Does Everything Happen for a Reason? Some Thoughts on the Law of Fate and the Law of Accident

Yes,everything happens for a reason, says cartoon character Maxine. Usually, she adds, it's because somebody screwed up!

I can relate to that because, if I'm honest, I can see that in many trying situations the person who screwed up was - me.

The idea that "everything happens for a reason" - call it EHFAR for short - has become so ingrained into contemporary thinking that people use it as an excuse for all kinds of avoidable mishaps.

"There are no coincidences" is a similar idea, with New Age overtones. Both, in my view, can be sloppy and even dangerous ways of looking at life for those of us trying to follow a spiritual path. Of course there are coincidences! It isn't always God's way of staying anonymous. Sometimes it is, often it isn't.

Synchronicity is different, and occurs only when we're in a higher state of consciousness, able to attract our Fate.

At the simplest level, EHFAR can merely be the response of an habitual optimist, always trying to look for the good in each situation. And that is fine. The more positive we can keep our attitudes in life, the better the outcome will be.

And it's certainly true that, as St Paul says, "all things work together for the good of those who love the Lord". But note, the second part of that sentence is just as important as the first. God can certainly bring good out of apparent evil, and make everything that happens to us work for our benefit, but only as long as we are following a spiritual path. Otherwise, we are simply living heedlessly, submerged by life, where accidents happen and entropy increases all the time.

The Work teaches that we are living either under the Law of Fate or the Law of Accident. If we're striving to become more conscious, then we will be brought increasingly under the Law of Fate. Conscious Humanity will ensure that our circumstances, the people around us, and the events that happen to us will be such as can increase our awareness, help our Work efforts.

Similarly, St Paul points out, God - sometimes interpreted in Twelve Step Programmes as an acronym for "Good Orderly Direction" - will help us to overcome our obstacles and bring good out of the mess we've made of our lives.  For this to occur, we have to invite Him to take over. God doesn't gatecrash our lives, but, like a true gentleman, waits to be asked.

But when we're living mindlessly, we expose ourselves to every accidental event that comes along. There's no guidance, no overall direction. We may like to calm ourselves by repeating the EHFAR mantra, and trying to justify our own mechanicalness, but in more conscious moments we know this is just not true. And seeing how we have behaved can be very painful indeed. It's part of the real suffering we must undergo for our own development, and to begin with we all try to avoid it. Hence the popularity of EHFAR.

In counselling, it's the client's ability to be truly honest that will enable them to be "cured" of seemingly intractable conditions. Honesty about their own codependence, their laziness, their willed helplessness. Their mechanicalness. And so it is for all of us, without exception.

The only "reason" for many things is the simple Law of Cause of Effect. And that alone won't help us to become more conscious.

While the Law of Accident tends downwards, deeper into matter and entropy, and away from consciousness, the Law of Fate will attract to us exactly what we need for our own development.

But the difference between the two can be very hard to see.

Take a road accident, for example, like the one I describe in my book "A Raging Thirst". Looked at from the outside, it seems merely the result of mechanical behaviour, a random event. But looked at from the viewpoint of the Work, it is clear that it truly did belong to my Fate.

How do I know this? And how can we see the marks of Fate in our lives, in general?

First, there will be obvious benefits to the situation, even one as dark as an accident that leaves someone disabled and in pain. The outcome gave me much more material to work on, and enabled me to turn back to the Work with all my being; without this spur, perhaps I would simply have drifted away from the Work, or at least abandoned it for so long that it grew cold in me, and I lost the ability to make real efforts.  And my present condition helps me to help others, in a very special way, by example. What'smore, I rediscovered my Christian faith, which has been a tremendous support in my personal Work and in my relationships, and I believe that in no other way could this have happened. God had to grab me by the scruff of my neck. Then I paid attention.

Second, the event could be clearly seen in my astrological chart. Everything pertaining to our Fate will be in our birthchart, from the map of our Essence to the sequence of Fated events that will be presented to us in our lives. For a long time, I couldn't see how my car accident manifested in my chart, but when the planet Chiron was discovered and its orbit mapped, it was immediately obvious. Chiron had formed an exact opposition to my native Sun and Mars on the day of my accident. At the same time, Mars and Venus had recently conjoined in my seventh house, foreshadowing the "spiritual marriage", the ultimate blessing,  that would be made possible if I truly worked on myself and avoided sinking into self-pity and denial.

Third, there will be hints and types of the Fated event in our earlier lives, although we may not understand them at the time. A spiritual guide such as a Work teacher is very helpful - indeed, absolutely vital - in encouraging our discernment of what is Fate and what is Accident. In my case, as a very young child I was always, inexplicably, frightened of the sight of people on crutches or with walking sticks, and even of women with bandages or plasters on their legs. I would cry and run from them, and sometimes have nightmares about them. Nobody understood why this happened, but with hindsight it's clear to me that my Essence recognized the Fate which was waiting for me, yet because it was still undeveloped it was unable to cope with this knowledge and tried to flee from it.

Even with these glimpses, the difference between Fate and Accident is usually very, very hard to see. Was that relationship with an addict, that caused us so much despair and wretchedness, our Fate? Was the very disease of addiction, if we are among those who, like me, suffer from it, our Fate? In the latter case, I would yes, definitely, because it must be at least partly manifested in our genetic inheritance, which is included in our Essence.

But what about the plane we missed because we were rushing around looking for our toiletries? The job we failed to get because the interviewer happened to favour a relative for the post? The ornery neighbour we find ourselves living next to, who complains every time we play music, even quietly? All these events and circumstances could be seen as either Fate or Accident. We must be very careful in trying to decide which is which. The difference is tremendous.

Still, we can trust that, even though we don't know exactly what our Fate may be, when we are truly working on ourselves, or working a Step, or obeying the spiritual demands of
our religion or our conscience, then our Higher Power will orchestrate our lives  so that we can use every person, every situation, for good.

This is the true alchemy, the gold which can be refined only from the base metal of our lives.

Myths of the Fall - the Garden of Eden and Kundabuffer

A Christian pastor trying to explain the notion of "original sin" to a rabbi summarized it thus: "It means that I'm an imperfect being living in an imperfect world." The rabbi, coming from a tradition that did not contain the idea of "original sin", could then understand exactly what it conveyed to his Christian colleague.

And as far it goes, this explanation is obviously true.

Many religions have attempted to explain the flaws in Man and in Creation. If there is a God, and if He is perfect, how can He have created such a clearly imperfect world? As Westerners, most of us were raised with the Bible as our background. The Garden of Eden is our primary myth of the Fall of Man. Most Christians and Jews interpret it as reflecting humankind's disobedience and the resulting expulsion from the original Paradise we were created to inhabit and tend. We lost that blissful state because we refused to accept God's condition for living in it - that we refrain from eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Having disobeyed, we were then embarked willy-nilly on the journey of self-development.  Now we have to learn to make right choices, to work on ourselves until our centres become balanced and our orientation is towards the spiritual rather than the physical world. In the process we suffer pain and hardship, but there is no other way, no short cut back to Paradise.

 Having been raised among sleeping people, we are sleepwalkers in our own lives unless we have a method of awakening. Our psychology is profoundly unbalanced; we are at the mercy of negative emotions of all kinds, and of the huge illusion that we can "do", which results in so many social and psychological problems.

And our very DNA reflects the fallen nature of mankind. Flaws such as a tendency to alcoholism and other addictions now form part of our nature, even though this was never intended by the Creator. Various inherited conditions, including disabilities and fatal illnesses, are today part of the human gene pool, and although they can provide excellent material for working on ourselves, they are also a source of real suffering. The Bible points out that the disobedience of Adam and Eve infected the physical world, causing thistles and thorns to grow and life on Earth to bring pain and travail to everyone.

In Christian teaching, I think that, as a friend recently pointed out, these flaws in our DNA as well as those in our psychological world form what's traditionally termed "original sin". Each human child inherits the results of that first fall from grace. Baptism can give us the possibility of overcoming it, and takes away the original "stain" of that sin - our inherited tendency to concupiscence - by transmitting the grace of Christ to the child or adult entering the Christian life. But we all have to bear the consequences of that original fall, and to battle against the tendency to sleep and apathy which constantly threatens to overcome us.

In Gurdjieff's own mythology, the history of Kundabuffer, while not exactly the same as the Biblical account, does parallel the story of the Fall. The organ Kundabuffer is said to have been implanted in Man by higher beings, after a cosmic "mistake" was made, in order to prevent mankind's premature spiritual development. In this story, it was necessary for human beings to transmit a certain type of energy for a while, and Kundabuffer was placed in us so that we would see things the wrong way round, and not develop too fast. When the necessity for it was over, Kundabuffer was removed, but its consequences have unfortunately remained in our psychology and are responsible for our fallen, sleeping state.

Students of Gurdjieff have made strenuous efforts to analyze the exact nature and placement of Kundabuffer, but none of these attempts are wholly convincing. Gurdjieff was adamant that his mythology should not be too easily comprehended, because simply analysing facts with the intellectual centre would bypass the essential emotional work that is truly beneficial for our understanding. When a student read aloud to him some of "All and Everything", G thought he had made it too easy to understand, and said he had to "Bury the dog deeper"!

Of course, the student questioned G - did he mean "bury the bone"?

No, Gurdjieff insisted - he really meant "bury the dog"!

And subsequently all kinds of speculation have arisen about what "the dog" meant - was G alluding to Sirius, the so-called "dog star" around which our own solar system revolves? Certainly, he may have been. It's an intriguing possibility, but to become too bogged down in any detail of G's writings can mean missing the overall effect he wished to produce, that of awakening our deeper thoughts and feelings, which alone can help us become conscious.

For me, as for my own teacher and for Mrs Pogson, the overall message of both the Kundabuffer myth and the story of the Garden of Eden are very close. Both say that we come into this world in an already imperfect state, with flaws in our Essence, in the psychology of those who surround us, and in the nature of the physical world in which we must live.

Our struggle is against sleep, the sleep so easily produced by all these obstacles, and consequently against everything in us that tends to send us to sleep. 

Mrs Pogson taught that the Fall of Mankind is repeated every day as our personal fall into a lower state of being. When we wake each morning, we are in Essence. As soon as we begin to think in categories of "I", "me", "mine", then we fall into limitation. 

Kundabuffer caused mankind to take unreality for reality, to see everything upside down. The Work exists so that gradually, through intense effort and suffering, and with the help of Conscious Humanity, we will eventually be able to see reality - and to become real ourselves.

Some Q's and A's on diet

After my previous post, a number of friends and family members expressed surprise and concern that I'd "gone over" to eating meat! Among the questions they asked were, was I now Paleo? Atkins? Did I think vegetarian diets were a mistake? And so on. So here's a selection of some of the questions, and my answers.

Q: Do you now eat meat every day? Have you become an "Atkins" diet convert?

A: No to both. My husband has similar genes to mine, and we find that eating red meat once or twice a week, plus one or two poultry meals, keeps us feeling healthier. The rest of the time we eat meals based on fish, or vegetarian courses that include dairy foods. My body does seem to need some first-class, animal protein every day, but a lot of the time that's just a tin of tuna or salmon for lunch!

Q: Couldn't you have got all your needs met from a vegan diet with supplements?

A: No again, in my own case. Yes, in theory, for able-bodied people with lower protein requirements. But to obtain all your needs from vegan food, even with supplements, you have to eat a minimum of 1500 calories per day. That's an achievable goal for most people, and if your body responds well to grains, soy and legumes this can be a healthy way of eating. But for me, relatively immobile and in a wheelchair for much of the time, if I eat that many calories I put on weight. This is what happened to me over several years, and culminated in my becoming overweight and developing Type 2 diabetes and hypothyroidism. When I reduced my calories to 1350 a day, I lost the weight, but I could no longer meet my needs for protein. The result was a constant, debilitating tiredness which meant that on most afternoons I needed to sleep, and the rest of the time barely managed to drag myself around, even in my wheelchair. I felt as if I were dying, and in fact my body was desperately trying to tell me that that was what I risked if it didn't receive the right food.

Q: Why do you need so much protein? Most vegans and vegetarians are fine.

A: I blame my genes. Really. When I changed to including meat in my diet, I had a full genetic analysis of my dietary needs, and they confirmed exactly what my poor moving/instinctive centre had been trying to tell me all those years. I need much more protein than most people, and at the same time my body can't digest grains and legumes very well. Soy is out when you're hypothyroid, so the answer is, at least for me, to have animal proteins.  My body handles dairy foods very well, so that's now part of my diet. It's wonderful to be able to eat Brie again!

The analysts also recommended that I limit the amount of grains I eat to 3 servings per day (I usually manage 2-4). Otherwise, I should avoid wheat, because I carry genes for celiac and Crohn's diseases, and celiac can strike at any moment without warning. I don't at present need a gluten-free diet, thank goodness, so I eat spelt, rye and oats instead of wheat.

In addition, I also have the so-called "thrifty genes", which means I easily store fat and find it very hard to lose. With that and my diabetes, I have to limit my calories every day. These genes would have helped my ancestors to survive hard, northern European and Russian winters, but are a real nuisance in our food-rich world today.

Q: What kind of meat and fish do you include now?

A: Mostly the "kosher" variety. Whether it's my Jewish ancestry or my body's aversion to certain kinds of foods (and perhaps the former causes the latter), I find pork products very hard to digest and I avoid them. I'm allergic to shellfish, so oysters, shrimp and crab are also out. That leaves lamb and beef, all kinds of poultry, most kinds of fish, and lots and lots of fruit and vegetables. In my house we easily manage 8-10 portions of fruit and veg a day, and my body loves this. What we eat now is a plant-based, Mediterranean diet. The plan we follow these days is low-glycemic and medium carb, but higher than normal in protein.


Q: What do you think of vegetarian and vegan diets?

A: I was so happy to be vegetarian and then vegan for many years, and felt really virtuous. I wasn't hurting any animals, I was helping the environment, and my abstention from meat and fish made me healthier, or so I believed.

There's an interesting and controversial book which address all these concerns - "The Vegetarian Myth" by Lierre Keith. I found her conclusions surprising but logical. She shows that eating an omnivorous diet, if we're careful about insisting on the highest standards of animal welfare, can actually contribute to the wellbeing of the planet.

It's true that many people live happily and healthily for years on vegetarian, even vegan, diets. They obviously don't have the same genetic makeup as myself and my husband. For lots of people, less protein is actually better for them, and they thrive on a carefully planned, meat-dairy-and-fish-excluding diet. I'm not one of them.

Q: How can most people know which type of diet suits them?

A: Notice your body's demands. Don't let your intellectual and emotional centres, exclusively, choose your food for you, as I did. Don't let sentimentality interfere in your food choices: that's the wrong work of the emotional centre. Particularly note how well your body heals after cuts and bruises, how your immune system is functioning, whether you're getting tired more frequently, whether you have any unexplained symptoms that could relate to a food deficiency.

And then, if you're not sure, get genetically tested. It's not cheap, but the health benefits are inestimable.

And, although human beings are omnivores and can adapt to a wide variety of diets, there's something immeasurable but real in the way our bodies respond to different food. It's a wholistic response. It may well be that some people - like me - could include every nutritional supplement known to man, and base our food on a vegan diet, and still not thrive. There could be something about the overall effect of including animal foods that, for people like us, provide a clear benefit, even though the individual components of the supplements might theoretically be able to do the same thing.

Final note: When I was a vegan, I was pleased that I had removed myself from the animal-eating food chain. I was no longer part of the dietary regime that had grown out of the hunter-gatherer needs of our common ancestors. But I was too proud; I suffered from hubris. My body protested in its own way, and showed me that, like other people of my genetic type, I had to follow the laws of eating animal foods. I didn't like that thought at all, but in accepting it and eating accordingly I've become more humble and more grateful for my food.

Gurdjieff said that we all contain a wolf and a sheep within us, and we have to learn how to make them live peacefully side by side. He wasn't talking specifically about diet, but I think the same picture can illustrate our dietary requirements. Those of us who need meat must accept that fact, and be grateful that we can obtain it. Some believe that meat exasperates aggression. I don't, but even if that were true, it would just mean that we need to be more observant and notice when aggressive I's are lurking.

Science helps here, although sometimes it's faulty and is later disproved. For example, the Blood Group diet mandates that everyone with blood group A (as I have) can live happily on a vegetarian regime. I used that theory to back up my vegan dietary choices, but it just wasn't true for me. the theory was disproved through observation. The science was incomplete. We are all individuals, and only careful observation and - if necessary - scientific testing to confirm our hypotheses, can show us the best way to thrive. Our instinctive/moving centres are telling us what we need at every moment, if only we would listen.

What of the belief that eating veggie food is more "spiritual"? After all, Buddhist and Carmelite monks and nuns stick to vegetarian food. But needless to say, I don't believe it affects one's spiritual growth, except that if we're not in good health it's harder to be observant and attentive. If a teacher of the stature of Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan can encourage some mureeds to eat meat, who am I to disagree? Again, it's a matter of individual type and bodily needs. Only sincere, unclouded observation will help us know what our best diet is.

And it's been pointed out that some of the side-effects of lack of Vitamin B12 - a common problem with vegan diets, even when supplemented - include a feeling of spaciness, light-headedness, and problems in concentrating. Misinterpreted, it could mean that some obligate carnivores eating vegan are misguidedly thinking they're becoming more spiritual when actually they're on the path to pernicious anemia! This happened to me, and it's serious. Observe, observe, experiment and observe some more. And then, if you still want confirmation, get genetically tested.

Eating mindfully, eating consciously

I want to share some thoughts about diet and eating. Of course, those of us in the Work have often had the task of "eating consciously", and for many this is now the way that all food is consumed, at least, as far as we're able to maintain our more conscious state during a meal, that is. And that state, of course, increases with practice.

But recently there have been a number of books on "mindful eating". Is this the same as "conscious eating"? If not, how does it differ?

I think there's a real difference, and that the two practices are based on different understandings of what it means to eat with greater awareness.

For the mindfulness practitioners, the process of being more "mindful", more aware, is something that begins with a form of meditation and can gradually be extended to cover more areas of daily life. So far, this sounds a lot like the Work, and there's no contradiction between the two.  But the difference, in practice, seems to be one of depth. In the Work, we want to become more than just "mindful"; we want to deepen and extend our consciousness so that our whole life becomes a way of reaching a higher level of Being.

Mindfulness itself is a good thing. It's like the beginning stages of self-observation, and if it helps people to become more awake and less mechanical, that can only be helpful to the individual and to the collective.

But in the Work, we wish to go further.

Of all the books I've read on mindful eating, many seem to describe a process of tuning in to our intellectual, emotional and sensual reactions to food, and the vast majority then go on to recommend a mostly vegetarian or vegan diet. This, supposedly, is the result of considering what and how we eat.

I found in my own experience that this approach worked for me for a while.

Let me digress a little and share my diet journey with you. I began eating macrobiotically during the 1970s, studied with Michio Kushi and had cookery lessons with his wife, Aveline. They recommended a vegetarian - in effect, a vegan - diet, supplemented with a little fish.

On the other hand, when I was initiated into the Sufis, during the same period, my teacher, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, specifically told me not to promise to become a vegetarian. All the other mureeds undertook this pledge at their ceremony, but Pir Vilayat told me that I would need to eat meat at times, even though I wouldn't like it.

As a determined macrobiotic eater, however, I chose to ignore this piece of advice. My reasoning was as follows: lambs and calves and chickens are very sweet and lovable creatures; I enjoyed watching them and cuddling them when I had the chance; therefore, since I liked them so much, I had no business eating them.

I calculated my needs for protein, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients so that I could be pretty sure I was getting the right diet for my individual body, and occasionally included fish so that I would have the fish oils that I didn't think my body could make.

I ignored the fact that over the years I was getting less healthy, not more so, and that IBS had become a constant, unpleasant state. I was always tired, but put that down to my diabetes and hypothyroid (which in itself might have been precipitated by the large amounts of soyfoods I was putting away on my supposedly healthy macrobiotic diet).

But one day my husband had to have a blood test, and it turned out he was anemic. The doctors said it would be advisable for him to eat red meat, as he would assimilate the iron better than from plants or from a supplement, so I dutifully cooked him shepherds pie, spag bol, roast chicken and chili until his test results improved.

I usually cooked separate meals for us both so that I didn't have to eat meat myself. I didn't enjoy cooking his dishes, but did so with love and awareness that the health of a human being, especially one so dear to me, was more important by far than the life or death of an animal, however cute the latter might be.

After a particularly tiring day, however, I lacked the energy to cook two different main courses, so I took the plunge and shared his shepherd's pie. And it was a revelation! Within half an hour, I felt a distinct sensation of warmth and relaxation, a sort of "groundedness", permeating my body. An hour later, and my IBS stopped. My tiredness lifted, and I felt a strong sense of wellbeing, so much so that I slept better that night than I had done for years.

Clearly, my instinctive/moving centre was trying to tell me something, the same message that Pir Vilayat had given me all those years ago: I was an omnivore, and I needed meat.

Checking my DNA, which I'd had tested at 23andme, I saw that most of my ancestors came from very cold countries in northern Europe and Russia, where vegetarianism would have meant starvation. I was programmed to eat animal protein, whether I liked that fact or not.

And then I realized that I'd been using the wrong centres with which to select and enjoy my food. I'd left out the most important one of all - that of my own body, which had been trying to tell me it needed different food, but which I'd overridden by insisting on my attachment to vegetarian and vegan food and the accompanying feelings of virtue and "purity" it brought.

I'd been using my emotional centre when I should have been aware of my instinctive/moving centre. Instead of taking notice of the latter, I'd also brought in the intellectual to calculate my nutritional needs - not in itself a problem, but insufficient to guarantee that I was really getting what I needed.

And this, I think, is what much "mindful eating" advice does: focuses on the emotional and intellectual centres to the detriment of the body's own needs. Of course, there are exceptions, and for many people, especially those whose ancestors come from warmer countries, vegetarian/vegan regimes may be beneficial. But for a northern European like me, they couldn't fill the bill.

So now, for me, eating consciously means being aware of my physical needs as well as my emotional reactions to food, and my intellectual awareness of various nutrients. If I listen to my body, all is well. If I don't, I will slide back into that constantly tired, depleted state. It's no use my being sentimentally aware of the adorableness of baby lambs - I'm a three-brained being, and my needs must take priority.

I'm sorry if I've shocked anyone. I know people become very attached to their own dietary regimes, because I was myself until my road-to-Damascus moment.

But Gurdjieff tells us that we must strive to have in our presence everything "really necessary" for our planetary existence, and for many of us, that includes meat. He was certainly no vegetarian, far less a vegan. He deplored faddiness and sentimentality over food. He did hint that in the right circumstances a vegetarian diet could be beneficial, but he clearly didn't consider that those conditions existed for most people, and certainly not for himself or his students.

We must feed all of our centres when we take in this first being food, and we must be aware through experience and constant awareness just what it is that we need.

Now, my emotional centre no longer interferes with its annoyingly sentimental I's, but instead I'm full of gratitude that I can eat exactly what I need. Grateful that I can afford to buy it, that I'm fit enough to cook it, and that I can share it with those I love. Grateful to everyone whose efforts have brought it to my table - the farmers, the butchers, the shopworkers - and for the fact that I can also afford to insist on free range, healthy meat.

Animal welfare is extremely important, whether we're vegetarian or omnivore. And so I also extend gratitude to the animals whose lives have been taken so that I can enjoy better health and wellbeing. In our house, we always say grace before meals, and this, for me, is the epitome of eating consciously.

And one final thought - I believe that no one diet fits everyone, all the time. So, if you discover the way of eating that best suits you, be aware too that your needs may change, and that by remaining vigilant to your body's reactions you can stay as healthy as possible.