This past weekend I went on a journey. This was a far greater and deeper journey than my recent European river cruise. It had to do with my emotions; with living and dying. I thought I was attending a retreat to support my daughter-in-law, Michelle, who has stage 4 cancer. It was being given by … Read more
“Eat, drink and be merry.” Or so the Roman God, Bacchus, supposedly advises. “For tomorrow you shall die.” I have always taken this sentiment to mean, live it up now baby, ‘cause heck, we’re all going to die in the end! The antithesis to a spiritual practice in life, right? Eating and Drinking on the … Read more
This is the second of a three part series on the Cambodian Buddhist monk, Bante, who taught “green” meditation at Sherborne on my course in 1973. “Green Meditation with Bhante” began showing up as part of the weekly schedule on the bulletin board at Sherborne. We could just squeeze one group of thirty into … Read more
While I’m drifting down the Rhine on a river cruise, I thought I’d leave a series of out-takes about the Buddhist monk, Bhante, from my memoir, Real People. He met Mr. Bennett and visited Sherborne for the first time in 1973, during my course. Bhante, a Cambodian Buddhist monk, arrived at Sherborne from India. … Read more
I experienced a moment of compassion this morning with a friend. It happened as we were practicing one of Gurdjieff’s movements called the Great Prayer. This movement never ceases to reveal something to me in the practicing of it. There’s a lot of kneeling in this movement. Neither one of us is young, and she … Read more
Negative emotions that I didn’t know I had surprised me recently. There are tent caterpillars ballooning in a few trees in my yard. My go-to remedy for this is to cut those branches down and burn them, caterpillars, and all. I struggle with this because “all life is one and everything that lives is Holy,” … Read more
This is how the Work works— it only works when you do. And what, exactly, does that mean? It means, I am the only one who can change in any given moment. Like the moment of being profoundly unhappy, or mad, or dissatisfied, especially those moments when these feelings are directed at someone else. When … Read more
What can I do when life gets in the way? It happened the other day. I was hacked and I didn’t know how badly. Had they breeched my computer? Could they get into my bank accounts? And then my phone wasn’t making or receiving calls. I’m so not good at emergencies like this. I don’t … Read more
Irmis B. Popoff (whom we called Mrs. Popoff and post Sherborne, Mrs. P) introduced Jack and me to Gurdjieff. There was very little known or written about Gurdjieff’s work in the early 1970s outside of P.D. Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous and Gurdjieff’s All and Everything, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson. Finding someone who … Read more
My first teacher in the work was Mrs. Popoff who had been P.D. Ouspensky’s “secretary.” This meant she was responsible for recording what was said at group meetings—from memory. When Gurdjieff came to New York, she was in the movements classes he gave. She attended his famous dinners, which meant getting home in the wee … Read more