If, as we are told, life on Earth is a pain factory, a "vale of tears", how can any of us hope to avoid suffering?
We can't. Suffering is built into human life, and nobody escapes their share of it. We've all lost people we love because of death; we've seen friends or family members suffer injuries, illnesses and losses; we've undergone many different types of loss ourselves. Such trials and burdens are normal. It's impossible to imagine a perfect life, marked by no sorrow, in this world - when novels or films try to depict such a life, as in "The Brady Bunch", we know it's completely fake. How could it not be?
What defines us is not the nature of our losses, but how we cope with them.
Do we react with resentment, anger, blame, or self-pity?
Or do we resign ourselves patiently, without complaint, and simply accept suffering as part of our lot?
The Good Householder knows that nobody can be free of suffering, but if he or she has a strong religious faith, that faith can give guidelines as to how to handle it when it comes.
And yet, even those of us with faith will necessarily grieve at the loss of a loved one. It's a natural part of life, yes, and we may know or hope that the person we've lost has gone on to a different kind of life in the world of Spirit, but the pain we feel is still real, still acute.
If we try to deny it, if we attempt to leap from grief to acceptance in one enormous jump, we're trying to bypass our suffering. Such a spiritual bypass can never succeed. We might, for a while, manage to put on a happy face and stuff our feelings back down into our unconscious mind, but inevitably they will fester and grow, only to surface, perhaps much later, in destructive ways.
Therapists know that grieving has five aspects, which often alternate, coming and going in no particular order for perhaps a year or more. If the acute form of grieving lasts longer than two years, then some sort of help is probably indicated; but there is no real relief for the normal course of grieving. Anger, sadness, denial, bargaining and acceptance - all take their turn in the round of stormy emotions that sweep through us on the death of someone we cherish.
Eventually, we hope to reach acceptance, which is not an approval of what has happened, but a bittersweet feeling that means we acknowledge our pain, are thankful for the life of the person we lost, and for what he or she meant to us, yet know that it's time to leave the deepest pain behind as we continue with our lives.
The Jewish tradition of mourning is one of the best I know: members of the family of a newly-deceased person spend a week in deepest mourning, sitting in their homes with darkened windows, visited by friends and other more distant family members who offer them comforting words, prayers, and concrete help in the form of food and drink. Nobody who has just lost someone dear to them should have to cope with the daily necessities of life, in that tradition. That's where the whole community comes in, faith with its sleeves rolled up, ready to work.
After the first seven days, a somewhat less acute form of mourning is sanctioned for thirty days. Grieving people may return to work and to their normal duties, but are not expected to take part in celebrations or festivals, and are excused from participating in many communal activities as they gradually begin to recover from their loss.
Personal mourning continues, of course, even after the thirty days, but at the end of a year the gravestone is set and the family bids a public, final farewell to the person they've lost.
In Catholic countries, public mourning, share sorrow, and the eventual, joyful funeral "wake" helps the bereaved to cope with their loss.
With clear boundaries like this, which everyone knows and respects, grieving is much more manageable. But so many of us in the West have lost our common traditions, and don't know how to handle grief, either in our own case or in relation to others. It's not uncommon for people to actually avoid speaking to a newly-bereaved spouse or child, to even cross the road in order not to have to say hello to them, simply because we no longer have any sense of what to say. And this, of course, isolates the bereaved and causes them even more grief.
People today often fear death because they feel no assurance or hope about what comes after. With no uniting religious traditions, a huge loss like this is almost impossible to cope with. When, in the sixties, society began to jettison all religious paths, all moral constraints, and adopt a hedonistic approach to life, a sense of connection, of community, was lost.
Today, many react to the reality of death like a child afraid of the dark. We deny it in a thousand ways, through plastic surgery and artificially youthful looks, so that we can pretend to ourselves that we are still "only" 40, not 60 or 70; through a myriad vitamin supplements and odd diets to stave off the ageing process, none of which work; through constant mental distraction with entertainment, trivia, intoxicants.
Queen Elizabeth I was so terrified of ageing that, even though she claimed a strong Christian faith, she banned all mirrors from her palaces and wore a thick mask of makeup to try to hide the ravages of time. It sometimes seems as though many today would like to do the same.
Other losses - financial, emotional, physical - affect us less acutely but are nonetheless part of our lives.
A Good Householder lives without the expectation of a smooth ride, an easy journey. Whatever comes, she handles with equanimity and acceptance. If a job is lost, then the family may have to move home, but instead of bewailing their problems, Good Householders simply make the necessary arrangements and set up a new home hundreds of miles away, where work is to be found. This has actually happened to several members of my family and to me and my husband. In no instance did those affected want to leave their home neighbourhoods, but all saw the need, and simply did what had to be done in order to support themselves and their dependents.
There is no particular merit in acting thus, and it used to be the norm. Much mockery was made of the British "stiff upper lip", which was lampooned in films and books, but today the British war slogan - Keep Calm And Carry On - confronts us everywhere in the form of bags, t-shirts and posters. Clearly, while it could be overdone and lead to unhealthy repression, it also embodies a stoicism that people recognize as missing from an often hysterical society.
In the AA Big Book, mention is made of the universal need for acceptance of life on life's terms. Life often gives us unwelcome shocks, but if we know that this is quite normal we will live our lives with a calm acceptance of whatever may come. We may not like it, but what seems like a bitter blow can reveal unexpected gains if we handle it aright.
In the case of my own house move, to a different area where I knew nobody and felt ill at ease, I discovered two new Work students, and to this day am extremely grateful to my Higher Power, whom I choose to call God, for bringing them into my life. My husband, for his part, found good work that enabled him to help many suffering alcoholics, addicts and codependent clients. We both feel that the move was in the end a very good thing.
A Good Householder is not an unemotional, unfeeling robot. She does feel, often deeply, but she knows that sometimes feelings are best left unexpressed, and are certainly not always the right guide to action. She believes, along with Hegel, that "freedom is the recognition of necessity", and that we can't expect any real happiness or satisfaction from life. She does her duty, accepts her responsibilities, without seeking any reward. She knows that life itself is full of difficulties, but she also knows that life is not an end in itself. There is something higher, and that is where she places her trust.
This is the path of dharma, and right thinking people have followed it for thousands of years. Eventually they will reach enlightenment; they are assured of the loving care of God, however they conceive that God, because they live according to their real conscience.
Twelve Step programmes, if diligently followed, help the still suffering alcoholic or addict to reach the stage of the Good Householder.
And that is already at a much higher level than many of us.
Friday, 26 June 2015
Wednesday, 24 June 2015
Four Types of Suffering: (1) Unnecessary suffering
Suffering is an inevitable part of being human. Gurdjieff called our Earth a pain factory, and said that while much suffering was unavoidable, there was also a great deal that was unnecessary and caused by our own defective psychology.
We are all born into families where parents suffer from negative emotions. We were not designed to be unhappy, but due to a flaw in Creation - described slightly differently by the Bible and by the Work, but essentially leading to the same situation - we have all imbibed negative emotions with our mothers' milk.
Our parents were negative because their parents were negative, and so on, back to the earliest human beings on Earth.
Why? Because we have disobeyed God, says the Bible, and inherited the fallen nature of Adam and Eve. The Work says we have all suffered from the consequences of "Kundabuffer", a mysterious organ which caused us to see everything the wrong way round.
Whatever the origin, the fact of suffering is undeniable.
There is a story of an old lady who begged the Buddha to relieve her suffering. Her child had died and she could find no relief from her distress. The Buddha told her to enquire at every house in the village until she found a family which had experienced no suffering; then she was to return to him.
The woman obeyed, but of course she found no such family, because every single household experienced sadness, sickness, poverty or another source of suffering; sometimes all three.
But her search taught her to live with her suffering, because she now realized it was part of the human condition.
We have been raised, most of us, by sleeping people. We are fortunate indeed if our parents were Good Householders. Today, the zeitgeist leaves most people in limbo; their religious faith is being rubbished in the media and in society at large; we are surrounded by a sea of technology, most of which drowns us in trivia; we struggle to make ends meet in a fiercely materialistic and selfish culture; and our world is threatened with catastrophe from climate change, pollution, and wars.
A family headed by Good Householders teaches children to lead their lives without undue fear or anxiety, but with circumspection. Until about sixty years ago, most societies had an accepted religion, and whatever abuses may have been committed in its name, the overall effect was good. People knew there were natural laws and written commandments about our behaviour, and their consciences were less buried, less confused than is becoming the case for many today.
Most people believed in God. This belief helped them cope with the daily sufferings and stresses life placed upon them, and consequently they were able to teach their children to bear such suffering with equanimity, yielding neither to despair nor to false optimism.
But now, with Christianity and Judaism being persecuted in many areas of the world, and with the whole idea of religion being quietly abandoned in favour of materialism, even the level of Good Householder is now very hard to reach.
And even when parents are Good Householders, they may still be at the mercy of many irrational fears and anxieties, or subject to genetic flaws which create addictions and mental illnesses. The flaw in Creation, "original sin", gives rise to imperfections at every level.
Imagine, then, the state of children raised in families which are not Good Householders. In many segments of society, this is the norm. People have no ideals to pass on to their children, no common behavioural standards which all are expected to observe. Children are at the mercy of their parents' every passing whim, every fit of temper, every manifestation of addiction - alcoholism, codependence, and many, many more.
Or, as Philip Larkin said,
They f*** you up, your Mum and Dad,
They may not mean to, but they do;
They give you every fault they had,
Then add some new ones, just for you.
Indeed. And so many now reach adulthood in a state of emotional chaos, having been given a neglectful, muddled upbringing with no worthwhile goals to aim for except the survival of the fittest.
It is this type of suffering, our neuroses, defence mechanisms, phobias, aversions, addictions and codependence, that Gurdjieff tells us is unnecessary. And thank God that it is.
This is where counselling and therapy can be of enormous help. A wise, insightful, accepting counselor helps clients to understand the internal sources of their suffering, and by seeing them, to be increasingly more free of them.
Counseling is not the Work, of course, as I explained in an earlier post. But it can help people to reach the level of living as Good Householders.
AA and other Twelve-Step programmes are also vital resources for those beset by addictions. They have saved countless lives and helped millions of people to free themselves from addiction and become Good Householders.
The suffering which comes from internal disorder is entirely unnecessary. We can, and must, sacrifice it if we are to make any progress towards living responsibly, let alone to be able to work on ourselves.
If things are not quite as bad as that, if we can manage to see our troublesome negative emotions and identify the I's associated with them, we can begin to make changes. Whether or not we've had counseling, an intuitive Work teacher can help the student see these I's, and offer tasks which can help overcome them. Gradually, the negative emotional I's die away; they still live on, in the basement, but gradually they become less and less influential, like vicious dogs whose barking can still be faintly heard but who can no longer bite us.
The Work tells us that we have a right not to be negative. Not, you note, that we have no right to be negative. We have every right, if we wish, to carry on objecting, complaining, being abused, being self-righteous or angry. The whole gamut of negative emotions is paraded every day on television, in the form of soap operas; clearly, many people still enjoy seeing them and can identify with them.
But we, having begun to work on ourselves, can see how useless such emotions are, how they leak away our precious energy and cause us no end of trouble from their interference in our lives. We don't judge ourselves, nor do we criticize ourselves, for being as we are. We can't help it; we didn't cause it, and we are not to blame for the state we are in when we begin this work.
Once embarked on it, however, we see more and more how such suffering must be given up completely. We can allow negative emotions no voice in our lives. We don't repress them; we simply look, and in the light they gradually start to shrink in power.
When my family and I first came to live in Atlanta, we rented a studio in a rather run-down apartment complex. It all looked all right in the daylight, but in the dark, if you went into the kitchen, there were dozens of cockroaches crawling all over the surfaces. It was a nightmare. One remedy was to switch the light on, and leave it on. They all slunk back to their crevices, and as long as the light was on, they didn't come back.
This is how it is for us in the Work. We try, as far as possible, to live our lives with the lights on. Then those I's which cause us unnecessary suffering will, over time, leave us alone.
We are all born into families where parents suffer from negative emotions. We were not designed to be unhappy, but due to a flaw in Creation - described slightly differently by the Bible and by the Work, but essentially leading to the same situation - we have all imbibed negative emotions with our mothers' milk.
Our parents were negative because their parents were negative, and so on, back to the earliest human beings on Earth.
Why? Because we have disobeyed God, says the Bible, and inherited the fallen nature of Adam and Eve. The Work says we have all suffered from the consequences of "Kundabuffer", a mysterious organ which caused us to see everything the wrong way round.
Whatever the origin, the fact of suffering is undeniable.
There is a story of an old lady who begged the Buddha to relieve her suffering. Her child had died and she could find no relief from her distress. The Buddha told her to enquire at every house in the village until she found a family which had experienced no suffering; then she was to return to him.
The woman obeyed, but of course she found no such family, because every single household experienced sadness, sickness, poverty or another source of suffering; sometimes all three.
But her search taught her to live with her suffering, because she now realized it was part of the human condition.
We have been raised, most of us, by sleeping people. We are fortunate indeed if our parents were Good Householders. Today, the zeitgeist leaves most people in limbo; their religious faith is being rubbished in the media and in society at large; we are surrounded by a sea of technology, most of which drowns us in trivia; we struggle to make ends meet in a fiercely materialistic and selfish culture; and our world is threatened with catastrophe from climate change, pollution, and wars.
A family headed by Good Householders teaches children to lead their lives without undue fear or anxiety, but with circumspection. Until about sixty years ago, most societies had an accepted religion, and whatever abuses may have been committed in its name, the overall effect was good. People knew there were natural laws and written commandments about our behaviour, and their consciences were less buried, less confused than is becoming the case for many today.
Most people believed in God. This belief helped them cope with the daily sufferings and stresses life placed upon them, and consequently they were able to teach their children to bear such suffering with equanimity, yielding neither to despair nor to false optimism.
But now, with Christianity and Judaism being persecuted in many areas of the world, and with the whole idea of religion being quietly abandoned in favour of materialism, even the level of Good Householder is now very hard to reach.
And even when parents are Good Householders, they may still be at the mercy of many irrational fears and anxieties, or subject to genetic flaws which create addictions and mental illnesses. The flaw in Creation, "original sin", gives rise to imperfections at every level.
Imagine, then, the state of children raised in families which are not Good Householders. In many segments of society, this is the norm. People have no ideals to pass on to their children, no common behavioural standards which all are expected to observe. Children are at the mercy of their parents' every passing whim, every fit of temper, every manifestation of addiction - alcoholism, codependence, and many, many more.
Or, as Philip Larkin said,
They f*** you up, your Mum and Dad,
They may not mean to, but they do;
They give you every fault they had,
Then add some new ones, just for you.
Indeed. And so many now reach adulthood in a state of emotional chaos, having been given a neglectful, muddled upbringing with no worthwhile goals to aim for except the survival of the fittest.
It is this type of suffering, our neuroses, defence mechanisms, phobias, aversions, addictions and codependence, that Gurdjieff tells us is unnecessary. And thank God that it is.
This is where counselling and therapy can be of enormous help. A wise, insightful, accepting counselor helps clients to understand the internal sources of their suffering, and by seeing them, to be increasingly more free of them.
Counseling is not the Work, of course, as I explained in an earlier post. But it can help people to reach the level of living as Good Householders.
AA and other Twelve-Step programmes are also vital resources for those beset by addictions. They have saved countless lives and helped millions of people to free themselves from addiction and become Good Householders.
The suffering which comes from internal disorder is entirely unnecessary. We can, and must, sacrifice it if we are to make any progress towards living responsibly, let alone to be able to work on ourselves.
If things are not quite as bad as that, if we can manage to see our troublesome negative emotions and identify the I's associated with them, we can begin to make changes. Whether or not we've had counseling, an intuitive Work teacher can help the student see these I's, and offer tasks which can help overcome them. Gradually, the negative emotional I's die away; they still live on, in the basement, but gradually they become less and less influential, like vicious dogs whose barking can still be faintly heard but who can no longer bite us.
The Work tells us that we have a right not to be negative. Not, you note, that we have no right to be negative. We have every right, if we wish, to carry on objecting, complaining, being abused, being self-righteous or angry. The whole gamut of negative emotions is paraded every day on television, in the form of soap operas; clearly, many people still enjoy seeing them and can identify with them.
But we, having begun to work on ourselves, can see how useless such emotions are, how they leak away our precious energy and cause us no end of trouble from their interference in our lives. We don't judge ourselves, nor do we criticize ourselves, for being as we are. We can't help it; we didn't cause it, and we are not to blame for the state we are in when we begin this work.
Once embarked on it, however, we see more and more how such suffering must be given up completely. We can allow negative emotions no voice in our lives. We don't repress them; we simply look, and in the light they gradually start to shrink in power.
When my family and I first came to live in Atlanta, we rented a studio in a rather run-down apartment complex. It all looked all right in the daylight, but in the dark, if you went into the kitchen, there were dozens of cockroaches crawling all over the surfaces. It was a nightmare. One remedy was to switch the light on, and leave it on. They all slunk back to their crevices, and as long as the light was on, they didn't come back.
This is how it is for us in the Work. We try, as far as possible, to live our lives with the lights on. Then those I's which cause us unnecessary suffering will, over time, leave us alone.
Monday, 22 June 2015
The Shock of Step Three
Step Three says we "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him." (Italics in the original).
Sounds easy, doesn't it? We don't have to do very much at this point, merely "make a decision". But in that sentence is concealed a major shock for many people. We have to absolutely give up on the idea that we can control anything, except, in limited ways, ourselves.
We can't control other people, places and things, as we saw in Step Two. Moreover, in Step One we realized that we were powerless over alcohol, and our lives had become unmanageable. We'd made a complete mess of our lives. We'd failed the people who needed us, we'd neglected our work and our household, we'd repeatedly risked everything so we could carry on drinking, drugging or behaving codependently, and we'd forgotten the all-important truth - maybe, indeed, we never knew it for the truth - that we can do nothing without help from our Higher Power.
In America, I found that most people in AA had no problem in believing in God. Despite vigorous efforts from secularists, Christianity there is far from dead. Most people in the rooms of AA in America take Jesus as their Higher Power; many take God the Father; the relatively few agnostics or atheists take the group as their Higher Power.
In England, we're well on the way to discarding religion completely - except, of course, for Islam, which everyone knows they'd better show overt respect for, even if they don't know anything about it, as otherwise they could be targeted by militants.
At English AA meetings, I did find that today most alcoholics here do accept the concept and the reality of a personal God, whether they call that God Jesus, Our Father, or simply "the Almighty". But there's a growing and highly vociferous number of resentful newcomers who are unwilling to even try to believe in any Higher Power. Reluctantly, they may accept the group as such, but many have been so turned off by having misguided religious ideas forced on them at an early age that as adults they have very little faith in anything.
And yet, despite all evidence to the contrary, they still have faith in themselves! So many newcomers and older "dry drunks" persist in believing that they just had a run of bad luck, that next time will be different, that they can stay sober by themselves, with the occasional meeting from time to time because their counsellor recommends it, but with no submission at all to a Higher Power.
What arrogance! What insanity!
Relying on ourselves was what got us into our mess in the first place. Relying on ourselves to get sober and stay sober is like asking the drunk on the corner to take over our lives for us - because that's who we are, just another common-or-garden drunk, or codependent, or addict. The I's that speak to us from our inner addict tell we can manage quite well without any sort of God. That God is a man-made idea, rather than Man being God's idea! And then they relapse, and have to rethink their position.
The first Three Steps have been summed up as "I can't; God can; I think I'll let Him".
But first we need to get out of the driver's seat! That alcoholic, that codependent, is driving our bus for us, so we need to get off and ask the God of our understanding to please take over.
Without the necessary humility we will never reach this Step. There are many people in AA who are not really recovering at all, but simply doing the first two steps over and over because they can't bring themselves to acknowledge the existence of a loving God, let alone humbly ask that God to run their lives for them.
In many cases, it is sheer laziness that prompts this blind attitude. If we really don't believe in a personal God, have we even tried? Have we prayed for faith? Have we talked to our sponsor and asked how he or she came to believe in God? (Tip: if the sponsor doesn't believe at all, find another sponsor fast).
Reading the chapter "We Agnostics" in the AA Big Book can be very enlightening. Others have faced the same dilemma and overcome it. Sometimes people have had startling spiritual experiences that immediately confirm the reality of God. Mostly, we find Him through our intuitions, understandings, through wise words heard at a meeting, from our sponsor, or by reading spiritual books and keeping an open mind.
But the open mind is a necessity here. We can't just close it and say we are own Higher Power. Our lives up to this point have shown how wrong that is.
And the God to whom we entrust our lives must be a loving, compassionate God, someone who wants the very best for us, who can be our best friend and inner guide, leading us gently out of the chaos of addiction to the sanity of sobriety.
So in order to be able to sincerely take Step Three, we must have the first two steps firmly in place. And then, if we're agnostic or atheist, we vow to keep our minds open to the possibility of God, and meanwhile place our trust in the group or in AA as a whole.
If we persevere, most of us will come to believe in that God and will have a direct, personal relationship with Him.
As the Big Book says, "May you find Him now".
And that experience of God, when it comes (and it will come for those who really want it and persevere in their efforts to find Him) is a wonderful shock! How happy we are to have been wrong!
Sounds easy, doesn't it? We don't have to do very much at this point, merely "make a decision". But in that sentence is concealed a major shock for many people. We have to absolutely give up on the idea that we can control anything, except, in limited ways, ourselves.
We can't control other people, places and things, as we saw in Step Two. Moreover, in Step One we realized that we were powerless over alcohol, and our lives had become unmanageable. We'd made a complete mess of our lives. We'd failed the people who needed us, we'd neglected our work and our household, we'd repeatedly risked everything so we could carry on drinking, drugging or behaving codependently, and we'd forgotten the all-important truth - maybe, indeed, we never knew it for the truth - that we can do nothing without help from our Higher Power.
In America, I found that most people in AA had no problem in believing in God. Despite vigorous efforts from secularists, Christianity there is far from dead. Most people in the rooms of AA in America take Jesus as their Higher Power; many take God the Father; the relatively few agnostics or atheists take the group as their Higher Power.
In England, we're well on the way to discarding religion completely - except, of course, for Islam, which everyone knows they'd better show overt respect for, even if they don't know anything about it, as otherwise they could be targeted by militants.
At English AA meetings, I did find that today most alcoholics here do accept the concept and the reality of a personal God, whether they call that God Jesus, Our Father, or simply "the Almighty". But there's a growing and highly vociferous number of resentful newcomers who are unwilling to even try to believe in any Higher Power. Reluctantly, they may accept the group as such, but many have been so turned off by having misguided religious ideas forced on them at an early age that as adults they have very little faith in anything.
And yet, despite all evidence to the contrary, they still have faith in themselves! So many newcomers and older "dry drunks" persist in believing that they just had a run of bad luck, that next time will be different, that they can stay sober by themselves, with the occasional meeting from time to time because their counsellor recommends it, but with no submission at all to a Higher Power.
What arrogance! What insanity!
Relying on ourselves was what got us into our mess in the first place. Relying on ourselves to get sober and stay sober is like asking the drunk on the corner to take over our lives for us - because that's who we are, just another common-or-garden drunk, or codependent, or addict. The I's that speak to us from our inner addict tell we can manage quite well without any sort of God. That God is a man-made idea, rather than Man being God's idea! And then they relapse, and have to rethink their position.
The first Three Steps have been summed up as "I can't; God can; I think I'll let Him".
But first we need to get out of the driver's seat! That alcoholic, that codependent, is driving our bus for us, so we need to get off and ask the God of our understanding to please take over.
Without the necessary humility we will never reach this Step. There are many people in AA who are not really recovering at all, but simply doing the first two steps over and over because they can't bring themselves to acknowledge the existence of a loving God, let alone humbly ask that God to run their lives for them.
In many cases, it is sheer laziness that prompts this blind attitude. If we really don't believe in a personal God, have we even tried? Have we prayed for faith? Have we talked to our sponsor and asked how he or she came to believe in God? (Tip: if the sponsor doesn't believe at all, find another sponsor fast).
Reading the chapter "We Agnostics" in the AA Big Book can be very enlightening. Others have faced the same dilemma and overcome it. Sometimes people have had startling spiritual experiences that immediately confirm the reality of God. Mostly, we find Him through our intuitions, understandings, through wise words heard at a meeting, from our sponsor, or by reading spiritual books and keeping an open mind.
But the open mind is a necessity here. We can't just close it and say we are own Higher Power. Our lives up to this point have shown how wrong that is.
And the God to whom we entrust our lives must be a loving, compassionate God, someone who wants the very best for us, who can be our best friend and inner guide, leading us gently out of the chaos of addiction to the sanity of sobriety.
So in order to be able to sincerely take Step Three, we must have the first two steps firmly in place. And then, if we're agnostic or atheist, we vow to keep our minds open to the possibility of God, and meanwhile place our trust in the group or in AA as a whole.
If we persevere, most of us will come to believe in that God and will have a direct, personal relationship with Him.
As the Big Book says, "May you find Him now".
And that experience of God, when it comes (and it will come for those who really want it and persevere in their efforts to find Him) is a wonderful shock! How happy we are to have been wrong!
Friday, 19 June 2015
Arrogance and Humility
When we begin the Work, or when we come into recovery from addiction, we're told that complete honesty is necessary. But we can't bear to see ourselves as we truly are. We don't want to let go of the false image we have of ourselves, and we lie constantly to ourselves and to everyone else about who we really are.
We know that the beast who lives in our mental dungeon is ugly, destructive and fatal to our spiritual progress. But we want others to think well of us. We want to impress our Work teacher, our fellow students, our counsellor or our sponsor. We think that if they knew the truth, the real truth, they would reject us. Perhaps even God would reject us! So we hide, and duck, and dive, and look away.
And what drives that denial is the arch-enemy of our spiritual life, Pride.
Pride is considered by the church to be the very worst of all sins, for good reason. Pride fuels the engine of denial. Pride tells us we really are our Imaginary I, our False Personality, that hypocritical creature who wants to impress everyone with its knowledge and its power, its fine achievements.
It's Pride that keeps us from being really honest. We can't bear the truth, so we shut it away and slam the door. No one will ever know, we tell ourselves. We can pretend we are the wonderful person that we'd like to be, that kind, caring, insightful man or woman who impresses everyone with their knowledge and understanding.
But the truth keeps intruding, like an annoying guest who keeps knocking on our shut door until finally we open that door a crack. And more often than not, bang it shut again.
The reality is portrayed by Holman Hunt in his picture of Christ as the Light of the World, saying "Behold, I stand at the door and knock". In that picture, the door has no handle on the outside. Christ can only knock; we ourselves must open the door.
And the miracle is that sometimes we feel secure enough to actually begin to admit the truth to ourselves, to let that light in, the light that heals as it shines. Enough light is needed for our spirit to grow, but that light can be so very painful when we first allow it in.
Our pride, our vanity, our arrogance is what most keeps us from seeing ourselves as we really are.
We like to pretend that we don't need any help from anyone, either human nor divine. We can do it all ourselves. We can pull ourselves up spiritually with our bootstraps!
This attitude, so common and so fatal to progress, reflects a sort of Thatcherite approach to the spiritual path. It is the very opposite of humility, the one quality we need above all others before we can begin to grow.
Humility comes from the word "humus", the Latin name for the topsoil, the only layer which is fertile and fruitful. Humus must be worked in order to nourish plants, and we must be humble enough to let the Work form us from within, so that False Personality can die and Essence may grow.
In one of Marian's groups, a student claimed credit for writing an admittedly well-researched and clearly written paper on astronomy, which she read aloud to the rest of us.
Marian thanked her, and the student replied, "Yes, I know I have a good intellectual centre, so I can be pleased with that, can't I?"
"No," Marian said. "You can be proud of the efforts you made, only that. Your intellectual centre was given to you by God. You didn't make yourself."
Taken aback, the student was silent, and we all digested the new impressions that we'd just received.
Because, of course, what our teacher said was absolutely true. We hadn't made ourselves! We were all university students, all secretly proud of our achievements, but suddenly we saw that we needed to be more grateful, more humble, for the intellectual gifts God had allotted to us.
The attitude of arrogance underlies the whole problem of admitting that we cannot "do" in the Work. It's exactly the same for AA or NA members when they confront the reality of their powerlessness.
And it's why, in my view, so many New Age self-help books crowd the shelves of every bookstore. They sell well, because they lie to us and tell us we can do anything we put our minds to. And it's not true. Because we want to feel powerful, we buy the books and absorb their flattering contents, and pretend that we're inventing ourselves, all by ourselves with no help from anyone else, not even God.
Of course, it doesn't work, so out goes the old book and in comes the new, the latest version of this ancient lie that will, we hope, this time prove true. We can "do", we do have power, we are quite all right. We can remake ourselves, all by ourselves. And we are all perfectly fine people, anyway.
The Work never tells us that we are fine just as we are. It says the opposite; that we are not fine, but that we can learn to become better people, more insightful, more able to live by our Essence values and be of service to our Creator, as long as we are willing to keep looking at ourselves and stop hiding from the truth.
And, like the Twelve-Step programme, it shows us that truth very gradually and gently, without judging or condemning us. We are as we are because, without help from a higher level, that is all that can happen. We cannot change ourselves on our own.
But when we reverse our attitudes, when we become humble enough to ask for help, that help is always given. It comes from Conscious Humanity, from the level above life, and it may be expressed in an intuition, an insight, a wise word from a teacher or sponsor who's progressed further along the path than we have, and can see with clarity where we are and what we are like, because they were once like that too.
The higher blends with the lower to actualize the middle, Gurdjieff taught. Practically, help from that higher level blends with the lower - ourselves - to bring us to a higher level than before. Without that help, we could never reach it but would always remain at the level of life. We can change our looks, our jobs, our homes, anything at all on a life level, yet nothing will change spiritually for us until we ask for that help from above. And then, everything can change.
As our Being grows, so will our life circumstances change. The Work will arrange for us to have exactly what we need for our best progress. But it all depends on our having that basic humility.
That is why Jesus said that the meek, the humble, were blessed, because they would inherit the Earth. Only those who admit their powerlessness will ever be able to achieve real progress in the spiritual life.
Thursday, 18 June 2015
A Power Greater Than Ourselves - for everyone
The second Step of the Twelve Step programme says that we "came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity".
That Power is usually conceived as being God, or, as AA puts it - knowing that alcoholics are incredibly stubborn and self-willed - the "God of our understanding". This phrase, of course, allows the recovering alcoholic (and anyone else with a problem of addiction, which is most of us) to think of God in a way that makes sense to him or her. The saying is, "You can always tell an alcoholic, but you can't tell him much". And that's so true! AA is full of mavericks, men and women who find it very hard to accept anything another person tells them. And this includes advice about God. So, although AA was founded on Christian principles, it doesn't insist that our Higher Power has to fit any Christian denomination's idea of God.
But our Higher Power does have to be a Power that is on our side, that loves us unconditionally and wants only the very best for us. To me, only the Christian and Jewish God, God described as an infinitely loving Father, fits the bill. The Christian God has the added advantage in having the person of Jesus Christ, a real, living human being as well as God, as a model for our behaviour and our ideas about God. Nobody could be more loving, more concerned with our wellbeing, than Jesus. For those of us who believe in Him, including this writer, He is the God of my understanding who's always with me, who will never leave me or forsake me, who was there in my after-death experience and who emanated love, compassion, and understanding as He allowed me to return to life to look after my children.
Jesus shows us the knowable side of the unknowable Great Creator. He tells us, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father". And we can all see Him with our spiritual sight, if we wish to; all we need do is ask Him to show Himself to us.
But not everyone can bring themselves to even try to believe in this God. Many people have had a harsh religious upbringing, which portrayed God as the great magistrate in the sky, ready to impose fines and punishments at the slightest infringement of his rules. Others, in perhaps an even worse situation, grew up without any religious education at all. They don't know the Bible, the Koran, the Hindu texts or Buddhism. They think men and women are lonely beings, set adrift in an uncaring universe. There is no help and no hope for us in this picture. Thank God it isn't true.
Some think of God as an ineffable force, so far above us that we can't conceive of him or understand His ways. There is some truth in this. God the Creator is that unknown, unknowable energy, of whom nothing can be said, who can be defined only in negative terms - not this, not that. In the Work, the Ray of Creation shows the whole ladder of being, with, at the very top, the Absolute, His Endlessness, the great force beyond all knowing.
But thanks to the work of Jesus Christ, who created the Side Octave to the Sun for us, we have a picture of God as a perfect human being to whom we can truly relate and who offers a way through our struggles and temptations. He helps us at every step of the way, because He wants only our highest and best good. He is always there for us, if we call on Him. The Catholic and Orthodox Christian traditions speak of a "treasury of merit" stored up from the sacrifice and suffering of Jesus and all the saints, the great men and women who have heroically imitated Him and contributed their own sacred efforts to renew and repair the world through the ages. Many are known, many more are anonymous.
In the Work, we speak of higher hydrogens, special particles of energy created by this type of effort, that we can make as we remember ourselves, sacrifice our self-will, our False Personality, and suffer the remorse of conscience that comes from seeing ourselves as we truly are.
When I came into AA after many years in the Work, I had no problem at all with thinking of God as Jesus, and understanding the operation of grace and mercy that had preserved my life and enable me to reach the point of recovery.
But for those suffering alcoholics and addicts who want to work the Steps but who can't find a God they can believe in, then - at least at first - the idea of the AA group, or AA as a whole, as their Higher Power will work very well. AA, a group of recovering alcoholics who've found a way to sanity, has much more power than the newly-dry drunk. The wisdom and knowledge that AA has accumulated are available to anyone who asks, and a personal, individual sponsor can offer specific advice and recommendations as the alcoholic begins to climb the ladder of the steps.
Some ideas of the "Higher Power" are bizarre, however. There's one story - possibly apocryphal - of the just-sobered-up alcoholic in my home town of Bournemouth who claimed that her higher power was a yellow double-decker bus! She really believed it at the time. She justified her choice by saying the bus was much bigger than she was, had a lot of horse-power, and would kill her if she didn't get out of the way! Fortunately, it was not long before someone offered to be her temporary sponsor and quickly set her right.
Another new recruit to AA saw "nature" as his higher power. He thought of the healing work of nature, repairing our wounds and fostering young animals. But someone pointed out that nature was also heartless and cruel, and the tsunami that killed 250,000 people early in this century proved how accurate that was. So the new recruit, and the girl who'd come up with the "yellow bus" idea, were persuaded to take the group as their higher power, and listen to the advice that others gave.
We certainly need a Higher Power if we are to recover and stay sober. We need to be able to draw on a fund of wisdom greater than our own very limited experiences, and we also need to feel the love and caring of a kind, compassionate God. This love, this caring, is often felt in an AA or NA group. It is felt there more often than in many churches. It is the beginning of the true Christian community, or the society of the Friends of God, as the Sufis put it.
And everyone, whether alcoholic or addict or just a normal person trying to live according to their conscience, needs that.
That Power is usually conceived as being God, or, as AA puts it - knowing that alcoholics are incredibly stubborn and self-willed - the "God of our understanding". This phrase, of course, allows the recovering alcoholic (and anyone else with a problem of addiction, which is most of us) to think of God in a way that makes sense to him or her. The saying is, "You can always tell an alcoholic, but you can't tell him much". And that's so true! AA is full of mavericks, men and women who find it very hard to accept anything another person tells them. And this includes advice about God. So, although AA was founded on Christian principles, it doesn't insist that our Higher Power has to fit any Christian denomination's idea of God.
But our Higher Power does have to be a Power that is on our side, that loves us unconditionally and wants only the very best for us. To me, only the Christian and Jewish God, God described as an infinitely loving Father, fits the bill. The Christian God has the added advantage in having the person of Jesus Christ, a real, living human being as well as God, as a model for our behaviour and our ideas about God. Nobody could be more loving, more concerned with our wellbeing, than Jesus. For those of us who believe in Him, including this writer, He is the God of my understanding who's always with me, who will never leave me or forsake me, who was there in my after-death experience and who emanated love, compassion, and understanding as He allowed me to return to life to look after my children.
Jesus shows us the knowable side of the unknowable Great Creator. He tells us, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father". And we can all see Him with our spiritual sight, if we wish to; all we need do is ask Him to show Himself to us.
But not everyone can bring themselves to even try to believe in this God. Many people have had a harsh religious upbringing, which portrayed God as the great magistrate in the sky, ready to impose fines and punishments at the slightest infringement of his rules. Others, in perhaps an even worse situation, grew up without any religious education at all. They don't know the Bible, the Koran, the Hindu texts or Buddhism. They think men and women are lonely beings, set adrift in an uncaring universe. There is no help and no hope for us in this picture. Thank God it isn't true.
Some think of God as an ineffable force, so far above us that we can't conceive of him or understand His ways. There is some truth in this. God the Creator is that unknown, unknowable energy, of whom nothing can be said, who can be defined only in negative terms - not this, not that. In the Work, the Ray of Creation shows the whole ladder of being, with, at the very top, the Absolute, His Endlessness, the great force beyond all knowing.
But thanks to the work of Jesus Christ, who created the Side Octave to the Sun for us, we have a picture of God as a perfect human being to whom we can truly relate and who offers a way through our struggles and temptations. He helps us at every step of the way, because He wants only our highest and best good. He is always there for us, if we call on Him. The Catholic and Orthodox Christian traditions speak of a "treasury of merit" stored up from the sacrifice and suffering of Jesus and all the saints, the great men and women who have heroically imitated Him and contributed their own sacred efforts to renew and repair the world through the ages. Many are known, many more are anonymous.
In the Work, we speak of higher hydrogens, special particles of energy created by this type of effort, that we can make as we remember ourselves, sacrifice our self-will, our False Personality, and suffer the remorse of conscience that comes from seeing ourselves as we truly are.
When I came into AA after many years in the Work, I had no problem at all with thinking of God as Jesus, and understanding the operation of grace and mercy that had preserved my life and enable me to reach the point of recovery.
But for those suffering alcoholics and addicts who want to work the Steps but who can't find a God they can believe in, then - at least at first - the idea of the AA group, or AA as a whole, as their Higher Power will work very well. AA, a group of recovering alcoholics who've found a way to sanity, has much more power than the newly-dry drunk. The wisdom and knowledge that AA has accumulated are available to anyone who asks, and a personal, individual sponsor can offer specific advice and recommendations as the alcoholic begins to climb the ladder of the steps.
Some ideas of the "Higher Power" are bizarre, however. There's one story - possibly apocryphal - of the just-sobered-up alcoholic in my home town of Bournemouth who claimed that her higher power was a yellow double-decker bus! She really believed it at the time. She justified her choice by saying the bus was much bigger than she was, had a lot of horse-power, and would kill her if she didn't get out of the way! Fortunately, it was not long before someone offered to be her temporary sponsor and quickly set her right.
Another new recruit to AA saw "nature" as his higher power. He thought of the healing work of nature, repairing our wounds and fostering young animals. But someone pointed out that nature was also heartless and cruel, and the tsunami that killed 250,000 people early in this century proved how accurate that was. So the new recruit, and the girl who'd come up with the "yellow bus" idea, were persuaded to take the group as their higher power, and listen to the advice that others gave.
We certainly need a Higher Power if we are to recover and stay sober. We need to be able to draw on a fund of wisdom greater than our own very limited experiences, and we also need to feel the love and caring of a kind, compassionate God. This love, this caring, is often felt in an AA or NA group. It is felt there more often than in many churches. It is the beginning of the true Christian community, or the society of the Friends of God, as the Sufis put it.
And everyone, whether alcoholic or addict or just a normal person trying to live according to their conscience, needs that.
Friday, 12 June 2015
Powerless - On Taking Step One
"We admitted we were powerless over alcohol ... that our lives had become unmanageable".
That simple declaration, Step One in the Twelve-Step Programme, is almost impossible for the drinking alcoholic to make. He thinks he is powerful, and that he can control his drinking. He could stop any time he wanted, he just doesn't want to! Add to that a terror of what might happen if he were actually to give up his alcohol, and he simply can't bring himself to utter Step One.
When I was still drinking, I believed against all the evidence that alcohol was the only way I could cope with my chaotic life. If I were to stop drinking, I would fall apart! No matter how many friends and family members told me I was an alcoholic and needed to go to AA, I refused to consider the idea. Me? An alcoholic? How could that be true? I had a good job, fine house, nice car, expensive clothes, a maid and a gardener. In counselling speak, I was FINE (F----d up, Insecure, Neurotic and Egotistical).
Alcoholics stop drinking only when they reach their rock bottom. Yet, waiting for that catastrophic event, whatever it may be, is exactly what may kill them. And it does kill millions of alcoholics, all over the world, those who never find their way into the AA rooms, and those who do, but relapse.
If you're wondering about someone you know whom you suspect of being an alcoholic - or perhaps you're thinking about your own alcohol consumption and want to check whether you can really control it - there's a simple test.
For two weeks, you have either one, two or three alcoholic drinks every evening. You pick the number before you begin the test. And then for fourteen consecutive evenings you must stick to that number, no more and no less. For me, that would have meant two glasses of wine each evening. Someone larger and used to greater alcohol consumption would probably be able to have three, but it's a good idea to discuss the amount with your doctor first. (It was my own doctor, an addictions specialist, who suggested this test to me when I first began to admit my secret drinking habit).
You must not have more than the number you choose, but neither must you have less. You must consume the drink of your choice every evening, with no nights off. And if you can manage to do this for two whole weeks in succession, you may well not be an alcoholic.
If you succeed, take the test for another two weeks. Anyone who can manage to control their drinking for an entire month, drinking every night with no abstinences or excesses, is almost certainly not an alcoholic.
I didn't make it past the first four days.
An alcoholic finds it much easier to abstain from drinking altogether than to control their habit. This test is not a scientific experiment, but it does give a very good indication of someone's drinking status. If he fails (and please note I'm using the masculine gender only for convenience, because it applies just as much to women), he may consider that just possibly he might be an alcoholic. If he then begins to go to meetings and work the Steps, he can avoid much heartache and perhaps even save his own life.
But most alcoholics carry on drinking until that terrible rock-bottom hits them, and they're forced to assess their own drinking behaviour from a hospital bed, a divorce court or a prison cell.
It's not only the alcohol that we alcoholics can't control: it's our entire lives. When we sober up long enough to see the messes we've made of everything, our broken family relationships, our lost jobs, our financial and emotional bankruptcy, we begin to get a glimpse of what powerlessness means.
And paradoxically, it brings with it a gleam of hope.
The moment I began to think that I might be an alcoholic was after a botched, drunken suicide attempt. Afterwards, I couldn't remember why I'd felt so anguished, what had happened to precipitate it; I'd had an alcoholic blackout, and all memory of that night had vanished.
Coming round the next day, I picked up the AA Big Book and read it through, cover to cover. And then I went to a meeting. That was 25 years ago, by the grace of God, and I'm still sober. I wouldn't get my "control" back for anything! I'm really, really happy to acknowledge that I'm powerless over alcohol and over people, places and things. Because that means I don't have to try to control it any more - any of it.
I couldn't control it anyway, but how I tried! I switched from one type of drink to another, from wine to beer to vodka and back to wine. I tried only drinking with meals. I tried staying sober for one day a week. I moved to a different apartment. Nothing worked. As counsellors say, "Wherever you go, there you are". And there I was, in a mess of my own manufacture, full of self-pity and resentment, and I would drink again, and I'd be back at square one, all control gone.
These days, I never try to control anything except my own state of mind. That is where the Work comes in. For alcoholics, the full Twelve Steps will take us to the level of what the Work calls Good Householder. We will be able to manage our feelings, and our circumstances will begin to improve as we apply our newly sober minds to solving our very real problems.
Although I was in the Work before I began drinking, the Work alone was not enough to help me stop. My Work teacher wasn't an alcoholic, and I needed practical advice from people who were. Once I began to climb back up towards the Householder state, I could put all that I'd learned about the Work into practice, but first I had to be free of the killer addiction that had gripped me.
Denial, as everyone now knows, is part of the disease of addiction. It's the only disease which tells you that you don't have it. That's where the rock-bottom event kicks in, because when we're brought face to face with the dreadful consequences of our drinking, the wall of denial begins to be breached. A chink of daylight is let in.
Powerlessness is real, and for the sober, recovering alcoholic it's a huge relief. I don't have to try to control the world any more! God didn't make me the general manager of the Universe, after all.
What a blessing!
That simple declaration, Step One in the Twelve-Step Programme, is almost impossible for the drinking alcoholic to make. He thinks he is powerful, and that he can control his drinking. He could stop any time he wanted, he just doesn't want to! Add to that a terror of what might happen if he were actually to give up his alcohol, and he simply can't bring himself to utter Step One.
When I was still drinking, I believed against all the evidence that alcohol was the only way I could cope with my chaotic life. If I were to stop drinking, I would fall apart! No matter how many friends and family members told me I was an alcoholic and needed to go to AA, I refused to consider the idea. Me? An alcoholic? How could that be true? I had a good job, fine house, nice car, expensive clothes, a maid and a gardener. In counselling speak, I was FINE (F----d up, Insecure, Neurotic and Egotistical).
Alcoholics stop drinking only when they reach their rock bottom. Yet, waiting for that catastrophic event, whatever it may be, is exactly what may kill them. And it does kill millions of alcoholics, all over the world, those who never find their way into the AA rooms, and those who do, but relapse.
If you're wondering about someone you know whom you suspect of being an alcoholic - or perhaps you're thinking about your own alcohol consumption and want to check whether you can really control it - there's a simple test.
For two weeks, you have either one, two or three alcoholic drinks every evening. You pick the number before you begin the test. And then for fourteen consecutive evenings you must stick to that number, no more and no less. For me, that would have meant two glasses of wine each evening. Someone larger and used to greater alcohol consumption would probably be able to have three, but it's a good idea to discuss the amount with your doctor first. (It was my own doctor, an addictions specialist, who suggested this test to me when I first began to admit my secret drinking habit).
You must not have more than the number you choose, but neither must you have less. You must consume the drink of your choice every evening, with no nights off. And if you can manage to do this for two whole weeks in succession, you may well not be an alcoholic.
If you succeed, take the test for another two weeks. Anyone who can manage to control their drinking for an entire month, drinking every night with no abstinences or excesses, is almost certainly not an alcoholic.
I didn't make it past the first four days.
An alcoholic finds it much easier to abstain from drinking altogether than to control their habit. This test is not a scientific experiment, but it does give a very good indication of someone's drinking status. If he fails (and please note I'm using the masculine gender only for convenience, because it applies just as much to women), he may consider that just possibly he might be an alcoholic. If he then begins to go to meetings and work the Steps, he can avoid much heartache and perhaps even save his own life.
But most alcoholics carry on drinking until that terrible rock-bottom hits them, and they're forced to assess their own drinking behaviour from a hospital bed, a divorce court or a prison cell.
It's not only the alcohol that we alcoholics can't control: it's our entire lives. When we sober up long enough to see the messes we've made of everything, our broken family relationships, our lost jobs, our financial and emotional bankruptcy, we begin to get a glimpse of what powerlessness means.
And paradoxically, it brings with it a gleam of hope.
The moment I began to think that I might be an alcoholic was after a botched, drunken suicide attempt. Afterwards, I couldn't remember why I'd felt so anguished, what had happened to precipitate it; I'd had an alcoholic blackout, and all memory of that night had vanished.
Coming round the next day, I picked up the AA Big Book and read it through, cover to cover. And then I went to a meeting. That was 25 years ago, by the grace of God, and I'm still sober. I wouldn't get my "control" back for anything! I'm really, really happy to acknowledge that I'm powerless over alcohol and over people, places and things. Because that means I don't have to try to control it any more - any of it.
I couldn't control it anyway, but how I tried! I switched from one type of drink to another, from wine to beer to vodka and back to wine. I tried only drinking with meals. I tried staying sober for one day a week. I moved to a different apartment. Nothing worked. As counsellors say, "Wherever you go, there you are". And there I was, in a mess of my own manufacture, full of self-pity and resentment, and I would drink again, and I'd be back at square one, all control gone.
These days, I never try to control anything except my own state of mind. That is where the Work comes in. For alcoholics, the full Twelve Steps will take us to the level of what the Work calls Good Householder. We will be able to manage our feelings, and our circumstances will begin to improve as we apply our newly sober minds to solving our very real problems.
Although I was in the Work before I began drinking, the Work alone was not enough to help me stop. My Work teacher wasn't an alcoholic, and I needed practical advice from people who were. Once I began to climb back up towards the Householder state, I could put all that I'd learned about the Work into practice, but first I had to be free of the killer addiction that had gripped me.
Denial, as everyone now knows, is part of the disease of addiction. It's the only disease which tells you that you don't have it. That's where the rock-bottom event kicks in, because when we're brought face to face with the dreadful consequences of our drinking, the wall of denial begins to be breached. A chink of daylight is let in.
Powerlessness is real, and for the sober, recovering alcoholic it's a huge relief. I don't have to try to control the world any more! God didn't make me the general manager of the Universe, after all.
What a blessing!
Friday, 5 June 2015
Esoteric Studies and the Work
Do esoteric studies have any place in the Work? Of course! The Work itself is called Esoteric Christianity, with the emphasis on both words. We believe that much of what Jesus taught was never written down, but preserved in an oral tradition which was driven underground due to persecution from religious authorities. As that danger receded, so the secret traditions were gradually allowed to emerge. But only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were conditions favorable to releasing greater amounts of knowledge into the public domain.
The Work, the Sufi sciences, the Tarot, the Kabbalah and astrology were all part of this great stream of "lost knowledge" which surfaced en masse at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
As a practising Jew, Jesus certainly knew all about the Kabbalah, gematria and astrology. Although there are many warnings in the Bible about using astrology and occult methods for divination, they and other studies are perfectly permissible when used to achieve more understanding, both about oneself and the Universe. Jesuits and Franciscans use astrology, the enneagram and the kabbalah in this way. The Kabbalah, for example, teaches that the ten sephirot on the Tree of Life are the energies of God, which are released to the world in an intricate dance of permutation and transmutation. By studying them, we can find our own personal path as well as better understand the workings of the hidden realms of heaven. The Kabbalah says that each soul has its root in a particular sephirah, and by studying that sephirah we can better understand our own self and its special mission in this life.
In the Work, we don't attempt to use these studies in order to change anything in the world. We know we cannot "do". We can, however, deepen our understanding of how we think and react, we can begin to change ourselves accordingly, and we can better understand how events and processes in the external world are actually brought about. When we become more conscious, our circumstances do begin to change. As more and more people achieve higher states of consciousness, the world as a whole will reflect this change. This is the only way, G taught, that the planet will ever change for the better. Political attempts to bring it about are doomed to failure, although they may stave off catastrophe for a while. But a change in people's collective consciousness is the only certain way to achieve any real, lasting progress. That is part of our responsibility in the Work, and it is vast.
With my teacher, Marian, our Work group studied the Kabbalah, learning the Hebrew alphabet and its correspondences so that we could practise gematria and understand some of the hidden meanings in the Bible. We studied the Tree of Life in depth, and found many connections and implications that we had not suspected, all of which greatly helped our personal work.
We studied the Tarot, using the private writings of Marian's own teacher, Beryl Pogson, and the book "Meditations on the Tarot", by an anonymous author whom I recently learned was Valentin Tomberg, the anthroposophist who converted to Catholicism. Tomberg's depth of understanding was profound. He writes about mysticism, about the different layers of meaning in the Tarot, and of how we are to understand each card in the Major Arcana. He relates the whole to Christianity, and shows how, through studying and working on ourselves in relation to the Tarot, we can see our own level of Being and the direction in which we need to move. He also points out the dangers inherent in such studies, and how to avoid becoming ego-inflated, which is always a problem for students of the Tarot and similar subjects.
In addition to all this, we studied Plato; the neo-Platonists such as Marsilio Ficino who, in the Renaissance, led an outpouring of suppressed, underground knowledge into the consciousness of the time, in spite of repeated attempts at suppression from the church authorities; Dante; Goethe; Shakespeare; the New Testament in Greek; and astrology.
The Nicoll groups have always been known for their scholarly approach to esoteric studies, and have led the way in promoting them. Not all groups studied them at such depth, but we all worked on them with the aim of increasing our knowledge and understanding.
But there are, as I've said, dangers in studying these matters. The church always warned of the problems inherent in divination. First, we may be wrong, and cause unwonted distress; second, we may be right, and succumb to ego-inflation, as Tomberg pointed out, which cuts off our spiritual progress; and third, relying on these methods takes us away from reliance on God, and this is the greatest danger.
In the Work, we learn to accept that what happens to us comes from the Will of God, through Conscious Humanity. In order to change our lives, we have to change our level of Being. There are no magical short cuts, and in any case we don't necessarily know what is best for us. Jesus told us that whatever we asked for in His name would be granted us, but that implies some understanding of what He wants for us, and we need to subject our own small wills, composed of little, insignificant, contradictory I's, to the great Will of God, which arranges things for our best and highest good.
For example, I frequently use astrology to help me see patterns in my own life and the lives of my family. Rather than looking at how events are likely to unfold, which, for the above reasons, is a rather foolish and simplistic way to practice astrology, I like to concentrate on the birthchart and on progressions and transits relating to the natal planets. These changes indicate psychological states, and can help me understand what's really going on during particular periods of time. I do consider general conditions, such as retrograde planetary periods, noting how they might affect events in my own life and what I can do about it, but this is very different from trying to predict the future. Nothing is written in stone, because everything depends on our attitudes. Astrology can help, but, as Max Heindel says, "The stars only incline, they do not compel".
The birthchart is a map of the Essence. As such, it's invaluable for understanding our own Essence qualities and challenges, as well as those of other people. We look at the Sun in particular, its sign, house and the planetary aspects to it; but other factors, including the Rising Sign, the Moon and the placement of other planets, are all important in the overall makeup of the Essence.
Using astrology rightly brings huge benefits. Simply contemplating the chart can bring insights. The more we study it, the more we are shown, and so it is with the other esoteric subjects I've mentioned in this post. All are invaluable when used aright.
Overall, however, as humble seekers we remember we are dependent on God for whatever happens to us. He it is who created the stars and planets, who inspired the artists of the Tarot and the philosophers of the Kabbalah. All comes from, and returns to, Him, the Source of all.
In the Work we know too that every event, however pleasant or otherwise, that happens to us is meant for our benefit, to increase our consciousness. And as long as we remember this, we may study esoteric subjects as much as we like, for they will do us nothing but good.
Wednesday, 3 June 2015
Problems with the Golden Dawn and its offshoots
"I can call spirits from the vasty deep!"
"Why, so can I or so can any man:
But will they come, when you do call for them?"
- Wm Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1
This little snatch of dialogue between Glendower and Hotspur in Shakespeare's drama shows how ancient is the desire to control the world through supernatural means. From the earliest writings in the Bible to the present day, the supernatural world has become an obsession.
Today, every teen seems to want to have "magic powers". Thanks to the
plethora of fantasy TV and films, the myth that we can obtain power over others and over events by simply uttering magic words or casting a spell has become very pervasive. The recent surge in interest may have started with Harry Potter, but unfortunately it didn't end there.
When Gurdjieff met Alistair Crowley, the notorious Golden Dawn "magician", he entertained Crowley at the Prieure in Paris. At the end of his short visit, Gurdjieff told Crowley to leave and never to return, because he was "all filthy inside".
Ever since, the Work has been very careful to screen out those seeking such powers, and warns new students that the path of ritual magic is harmful to their development. But why, exactly? Don't we all use rituals and visualizations in our daily lives? What's wrong with taking it further?
The short answer is that the ultimate aim of the Work, and of all the religions that Gurdjieff recognized as genuine, is to align our small will with the Will of God, the Most Holy Sun Absolute, so that we can assist in the evolution of our planet and solar system and in the process become ever more enlightened. In doing so, we have to make our Personality passive and our Essence active. False Personality must be eliminated, as it has no place in religion or in the Work and our Imaginary I must be discarded so that we may one day reach the level of Real I, the sacred temple within each of us where alone we may meet God.
All Work teachings are designed with this aim in mind. False Personality and life aims - the desire for money, possessions, power, sex, and so on - have no place in the Work. It's the same with Christian, Jewish and Sufi teachings, the paths I know best. New Sufis are warned not to seek "siddhis", or magical powers such as clairvoyance, influence over others, or material benefits, by using magic rituals, and if they persist in practising them they are told to leave their Order. I once witnessed two people being expelled from a Sufi conference precisely because of this. They were quite well known figures in the world of "magic", and Pir Vilayat told them publicly they were not genuine seekers but spies, and must leave at once. They did.
In the Work, life aims are not our Third Force, although as we develop insight and control over our own different I's we will naturally find it easier to reach life goals. But here, too, would-be magicians are not tolerated. In Haifa, I witnessed the public expulsion of one such student; in London, I was present at another, that of a member actually in my own Work group. He had sought to use the "magic powers" he had cultivated in Golden Dawn type rituals in order to seduce women. He was found unworthy to continue in the Work, because, as my teacher explained, "The Work doesn't want such types and has no place for them".
So-called magical rituals are aimed at making the practitioner feel powerful. The groups which encourage them are full of individuals who believe that they need to harness supernatural powers in order to fulfil their dreams. In real spirituality, however, whether it's the Work, a traditional religion, or a Twelve Step group, it's the other way round: we must accept our utter powerlessness, our nothingness, our dependence on God, before we can begin to become enlightened. Golden Dawn type groups encourage the reverse.
Many seekers who find their way into "magical" groups are motivated simply by the wish to learn more about esoteric subjects and increase their understanding, and if they don't stay too long with the society, and if they avoid practising ceremonial magic, they can emerge unharmed. But simply being a member of such an organization exposes them to the subtle promotion of magical rituals, and if students remain with them too long they may well succumb to the attraction, and set off on a harmful path.
Many websites exist today which attempt to lure in vulnerable individuals with the promise of material success. They cloak themselves in spiritual language, but actually encourage a materialistic outlook. In this respect they remind one of the more obnoxious tele-evangelists who tell viewers that if they send in their money to the Rev. So-and-So, and pray for prosperity, God will make those viewers rich!
Ritual, of course, is an important part of religious ceremonies. It helps create the right atmosphere for worshippers to become aware of God, to reach their deeper I's. Counsellors may also use rituals to help clients achieve psychological freedom and insight. But there is nothing supernatural about such therapeutic use. Participants are not required to call up spirits, or forsake their own religious beliefs.
The rituals and the methods the Golden Dawn style groups use try to change the individual's circumstances from without, rather than from within. Students of ceremonial magic align themselves with material forces and associated spirits, and as they get more deeply into the practices they strengthen their False Personalities.
And worse, there really are supernatural powers - evil, malignant psychic entities - which exist on other planes and which can obsess and take over the unwary practitioner.
Groups affiliated with the Golden Dawn and its offshoots often claim to be serving "the Light", or some such vague concept. But they never specify what the aim of this "light" is, and such a "light" is most certainly not the light of God.
In the Work, in true religions, as in any genuine, esoteric school from earliest Egypt to the present day, the aim is to do the Will of God on earth. That God is a benevolent, compassionate Being who wants the very best for His followers' spiritual development. He may endow us with various supernatural gifts as we grow in our knowledge and understanding, in order that we in turn may be of greater service to others, but He is most definitely not an archetype or spirit to be summoned up at will for selfish purposes. He is not at our command; we belong to Him, not the other way round.
All true esoteric teachings, as well as the great religions, stress the role of suffering in helping us to make spiritual progress. Suffering is not only an inescapable part of life, it is also the very means by which we grow. We have to sacrifice our unnecessary suffering, Gurdjieff taught, and to accept the conscious, voluntary suffering which comes to us when we see ourselves as we really are. Christ gave us the supreme example of sacrifice through love. When we imitate Him, we create a very fine spiritual substance which the Work calls "higher hydrogens", and which is necessary for our own progress and that of the universe. There is no other way but suffering in which we may create it.
No Golden Dawn type path would ever consider suffering and remorse of conscience to be part of their teachings. Their members want only to escape from such states. But without this suffering, our Essence cannot grow and we cannot reach Real I.
Magical rituals and the beliefs that go with them encourage the building up of False Personality at the expense of Essence. Eventually, such a path will make spiritual progress impossible.
The Golden Dawn and their imitators offer the unwary student a sham path to a sham god. They claim to be spiritual, but in fact worship materialism and a material spirit. At best, practitioners of magic rituals find themselves leading lives shorn of real spiritual comfort, at worst ending up in the clutches of the Father of Lies.
The most notorious ritual magicians in the 20th century were, of course, Alistair Crowley and Adolf Hitler's Nazi occult clique. Witnesses of Hitler's appearances have described how they saw him taken over by a powerful spirit as he addressed his audiences. I'm describing extreme cases here, of course, but the danger of occult possession is ever present when people dabble in such practices.
Followers of this way risk losing all possibilities of spiritual progress in this life and in future lives. This is what is meant by the legend of "selling one's soul to the devil". It really can happen.
As Hotspur concludes, "And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil -
By telling truth. Tell truth and shame the devil."
Indeed.
POSTSCRIPT :
Some weeks after writing this post I received an email from someone who did not agree with what I'd written about the Golden Dawn-type societies and their members. This person had taken some courses with one of these organizations and found them helpful. They had subsequently left the society, had never practised any of their rituals, and thought I had unfairly castigated the type of organization with which they'd studied. Naturally, what I've written in this post would not apply to someone like my correspondent, who'd had only minimal involvement with that society and did not feel it had harmed them in any way, but had helped them in their spiritual search.
But had they persisted with the organization concerned, they could well have been drawn into the ceremonial practices which are so dangerous.
I consulted an Orthodox Jewish rabbi in Jerusalem, a respected religious leader who teaches kabbalah to carefully selected students, and he pointed out that among the many dangers associated with such rituals is the possibility of becoming addicted to them. He confirmed they are strictly forbidden by the Torah, i.e. by Jewish law and tradition. Nobody should practice them, and if they did, he would expel them from his class.
If someone wants to study esotericism, it's much safer to do so with groups who don't encourage ritual practices at all, or by oneself, with the many aids to study available in bookstores or on the internet today.
If you're in the Work, then the best way to study would be with members of your Work group under the direction of an authorized teacher or a senior member, as I've done in the past.
To protect one's future spiritual possibilities, one should avoid all "magic rituals" and the groups who promote them. Otherwise one risks compromising one's mental health and cutting off future progress. This is why no Work group and no genuine, spiritual path would ever encourage or permit them.
If anything I've written in this post has caused offence to readers, I apologize. It was not my intention to hurt anyone's feelings, but to warn them in strong terms to keep away from a dangerous practice and the people who promote it.
"Why, so can I or so can any man:
But will they come, when you do call for them?"
- Wm Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1
This little snatch of dialogue between Glendower and Hotspur in Shakespeare's drama shows how ancient is the desire to control the world through supernatural means. From the earliest writings in the Bible to the present day, the supernatural world has become an obsession.
Today, every teen seems to want to have "magic powers". Thanks to the
plethora of fantasy TV and films, the myth that we can obtain power over others and over events by simply uttering magic words or casting a spell has become very pervasive. The recent surge in interest may have started with Harry Potter, but unfortunately it didn't end there.
When Gurdjieff met Alistair Crowley, the notorious Golden Dawn "magician", he entertained Crowley at the Prieure in Paris. At the end of his short visit, Gurdjieff told Crowley to leave and never to return, because he was "all filthy inside".
Ever since, the Work has been very careful to screen out those seeking such powers, and warns new students that the path of ritual magic is harmful to their development. But why, exactly? Don't we all use rituals and visualizations in our daily lives? What's wrong with taking it further?
The short answer is that the ultimate aim of the Work, and of all the religions that Gurdjieff recognized as genuine, is to align our small will with the Will of God, the Most Holy Sun Absolute, so that we can assist in the evolution of our planet and solar system and in the process become ever more enlightened. In doing so, we have to make our Personality passive and our Essence active. False Personality must be eliminated, as it has no place in religion or in the Work and our Imaginary I must be discarded so that we may one day reach the level of Real I, the sacred temple within each of us where alone we may meet God.
All Work teachings are designed with this aim in mind. False Personality and life aims - the desire for money, possessions, power, sex, and so on - have no place in the Work. It's the same with Christian, Jewish and Sufi teachings, the paths I know best. New Sufis are warned not to seek "siddhis", or magical powers such as clairvoyance, influence over others, or material benefits, by using magic rituals, and if they persist in practising them they are told to leave their Order. I once witnessed two people being expelled from a Sufi conference precisely because of this. They were quite well known figures in the world of "magic", and Pir Vilayat told them publicly they were not genuine seekers but spies, and must leave at once. They did.
In the Work, life aims are not our Third Force, although as we develop insight and control over our own different I's we will naturally find it easier to reach life goals. But here, too, would-be magicians are not tolerated. In Haifa, I witnessed the public expulsion of one such student; in London, I was present at another, that of a member actually in my own Work group. He had sought to use the "magic powers" he had cultivated in Golden Dawn type rituals in order to seduce women. He was found unworthy to continue in the Work, because, as my teacher explained, "The Work doesn't want such types and has no place for them".
So-called magical rituals are aimed at making the practitioner feel powerful. The groups which encourage them are full of individuals who believe that they need to harness supernatural powers in order to fulfil their dreams. In real spirituality, however, whether it's the Work, a traditional religion, or a Twelve Step group, it's the other way round: we must accept our utter powerlessness, our nothingness, our dependence on God, before we can begin to become enlightened. Golden Dawn type groups encourage the reverse.
Many seekers who find their way into "magical" groups are motivated simply by the wish to learn more about esoteric subjects and increase their understanding, and if they don't stay too long with the society, and if they avoid practising ceremonial magic, they can emerge unharmed. But simply being a member of such an organization exposes them to the subtle promotion of magical rituals, and if students remain with them too long they may well succumb to the attraction, and set off on a harmful path.
Many websites exist today which attempt to lure in vulnerable individuals with the promise of material success. They cloak themselves in spiritual language, but actually encourage a materialistic outlook. In this respect they remind one of the more obnoxious tele-evangelists who tell viewers that if they send in their money to the Rev. So-and-So, and pray for prosperity, God will make those viewers rich!
Ritual, of course, is an important part of religious ceremonies. It helps create the right atmosphere for worshippers to become aware of God, to reach their deeper I's. Counsellors may also use rituals to help clients achieve psychological freedom and insight. But there is nothing supernatural about such therapeutic use. Participants are not required to call up spirits, or forsake their own religious beliefs.
The rituals and the methods the Golden Dawn style groups use try to change the individual's circumstances from without, rather than from within. Students of ceremonial magic align themselves with material forces and associated spirits, and as they get more deeply into the practices they strengthen their False Personalities.
And worse, there really are supernatural powers - evil, malignant psychic entities - which exist on other planes and which can obsess and take over the unwary practitioner.
Groups affiliated with the Golden Dawn and its offshoots often claim to be serving "the Light", or some such vague concept. But they never specify what the aim of this "light" is, and such a "light" is most certainly not the light of God.
In the Work, in true religions, as in any genuine, esoteric school from earliest Egypt to the present day, the aim is to do the Will of God on earth. That God is a benevolent, compassionate Being who wants the very best for His followers' spiritual development. He may endow us with various supernatural gifts as we grow in our knowledge and understanding, in order that we in turn may be of greater service to others, but He is most definitely not an archetype or spirit to be summoned up at will for selfish purposes. He is not at our command; we belong to Him, not the other way round.
All true esoteric teachings, as well as the great religions, stress the role of suffering in helping us to make spiritual progress. Suffering is not only an inescapable part of life, it is also the very means by which we grow. We have to sacrifice our unnecessary suffering, Gurdjieff taught, and to accept the conscious, voluntary suffering which comes to us when we see ourselves as we really are. Christ gave us the supreme example of sacrifice through love. When we imitate Him, we create a very fine spiritual substance which the Work calls "higher hydrogens", and which is necessary for our own progress and that of the universe. There is no other way but suffering in which we may create it.
No Golden Dawn type path would ever consider suffering and remorse of conscience to be part of their teachings. Their members want only to escape from such states. But without this suffering, our Essence cannot grow and we cannot reach Real I.
Magical rituals and the beliefs that go with them encourage the building up of False Personality at the expense of Essence. Eventually, such a path will make spiritual progress impossible.
The Golden Dawn and their imitators offer the unwary student a sham path to a sham god. They claim to be spiritual, but in fact worship materialism and a material spirit. At best, practitioners of magic rituals find themselves leading lives shorn of real spiritual comfort, at worst ending up in the clutches of the Father of Lies.
The most notorious ritual magicians in the 20th century were, of course, Alistair Crowley and Adolf Hitler's Nazi occult clique. Witnesses of Hitler's appearances have described how they saw him taken over by a powerful spirit as he addressed his audiences. I'm describing extreme cases here, of course, but the danger of occult possession is ever present when people dabble in such practices.
Followers of this way risk losing all possibilities of spiritual progress in this life and in future lives. This is what is meant by the legend of "selling one's soul to the devil". It really can happen.
As Hotspur concludes, "And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil -
By telling truth. Tell truth and shame the devil."
Indeed.
POSTSCRIPT :
Some weeks after writing this post I received an email from someone who did not agree with what I'd written about the Golden Dawn-type societies and their members. This person had taken some courses with one of these organizations and found them helpful. They had subsequently left the society, had never practised any of their rituals, and thought I had unfairly castigated the type of organization with which they'd studied. Naturally, what I've written in this post would not apply to someone like my correspondent, who'd had only minimal involvement with that society and did not feel it had harmed them in any way, but had helped them in their spiritual search.
But had they persisted with the organization concerned, they could well have been drawn into the ceremonial practices which are so dangerous.
I consulted an Orthodox Jewish rabbi in Jerusalem, a respected religious leader who teaches kabbalah to carefully selected students, and he pointed out that among the many dangers associated with such rituals is the possibility of becoming addicted to them. He confirmed they are strictly forbidden by the Torah, i.e. by Jewish law and tradition. Nobody should practice them, and if they did, he would expel them from his class.
If someone wants to study esotericism, it's much safer to do so with groups who don't encourage ritual practices at all, or by oneself, with the many aids to study available in bookstores or on the internet today.
If you're in the Work, then the best way to study would be with members of your Work group under the direction of an authorized teacher or a senior member, as I've done in the past.
To protect one's future spiritual possibilities, one should avoid all "magic rituals" and the groups who promote them. Otherwise one risks compromising one's mental health and cutting off future progress. This is why no Work group and no genuine, spiritual path would ever encourage or permit them.
If anything I've written in this post has caused offence to readers, I apologize. It was not my intention to hurt anyone's feelings, but to warn them in strong terms to keep away from a dangerous practice and the people who promote it.
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