Suppose you've met a Work teacher through a Gurdjieff Foundation or by personal recommendation, and been invited to take part in a group. How will you decide whether this group, this teacher, is right for you?
First of all, as we discussed in the previous post, check this teacher's lineage, their line of descent. If you met them through a Foundation, this aspect should be fine. If through a personal introduction, ask him or her how they came to hear about the Work, who taught them, and how long they've been in the Work.
But above all, "listen" with your gut feelings.
We all need to develop our intuitions, as opposed to our imagination. Intuition will often tell you whether someone is genuine, or whether they're simply trying to impress you. If the potential teacher seems to be doing the latter, flee them like the plague.
Negative imagination can cause you to believe all sorts of false things, however. Basically, you need to ask yourself whether you feel a particular teacher can help you, whether he or she knows more than you about the Work (almost certainly, yes!); whether you're comfortable enough in their presence and with the Group to be able to share your observations.
But don't confuse a Work group with a therapy group, or a Work teacher with a counsellor. A Work teacher can't show students the Rogerian condition of "unconditional positive regard" all the time. Many of our I's are a hindrance to our Work, and the role of a teacher includes pointing out the harmful I's and habits which we don't need and which we can advantageously discard. He or she will need sometimes to draw attention to our "buffers", the defence mechanisms and reaction formations our False Personalities have constructed in order to interpret the world. A Work teacher must know when "shocks" are needed to help students progress, and how to give such a "shock" without harming them. A Work teacher has to be active and directive, whereas this is usually not the case with counselling.
Seeing ourselves as we are is a form of suffering, but it is cleansing and healing. It is vitally necessary. A Work teacher must be compassionate and understanding, so that we don't flinch from speaking the truth, but also strong and detached enough to be able to help the student to reach this realization for themselves.
Although, as we've seen, the Work isn't identical with counselling, I once watched a video of the great therapist Fritz Perls in a session with a difficult client. He struck me as behaving like a gentle manifestation of Gurdjieff. I don't know what contact, if any, Perls has had with the Work, but I think he must have had some familiarity. He uses terms such as "octaves" and confronts clients just as G would do. In this particular situation, he was quite brilliant. He kept just ahead of the client's evasions and obfuscations, refusing to buy into her half-truths and manipulation. He challenged her, confronted her, empathized yet remained objective, while all the time showing great compassion. At the end of the session, the client tells the camera that it was the best therapy session she'd ever had, and that she'd been able to see truths about herself that no other therapist had been able to show her.
A Work teacher operates something like this. The basis of his or her teaching must be love for the Work, and he or she must use "skilful means" to create the conditions for students to learn. Never must there be any trace of False Personality in the teacher; such a person would not usually be authorized to teach, and could pose a real danger to students. Still, some dangerous teachers do slip through the net: I have met them. Again, intuition and instinctive reactions, observed with clear sight, can help a beginner to see when this is happening.
I've met teachers who were deliberately trying to copy Gurdjieff's methods, without his compassion. They shouted, lost their temper, emotionally abused their students, because after all they were not Gurdjieff, and just imitating his outward behaviour was stupid and cruel. G knew how and when to shock, who could stand such treatment and who would be crushed by it; these imitators did not. Again, run from such a person. And the passive, "compassionate idiot" teachers, who shrink from pointing out any unpleasant truth, are also to be avoided. You won't learn anything from them.
And you can look - cautiously and respectfully - at what you know of the teacher's personal life. Is he or she married? Marriage is not a condition for being a Work teacher, of course, but if married, what is that relationship like? Is the teacher a Good Householder? Do they have a job, and if so, is it ethical and responsible? These conditions alone aren't sufficient to guarantee a teacher's worth, but the lack of them should disqualify him or her.
When I was first asked to teach a group, I felt very diffident. I didn't feel I had progressed far enough in the Work, or had enough knowledge, and I asked my own teacher's advice.
"Are you hesitating because you don't think you're worthy?" she asked.
I nodded.
"Then you'll be fine!" my teacher said. "You won't be teaching from pride or vanity, from False Personality. As long as you remember that diffidence, you'll be a good teacher."
As the Talmud puts it, "It may not be given to you to finish the task, but nor are you free to refrain from doing it." Not many are authorized to teach the Work, and any teacher worth their salt will feel how daunting, yet how necessary, is the task they are called to carry out.
A good Work teacher will always feel somewhat inadequate to their role. They will remember never to identify with the role of teacher, and to observe themselves and to remember themselves even as they attempt to teach others, so that their response to students remains conscious and aware. They know how full of traps for the unwary the path of teaching and studying the Work can be, yet they must find the courage to go ahead anyway, each remembering his or her own littleness.
If you meet a teacher who you feel fulfills these conditions, you can be reasonably sure you're in good hands. If you have Magnetic Centre (and I assume that you do, since you are reading this), and if you are sincere in your quest, sooner or later you will meet your teacher. The rest is up to you.
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