending was an instruction that I understood conceptually, but not in practice. For instance, I understood the directive to blend emotional feeling into the sensation of an arm or leg. But … Read more
I Teach How to Cook, Not What to Cook, by Ben Bennett I am very grateful to Ben Bennett, for writing a thorough and balanced overview of his father’s long search for transformation. Beginning with J.G. Bennett’s extraordinary out of body experience during World War I, Ben tells a complete tale of his father’s spiritual … Read more
I keep bumping up against how I’d like to be and how I am. Recently, I wrote about my experience of “passing through” into a moment of connection, and about a dream showing me how my attitude creates my world. Alongside these wonderful insights of how I could be, I’m aware of how the smallest … Read more
I’m thinking about letting go for Lent. Yes, I’ll give up my usual things like coffee, sweets, alcohol, but I’m trying to taste something different. I received a clue from a dream the other night. I was in a familiar setting, alone in my Respiratory department at the hospital. It was a quiet day, peaceful. … Read more
They weren’t just passing through. One of the kids who had grown up at Claymont, an intentional Work community, had brought a couple of friends for the weekend. They’d traveled to tend young trees along Bullskin Run which traverses the front field of Claymont’s property. Around four hundred saplings were planted a few years ago … Read more
Feeling center. It’s taken me a long time to become aware of feelings. I mean that there is sensation in my chest area even when there’s no big emotion going on. Yeah, I know it’s not the same for everyone. But that’s how it was/is for me. My focus is usually inside my head or … Read more
How to work is the question. Last week we looked at why to work, but that didn’t really answer the question of how? And how does Work affect the world we live in today? For starters, my teacher J.G. Bennett looked at the world with a long view. In eons, or at the least, hundreds … Read more
Why work—what is it all for, anyway? What was Gurdjieff or for that matter, Bennett, on about? How does this body of ideas and practices relate to the world today? Someone asked me a question along these lines last week. Honestly, an answer did not come trippingly off my tongue. And I wondered about that … Read more