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
Self-observation is a phrase people in Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way use, meaning to observe how one really is. (Or isn’t, as the case may be.) I’d like to tell the story of a recent moment of self-observation. To set my story up, I need to go back to last summer, when the notion of “listening” arose … Read more
Gurdjieff uses the word “mentation” when referring to what he calls the intellectual or thinking center in man. When it comes to intellect, I’ve always had a bit of an inferiority complex. My sister was the brainy one, I had to struggle for my A’s in school. My relationship with the thinking center started early-on … Read more
Who is J.G. Bennett, G.I. Gurdjieff, and what is Claymont? These names have loomed large my entire adult life. For most people they have not. So here goes: G.I. Gurdjieff was a Greek-Armenian mystic who brought the “wisdom of the East” to the West. Basically, he spent his youth searching for the answers to questions. … Read more