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
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
I just had what I’ll describe as a core experience. Meaning that it didn’t result from words, from thinking. It wasn’t like working out a problem and arriving at an “understanding.” Yet that elusive “core experience” allowed me to arrive at an understanding. So how did a core experience that led to understanding happen for … Read more
Set aside life. Follow the breath into stillness— silence centering. The rest are thoughts. Come back to the breath Be
What is the Truth of My Life? This comes at the end of a prayer that I composed. The prayer became part of my practice before sitting down to work on my memoir, Real People. Now I say it before I sit down to write this blog each week. There is something that happens with … Read more
Are heaven and air connected? Where does our spiritual body go upon death? I’m beginning to wonder. This enquiry is stemming, once again, from my Lenten practice of doing the rosary. Years ago, I found myself gazing up into the sky while contemplating “longing desire for heaven.” This was my inner meditation while thinking about … Read more
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