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.
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