Easter, Sacrifice, and Fifty Days of Rejoicing

Easter is not just the end of Lent. It is the beginning of fifty days of special grace, and is a complete season in itself.

After the forty days' penitence of Lent, when we strove to overcome some particular obstacle to our spiritual development, the joyful Resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday proclaims fifty days of rejoicing.

Of course, the full effect of that great and amazing joy is best felt if you've actually observed Lent thoughtfully, and taken it as a Work Aim. To do this means that Imaginary I is sacrificed on Good Friday, and Real I arises on Easter Sunday from the tomb where we have buried it by our mechanicalness.

Practiced annually, and consciously, the Passion Drama can lead to Real I directing our life more and more each year until we truly begin to live more consciously.

If - like so many of us - you've drifted in and out of observance during Lent, now is the time to become aware of the cosmic energies that permeate this special period, and to take advantage of them.

These special energies were known to ancient groups, from the time of the Sarmoung Brotherhood. It was their later continuations, in the form of the Essenes and the Therapeutae, who helped to develop the Christian Year based on the rhythms of those energies as they affect us on Earth.

Before that, the Jewish Year also followed a cycle based on esoteric knowledge, and it was from this that the Christian liturgy was later formed.

Incidentally, recent attempts to persuade churches to adopt a fixed date for Easter betray complete ignorance of these energies. The date of Easter, like that of the Jewish Passover, is calculated based on complex, cosmic events. Easter must fall on the first Sunday following the first Full Moon after the Spring Equinox. Consequently, it varies from year to year, causing businesses some inconvenience. But it is necessary for this cosmic cycle to be maintained, otherwise the special energies available now will be ignored, and Easter - apart from the celebration of the Resurrection, which itself is now being sidelined or banned in many parts of the world - will be no more significant than any other Bank Holiday.

The Jews were not the only people of the ancient world who knew of the cosmic cycles, and in the Hellenic civilization, the other great sphere of knowledge which helped engender the Christian Year, a dying and rising god (or goddess) was celebrated each year in the various Mysteries.

That deity was a vegetation god, and the dying and rising which featured in the annual celebrations represented the grain harvest, on which civilizations depended.

In the Jewish rituals, however, the regular sacrifices which were offered in the Temple at the great annual feasts were of animals. The inclusion of blood was a vital part of that sacrifice, as the Old Testament clearly shows. Some form of blood offering had to be given throughout the year for various personal reasons, such as atonement for individual sins, purification after childbirth, and so on. In the three annual pilgrimage feasts, those blood offerings took on a central role for the entire Jewish people, atonement for the sins of an entire nation, and reparation for offences against God.

We learn from "All and Everything" that the wise, conscious Messengers who were sent from time to time to recall humanity to greater awareness knew that nature itself required some kind of blood sacrifice. Ordinary men and women were also aware of this, to some extent, but in their unenlightened state they offered human sacrifices. From the Druids of the north to the cannibals around the various parts of the inhabited Earth, regular human sacrifices were made, to the great sorrow of Conscious Humanity.

The practice was particularly virulent in the land of Canaan and surrounding areas, where children were sacrificed to Baal and Moloch.

In their distress at seeing these practices, the wise men and women who had been enlightened by those various Messengers to humanity decided that the best alternative was to substitute animal sacrifices instead of destroying children.

Some form of blood was still needed, so the sacrifices could not be completely stopped. Why? Because nature needs the special higher hydrogens produced by a living organism at death, which Gurdjieff calls the sacred Rascooarno. These energies are used to power physical evolution, and cannot be completely eliminated. But clearly, to sacrifice animals, while still repugnant to those who were more conscious, was better than killing children, and the substituion was gradually introduced.

Gurdjieff tells us that the very same energies of the sacred Rascooarno are also produced when we make an offering of our own suffering, when we deliberately act against our mechanicalness and offer the results to Conscious Humanity. Our conscious suffering, when we see ourselves honestly and without self-justifying, gives even more sacred energy to be used for the evolution of organic life in the universe.

If many more people did this, then no blood sacrifice would be needed at all.

But since we do not, and never have, produced sufficient of this energy to eliminate the need for blood sacrifice, nature obtains it through increasing the number of deaths until the required amount is obtained.

More conscious people practicing the Work would mean fewer mass tragedies, such as tsunamis and earthquakes, and fewer acts of mass murder of the type we now see in the terrorism that is sweeping the whole world through the agency of fundamentalist Islam and other violent groups.

The role of Jesus Christ was to provide the entire Earth, and all human beings for the foreseeable future, with the necessary treasury of higher hydrogens through the medium of His purified blood which fell on the Earth at the time of His Crucifixion.

If we in the Work, and those who attempt to follow the Christian religion, all built on this foundation, offering up our individual suffering to Conscious Humanity, there would be a huge reduction in the number of unnecessary deaths we now see. But the number of conscious people must grow to a critical level before we can see any such reduction, and clearly we are from that number at present.

Other religions too have incorporated this teaching, of course, but none to the extent of Christianity, and none have given the world the huge store of higher hydrogens that Jesus Himself created, and which has been increased ever since by the many saints and martyrs, known and unknown, who follow His teaching.

We can now see how the Christian religion brought together the understanding of the need for a blood offering, as carried out by the Jewish priests in the Temple at Jerusalem, and the dying and rising of the various deities in other traditions current at the time of His death.

Atheists and agnostics who try to discount the significance of the Crucifixion, because the Greeks and Syrians, among others, had acted out the harvest god or goddess ritual, and who claim that Christianity simply copied these, are completely missing the point.

The Crucifixion went far, far beyond the acting out of harvest rituals.

It had to be carried out by a conscious person, the most conscious man who ever lived. And He had to be a Jew, because the Jewish religion understood the need for a blood sacrifice. He had to be raised in that tradition and to understand the whole background of, and reason for, His unique sacrifice. He had to be united with God, the Father, the Holy Sun Absolute, as well as being a truly conscious, human being. And this is indeed what happened.

After He had sacrificed Himself in this way there is now no more need for any blood sacrifices. The animal sacrifices at the Temple ceased when the Temple itself was destroyed, as Christ had foretold. But human lives continue to be wasted by the forces of nature and the mechanicalness of mankind, which becomes a channel for nature to bring about the continuing, necessary blood sacrifices.

Our fifty days of joy, which follow from the Cruficixion, should be the occasion for us in the Work to rejoice in the freedom that mankind now has to overcome tragedy. Our own personal death has been shown to be only a transitional state; the deaths of many has now become unnecessary.

If we redouble our efforts to become conscious now, bearing in mind the great cosmic energies that assist us at this time, we can live joyfully, grateful that our own personal efforts are linked to the huge once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, and that we can contribute - in a small but real way - to the evolution of mankind.

What a cause of joy, indeed!

Palm Sunday and the False "Health and Wealth" Gospel

Yesterday we celebrated Palm Sunday, the day more than two thousand years ago when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. The event was carefully stage managed. Jesus and His disciples knew that the crowds who were pouring into Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover would recall the Biblical prophecy that the Messiah would ride into that city on a donkey before proclaiming his power.

What the crowds wanted was a Messiah who would be a combination of Braveheart and Santa Claus, had they ever heard those names. Someone who would lead them to a military victory over the occupying Romans, and rout those hated rulers forever. Someone who would restore the Kingdom of Israel to full autonomy, bringing about material peace and prosperity for all.

But that's not what - or Who - they got.

Instead, there came this poor, homeless prophet and a bunch of very dubious-looking disciples. They were dusty, dirty and in need of refreshment themselves. They preached the good news of the coming Kingdom, but it was not to be a Kingdom of this world, as Jesus made absolutely clear. No, it was a Kingdom of Righteousness, Truth and Mercy, the veritable Kingdom of God, but it was not going to change things on the ground.

The crowds who cheered and shouted for Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem were exactly like those today who follow the so-called "Health and Wealth" gospel, or who cling to false New Age practices. They want redemption by means of a set prayer, or through hanging crystals in their windows, or saying affirmations.. They want easy rewards; they don't understand the reality of the spiritual path,  that it leads invariably by way of the Cross to the Crown.

You can see them on television, on the numerous evangelical channels where preachers tell their audiences that if they only believe in Jesus, He will heal every physical and mental problem and send them loads of dosh.  They hover round the New Age shops buying magic candles or the latest self-help book that promises them that wishful thinking can actually work.

Since the audiences for this kind of twaddle are usually poor, uneducated and downtrodden people, they're only too eager to swallow this farago of lies, and in the belief that these preachers can help them reach their material goals they often send in their own hard-won money to nudge God into action.

But even well-educated Christians can believe this false gospel.

After all, it's very comforting - to believe that all you have to do is repeat a few prayers and say the right affirmations, and everything you want will be given to you.

But it's not true! Jesus never, ever promised health or wealth to His followers. Instead, He told them they would have "tribulation" in the world, but they were to be of "good cheer", because He had overcome the world.

Catholics, most Anglicans and the Orthodox Churches follow the original gospel of Jesus, not the fake New Age-y version. We know that the truths Jesus came to reveal included that of the necessity of suffering, of carrying our own cross and bearing others' burdens as well.

A new book, When You Suffer by Jeff Cavins, explains very well the meaning of suffering and why it is so important. It's not advanced theology, it's simply a well-written, easy to understand explanation of the role of suffering in the life of the Christian, and why it is not to be rejected but embraced.

Suffering, Cavins says, when it's borne cheerfully and with grace, endows us with a sort of "heavenly cash" that we may use for the benefit of others. He describes a time when, in tremendous pain from a neck injury, he knelt by the bedside of his young daughter and prayed for her. This experience, he says, taught him more than anything he'd ever read about the power of suffering, and why God allows it - even decrees it.

In this, of course, Cavins is expounding something very like the Work. Indeed, if we substitute for the word "cash" the term "higher hydrogens",  it is exactly the Work teaching. And that should not surprise us; Gurdjieff always said that the Fourth Way was the teaching of esoteric Christianity, and there is much of it to be found in exoteric Christianity too.

We in the Work know that "our Being attracts our life", and that suffering will inevitably be part of our progress, if only the suffering that results from seeing the truth about ourselves. But extra suffering, physical and mental, may also be what we need in order to create our own "heavenly cash", by which we can evolve and contribute our share to the workings of Conscious Humanity

The Palm Sunday crowds wanted their Santa Claus Messiah, but we actually need the Messiah who came to suffer and die for us. Only by undergoing the terrible, horrifically painful and humiliating death of crucifixion, and then entering into the caverns of the underworld before returning to the world in the joyful burst of light that was the Resurrection, could everything in heaven and earth be given the chance of redemption.

Only in that particular, shocking way could Jesus create enough spiritual energy - Cavins's "heavenly cash" and our "higher hydrogens" - to purify the Earth and maintain the redemptive possibility for aeons to come.

Mrs Pogson emphasized that the purified blood of Christ, spilled on the ground at the Crucifixion, was so illuminated, so permeated with higher energies, that it had enough power to transform the world from then until now, and as far as we can imagine into the future.

And Jesus knew that we, too, needed to share in this suffering, to join our own trials and pains to those which He underwent on the Cross, in order for us to grow in spirit.

No amount of money could provide this growth. No wealth could buy our way out of it. Suffering is the price we pay for our own progress, and the debt we repay to Conscious Humanity when we willingly accept our share.

Our own evolution is inextricably bound up with that of humanity and life as a whole. That is the Good News of the real gospel, and it knocks the false "health and wealth" claims into a cocked hat.

When we remember the acclamations of the Palm Sunday crowds, let us also remember where Jesus's journey led him - to Calvary and to the empty tomb.

That is the real, the only truth.

The Love of God: Unconditional Positive Regard in Counselling

As Easter approaches, Christians contemplate the Passion of Christ and ponder on what the love of God might mean for us fallen human beings. It is a term not often heard today outside a religious setting, but it used to signify a plea for understanding, for mercy, a desperate cry - "Oh, for the love of God!"

But what do we, in fact, mean by "the love of God"? As a counsellor, I have asked myself whether it's identical with the idea of "Unconditional Positive Regard".  And can we experience the love of God in this life?

Carl Rogers coined the term "Unconditional Positive Regard" (UPR) to describe the state of respect, acceptance, benevolence and goodwill which he believed counsellors must exhibit towards clients if therapy is to be successful.

It can happen only when the counsellor puts aside all his or her preconceptions and simply listens, with total acceptance, to whatever the client says. There must be neither fear, disgust, nor rejection, if the client is to speak freely.

Some time ago I wrote a post on the way that counselling - at the very highest level of practice - is identical to the Work idea of "external considering". It is actually a form of self-remembering. The counsellor, while remaining fully aware of her own psychological processes, is completely open to, and aware of, what the client is communicating. This double attention is difficult to achieve and takes years of training and experience.

When practiced with awareness and coupled with empathy and the counsellor's own willingness to be honest about her reactions to what the client is saying, UPR is almost magical in its effects.

Let me give you two case histories when UPR proved crucial to healing, and you will see what I mean.

The first is of an 82-year-old lady (I use that term deliberately, as Emily was a well-brought-up, well-spoken, beautifully-dressed and extremely polite person). She had been referred to me by her doctor, who in turn had been contacted by the local magistrate.

 Emily (of course, this is not her real name) had been caught in the act of shoplifting an expensive bottle of perfume from the most upmarket store in her home town. Instead of sending her to jail or sentencing her to do community work, neither of which would have been appropriate or helped her at all, the magistrate recommended she receive counselling through her doctor's surgery, and this was how she came to be sitting in front of me one sunny morning, a lace handkerchief pressed to her weeping eyes.

During that first session Emily hardly spoke except to express remorse and shame. How could she have done it, she repeatedly asked herself. How terrible that she should have ended up in court! What would her mother have said! Or her children! How could look them in the face! And so on, for the full fifty minutes that constitute a counselling hour.

At the end, she made another appointment for the following week. And that followed a similar pattern, with prolonged weeping and remorseful reflections, until I began to wonder whether anything worthwhile was possible. All the time, I gave Emily my full attention. I noticed my own concern and compassion for her, and expressed these feelings to her in gentle tones so as not to disrupt her inner flow, but letting her know that I was fully there for her, completely on her side, not judging her but seeking to understand.

It was not until the third session that Emily began to talk about what had happened. She had stolen the perfume on her birthday. She was now alone in life, having been married but then widowed, and living far from both her children. Although they had sent birthday cards, she had received no presents, and she felt lonely and unloved. And, as always happened on her birthday, she had begun to experience sad, unsettling memories of her own unloving mother.

Now that she was totally at ease in my presence, Emily confided that she felt her mother had never loved her. And - from what she said - it seemed to be true. Emily's mother had done little but criticize and belittle her daughter and treat her as a thorough nuisance in the lives of herself and Emily's father. They had not wanted a child, Emily said, and her mother had wished that she could have a miscarriage. If abortion had been legal then, Emily would never have been born.

Knowing little of real love at home, Emily predictably married as early as she could to get away from her unkind parents. Just as predictably, she chose an unloving, cold, detached husband. Her husband did want children, and treated Emily as a combination of breeding cow and housekeeper. His death brought Emily some release, but she remained distant from her own children and basically alone.

The theft, she realized with gradual understanding, had been her "cry for help". She had symbolically stolen the love she so much needed from her mother and her husband, both now dead. Perfume symbolized femininity to Emily, as well as a gift, and she had never felt validated as a woman, a daughter or a mother. She therefore stole the gift she had longed for so much in order to comfort herself and feel loved, but it left her guilt-ridden, hollow, ashamed.

Therapy began when she saw the real nature of her situation, and healing followed fairly swiftly after she had faced these sad truths. I was able to reassure Emily that her mother had been mentally ill, and this lifted a burden from Emily's shoulders. She had felt that her mother had not loved her because she - Emily - was unlovable. Children always blame themselves for a parent's failures in regard to themselves, and Emily had simply suffered her way through life feeling unlovable and undeserving.

Of course, there was much sadness at this realization, but also hope. When she left my care, after eight more sessions, she was a different person - lighter, happier, more self-aware. She had not been loved, but she could now love herself and give affection and time to others. She joined a coffee club at her local church and began volunteering at a charity shop. The later years of her life were far happier than her childhood and earlier adulthood had been.

The other case study I want to present to you is that of a much younger woman. In her early thirties, Shelley had married six months previously and had come to me distraught because she had discovered her husband was spending huge sums of money on sex-chat lines. Of course, it was not so much the money that troubled her but the act of rejection that these phone calls implied.  If her husband loved her, why did he need to do this? Was she at fault? What could she do?

It was only after several sessions skating over the surface of her life and gradually establishing trust that Shelley began to open her heart to me. And what she disclosed was horrible. It emerged that she had been sexually abused by her own grandfather, from the ages of four until seven, when the grandfather was placed in a care home. She had never told anyone of this. Fear and shame had dogged her life ever since and she had chosen as a husband someone who confirmed her own sense of worthlessness.

Floods of tears accompanied this memory. The worst part was when she remembered the actual abuse, of course, and the feelings of dread she still experienced when she passed the street where the grandfather used to live.

Again, children blame themselves for the evil deeds that are done to them, and Shelley thought she herself must have somehow been at fault. Of course, this is quite absurd, but to the child it makes a kind of sense. Other children escape abuse, therefore there must be something wrong with a child who becomes a victim.

Much of the remaining therapy was devoted to rebuilding Shelley's self-esteem. By the end of our time together she had come to see that she had chosen someone who sexually abused her, just as her grandfather did, because this was the only kind of intimate relationship she had ever known.

When she came for a follow-up session, I was very glad to see that she had initiated a divorce and started a local group for incest survivors. She, too, was a changed person.

Shelley told me that she had tried to get counselling when she was younger, but had never felt able to tell the counsellor what had actually happened and therefore no healing ever took place. With me, she said, she knew that I would not judge or criticize her, and felt she could trust me with the terrible truth.

Here, I believe, is the effect of showing another person Unconditional Positive Regard. Or, as we may otherwise call it, simply love. For it is a kind of love that the counsellor shows the client, based not on their own respective personal qualities but simply on the act of witnessing another's pain. The counsellor is both an active and passive witness. She is active in the sense that she reacts with the client's own pain, sharing it and going through the terrible experience with her, and passive in the way she does not condemn the client, nor does she try to limit the client's disclosures.

 There can be no limits to what is shared in the counselling office, nothing that cannot be disclosed. And with the living through of old traumas in the presence of a loving witness, healing begins.

It is not too far-fetched to call this form of witnessing an example of the love of God.

Why? Because the counsellor does not create the love that is mediated in her office. The love comes through her, not from her. The love comes from the Source of all Love, God Himself.

If a counsellor does not believe in God, that makes no difference to the process. She may name it differently, talking about the human healing situation, or the absence of judgement. But to me, it most certainly is a kind of love, and it is the only way that real healing can occur. And I know that it does not come from me, but flows through me, from a higher source altogether; from what we call in the Work, Conscious Humanity, the head of whom is Jesus.

Of course, that love is subtly different from that which we experience with friends or family, and from what we feel for our spouse. Hopefully we neither judge nor condemn the people we love in our daily lives, but we do make demands on them, fulfill their own needs, and share our joys and sorrows with them.

When we love a client in this way of healing, we know that part of that love is to let them go at the end of it, to avoid creating a dependence that would be harmful to the client. There have been many clients whose company I've missed, many that I've wanted to follow up and to find out what has been going on in their lives.  Yet I cannot do so.  That would be violating their boundaries, and I have no right to hear any more from them. Indeed, I have a duty to discourage them if they should seem to be getting dependent on me in any way.

In this, it differs from the love of God. God always wants to hear from us, He is present in our lives at every instant, whether or not we acknowledge Him, and He never lets us go. But it is similar in the way that God never forces Himself on us, never demands that we listen to Him. He leaves us free to make that choice.

I don't press my religious views on my clients, because that too would violate a boundary and could prevent them from fully trusting me. But I usually wear a cross, and generally have a small cross or rosary, or perhaps an icon, on the wall of my office, along with other art works. If the client asks me about my faith, I'm happy to answer.

The rest is God's work.

How Prayers For The Dead Can Heal Your Family Tree

Yesterday I wrote about praying for the dead. Some people think this practice is truly bizarre, but those of Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox Christian or Jewish background understand completely why this is necessary.

But we can go still further. Besides praying for the well being of those who have passed away, we can actually bring healing to living family members - including ourselves - through prayers for the dead.

How? It's all explained in an excellent book, "Healing Your Family Tree", by Dr. Kenneth McAll.

And by a truly extraordinary piece of synchronicity that very book arrived at my house just as soon as I'd finished writing yesterday's post!

I'd ordered it weeks ago and had despaired of its ever arriving. I thought it would give some clues as to the origins of various familial problems which are clearly connected to both genetics (our faulty DNA) and family environments.

To my great delight, however, this book not only answers many questions in connection with how family problems may be passed down through the generations, it gives explicit guidance on how these problems may be healed. It shows how spiritual illnesses, as well as physical diseases, may be passed down and cause problems in the present. And it shows the way that all such diseases, whether of the body, mind or spirit, may be healed.

In previous posts I've looked at how our DNA carries the seeds of serious problems in our own lives and those of our families. It is becoming ever more apparent that here lie many of the physical origins of problems such as alcoholism, addictions of all kinds, mental illnesses and so on. We know now that various genetic flaws predispose some of us to addictive diseases and mental problems. There are known genes for opiate addiction, alcoholism, mood swings, and a sort of catch-all mental problem gene - the so-called "Warrior Gene" - which seems to compound many such addictions.

We also know that healing of all kinds comes ultimately from God, and His help is being sought quite openly by those who accept the Twelve Step programs.

Counselling, medication, family therapy and all sorts of interventions can work wonders in dealing with the symptoms of these deep-seated illnesses. But, as Jung said, no true healing is possible unless it takes place in the spirit, because all addictions - and many other mental problems, too - are actually spiritual problems manifesting in the physical sphere.

Those who've traced their family trees can often see these problems going back for many generations. Sometimes they seem to skip a generation, but generally, in every family, there are living members and ancestors who are known as the black sheep of the family, the ones that nobody talks about.

As an alcoholic who, thank God, has not had a drink for more than 25 years, I was especially interested in tracing the origins of this problem in my own family. True enough, in each generation I found someone who seemed especially problematic. He or she was known for a drinking problem, sometimes compounded with other physical and mental problems.

An alcoholic parent will not only pass on the alcoholic gene to some or all his children, he will also raise them in an unhealthy atmosphere. Until the actual genes were discovered, we could not be sure  whether it was nurture or nature that caused the alcoholism. Today, we see it is a combination of both.

To me, this is a clear indication of what is meant by "original sin". There are faults in our DNA, in our very Essence, which must be healed before true spiritual progress may be made. It could well be that it is for that very purpose that each alcoholic, each addict has chosen to become incarnated today, when so much help is available to heal these diseases. And our own healing efforts can stretch backwards and forwards, into the past and into the future, affecting all those related to us who may have suffered spiritual sickness and passing on a cleansed, renewed heritage to our children.

Dr McAll's book points out that as well as healing those now living, who suffer from inherited addictions and other illnesses, we also need to heal the dead. It may be those deceased ancestors, unhealed and so unable or unwilling to pass further into the afterlife, and who could have attracted evil spirits, who could be causing many of the problems of living family members.

He gives numerous examples of how this can happen. He points out that God can allow unhealed souls to linger, dogging the following generations, waiting until someone, usually one of their descendants, eventually realizes the true nature of the problem and prays for and with them.

Many of these ancestors will have rejected the Christian faith of their families, or else were raised with no faith at all. Many were never baptised, and others have turned their backs on God. The Bible speaks of "generational curses", and it could well be that in many families today this is what is happening, and why so many people are still unhealed despite the best efforts of their friends and families.

Perhaps our ancestors dabbled in the occult and attracted evil spirits, which are now attached to living family members. Maybe they took part in magical rituals, read the tarot or sold horoscopes for financial gain rather than knowledge and understanding, or tried to contact the dead through a medium or a ouija board. Any of these activities, however innocently entered into, creates a psychic "leak" and issues an invitation for an evil spiritual entity to come in, which can then obsess a family tree for many generations.

Dr McAll emphasizes the need to pray for these ancestors by name, if we know it; if we don't, we must pray to be given a name under which they may be interceded for. We can then baptise them into the Christian faith and hold a Eucharistic service for them, in which the healing powers of Jesus's body and blood are applied to the sick and suffering ancestor, and that ancestor is released from whatever is holding them and us in bondage.

Releasing them brings healing and peace to the living family members. And in this way, an entire family tree may be healed.

Dr McAll is an Anglican psychiatrist, and his book approaches the question of family curses in a thoroughly Biblical, Christian way.  If you don't accept this approach, you will gain nothing from reading this book.

But for anyone with an open mind who has noted recurring patterns of physical illness, addictions, mental illness and other problems in their own family, this book could be the way to ending all such suffering.

Readers already in recovery and following the Twelve Steps, and especially if they are also in the Work, will have seen great healing result from the influx of divine energies into their life.  Dr McAll is suggesting that we may extend this healing to everyone in our family tree who has ever suffered from such problems, and thus put a complete end to any and all curses that may have attached themselves to our family.

As he says, "In all cases of bondage the best efforts of psychiatry should be utilized to integrate the personality, but it is essential that they are used in conjunction with prayer and the Eucharist service, which has the power both to break the destructive bondage and to form life-giving bonds with Jesus Christ".

Amen.

Note: I'm indebted to Phil Rickman, author of the very successful Merrily Watkins deliverance ministry series of thrillers, for mentioning this book.

What is the Communion of Saints?

The Communion of Saints - a concept familiar to every Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox Christian  - simply means that we, as Christians, are connected with all other believers and people of good will, both living and dead.

Death does not separate us from them.

We may call the Communion of Saints by its Work name, Conscious Humanity, although, strictly speaking, only the more spiritually advanced members of that communion may be called conscious. Nevertheless, all of us in the Work belong to the Communion of Saints, even if more through desire than through achievement.

And it's not only those who were Christian during their lifetime who are included in this community. Sufis, Buddhists, Hindus, Orthodox Jews, those who have been Good Householders although they may never have followed any particular religion, together with everyone who has lived according to their conscience, may eventually be admitted to this group.

Brother John of the Carmelite Order used to preach that after death there will lots of people who, meeting Jesus for the first time, will exclaim in wonder "So it was You, all the time, and I didn't know!You were the One who healed my child, saved my life, gave me the courage to carry on! Thank You!"

Not everyone will reach Paradise all at once, of course, because we're not fit for it as we are. And Paradise is, in any case, "Only good for two-three days", according to Gurdjieff. What we shall do after we've enjoyed a well-earned rest will depend on us, our abilities, our deepest wishes, and on God and His many helpers, the saints, angels, and archangels.

We may be put to work maintaining the balance of energies on a particular planet; to educating young souls about to incarnate; to helping those in Purgatory to endure the pain of remorse and repentance. We don't know; it's not entirely up to us, in any case. But we believe that death is only a veil, a curtain, which separates those alive on Earth from those already in a different dimension, and that communication between us is still possible.

We are all working for a common aim, the perfecting of our being and the subsequent coming of the Kingdom of God.

We Catholics know that, when we pray to the saints for help, they respond. Proof of this is given daily in the form of miraculous happenings, both great and small. Some have been solidly proven by medical and scientific evidence, the criteria the Vatican uses to decide who is to be recognized as a bone fide Catholic saint.

We know that we may also pray to - and for - our ancestors. Many cultures, both Eastern and Western, encourage the setting up of family shrines in the home, where we can remember our dead and pray to and for them.

Gurdjieff believed that doing so helps us and them. He gave several examples of this type of prayer, from the need to pray for our direct family ancestors (and thus help our "grandfathers" and those even earlier than that generation) to the way in which one person's ancestor (in this case, Gurdjieff's own mother, who had passed away) could help the mother of a Work student.

Daily, in the Catholic church, Masses are offered for the dead. We believe this confers great honour on the deceased one, and helps him or her in the afterlife, wherever they may be. In Work language, we are dedicating a quantity of the very highest, finest energy - that of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ - to those we honour in this way.We also ask our dead loved ones to pray for us, just as we petition the saints to do the same. We are all one family, and we help one another.

No, our family dead are not necessarily out and out saints, not yet, but they are closer than we are to the miraculous realm where Conscious Humanity lives, and they can add their prayers to ours in cases of need.

What is the post-death state like? And will we all be part of Conscious Humanity one day?

All religions believe in some sort of afterlife. The Jewish and Christian faiths postulate a post-death period of assessment, where our next destination will be decided. We Christians call it Purgatory.

Purgatory is not a state of physical torture; it is the place where, with great compassion and empathy, we are helped by those more conscious than ourselves to relive the unrepented sins of our earthly life, and to make atonement for them by our sincere remorse.

Painful, yes. And this is the reason why we are urged, in the Jewish and Christian faiths and most of all in the Work, which is Esoteric Christianity, to repent - undergo metanoia - in our present life. Those sins, those errors, we have committed need to be faced and accepted before we can proceed any further.

It is this belief which underlies the practice, common to many religions and to the Twelve Step programs, of taking a personal inventory at the end of the day. I prefer to do this during the day, so that problems may be dealt with as they come up, but either way is fine. What is certain is that we will have no escape from facing our own sinful, mechanical nature, and we can either do this now, on Earth, or later, in Purgatory. The choice is ours.

A modern Kabbalistic interpretation of Purgatory says that after we die we are placed in a private cinema, with a comfortable chair and a large screen. The film of our life is then projected for us to view, over and over again, until we have repented for the evil, the mechanical acts, we have committed. Then, and only then, may we allowed to ascend to the next stage of our existence.

What will that stage be like?

Marian, my Work teacher, explained that the substance of our Essence is immortal and therefore cannot be physically destroyed in the same way that our bodies can. After death, if someone has remained asleep all their lives, if they have not worked on themselves at all, if they have stifled the voice of their conscience and lived mechanically, their body will decay and their Essence will be thrown back into the melting pot. Nothing of them will survive, because they had not achieved any individuality.

This is Work teaching, and of course it is subtly different from the exoteric, Christian, doctrine.

If, on the other hand, we have begun to wake up, then our spiritual journey is commencing. We will be sent again and again into incarnation so that every lesson we need to learn can be fully assimilated. Only then will we be allowed to remain in "Heaven", however we picture that realm.

For me, it's a world of education, activity, and purpose. It's the fount of order in the universal battle against entropy. It's the state we picture ourselves in when we yearn to be of use to God. And if we follow our conscience, one day we shall certainly find ourselves there, with all the necessary Higher Being Bodies that we have created with the help of Conscious Humanity, which will give us the ability to survive in that rarefied atmosphere.

The Way of the Good Householder will eventually lead there, especially if followed in conjunction with one of the true religions.

For us in the Work, we are following the Way of Accelerated Completion. We hope to reach our destination more quickly than if we simply followed an exoteric religion, but there are no guarantees.

 In the meantime, we need all the help we can get, and praying to the saints, both known and unknown, who are part of Conscious Humanity will help us in more ways than we can possibly imagine.

Please note that, although we are encouraged to pray to the dead, and to offer our own prayers for them, we are not to contact them through a medium or any other occult activity. This is strictly forbidden by all religions and by the Work. Why? Because it is an illegitimate method of communicating with the dead, and calls on the astral realm rather than the spiritual dimension. This being so, all sorts of mischievous, possibly very evil, entities may respond and pretend to be the person summoned when they are nothing of the kind.

I have personally experienced this realm when in the presence of a medium, even though I did not give her permission to call on the dead and did not realize that this was what she was doing. The frightening consequence was only too real, and I have heard of others who also experienced this type of happening while physically in the presence of a medium. If we have not asked for it, the evil realm - the "sitra achra", or other side, in Hebrew - does not have permission to stay, so the remedy is to pray to God and ask for it to be stopped. This is always effective. But it is much better not to court this sort of experience at all. Some types of evil entities are very hard to dismiss.

Real communication with the dead takes places through the spiritual realm, without any medium, and always with the understanding that God may allow it or may prevent it for a particular reason. This is the only legitimate way.

That said, I do have a family shrine in my own house, where I honour the living and dead members of my family and pray for their wellbeing every day. And I ask for their prayers, too, because we are all members of the Communion of Saints, even though some of us are only potentially, not actually, thorough going saints!

Sometimes the dead may communicate with us directly, through a dream sent via the Higher Emotional Centre. This is a very powerful experience, very cleansing and fructifying. And while it should not be sought, neither should it be ignored. It is useful to write it down so that we don't forget the content, and can meditate on it later for guidance.

My personal practice is to pray to the saints, especially St Therese of Lisieux, when in particular need of enlightenment or understanding. There are saints for every type of problem, however, as you will find if you study the saints of the Catholic and Orthodox churches. They are all much closer to God than we are, and they invite our prayers. They long to help us, because in helping us, they help God Himself.

 And that is the purpose of the Communion of Saints - a great mutual-help society, formed of goodwill and spiritual energy, a tremendous source of help which we are foolish to ignore.

Why Gurdjieff Says We Need A "Critical Mind" In The Work

"It is useless to come here unless you have a critical mind".

Thus read one of the sayings attached to the wall of the Study House at the Prieure.

At first glance, this sounds a little odd. When we think of a "critical mind" in a Life context, we probably associate the phrase with someone who's always arguing, objecting or putting up difficulties. Such a person is emphatically not suited to the Work unless they can overcome such unhelpful habits of thinking.

 If they have Magnetic Centre and find their way to a group, the teacher will have her own work cut out in trying to help the student to discard these bad habits. And they may be so ingrained that a student is quite unable to rid themselves of this type of purely negative thinking, and will have to leave the Work altogether.

What, then, did Gurdjieff himself mean by the phrase "a critical mind", and why is it so essential for  work on ourselves?

First, we need to remind ourselves that our Intellectual Centre consists of two major areas, one positive and one negative. Unlike the Emotional Centre, which ideally does not have a negative division - a situation achieved usually only after years of painful work on ourselves - the Intellectual Centre is meant to have a negative part.

Why? Because without it, we could not evaluate ideas. We would be unable to compare, contrast, assess and either accept or discard thoughts and theories. We would have no way of evaluating the Work, for how is one to do this if one cannot compare it with other systems, and see where the Work differs or agrees with them?

For most people starting out in the Work today, a university education is part of their background. If they have been well taught at undergraduate level, they will know how to weigh up different ideas and how to assess their value. There will still be a lot of old ideas that will need discarding, but they will have been trained in the basic thinking processes that give them the expertise to do this.

If they can avoid the trap of "wiseacring" - indulging in pointless speculation for its own sake rather than as an aid to enlightenment, something all too common in academia - their Intellectual Centre will be able to help them in the Work. It will be much easier for someone with a well trained mind to eventually achieve metanoia.

Yet a degree isn't vital when it comes to studying and practicing the Work. Gurdjieff himself had studied at a military academy, but he did not have a university education as we know it. Although many of his male students did have such a background, his female students usually did not. University education was widely closed to women before the middle part of the 20th century, and even then a woman had to be unusually gifted and persevering before she could be accepted at a university.

What is vital, however, is that the student should have undergone some sort of mental training that will help him or her to separate ideas, weigh them, evaluate them and - in the case of the Work - apply them. If she does not possess such a background, her teacher will instruct her to study the type of material that will help in developing her mind. She may be asked to read theology, or philosophy, or science, and then to evaluate the ideas in a cogent manner. It is hard going, but it is necessary.

Without the ability to do this, there can be no progress in the Work.

While it's obvious that the type of person I mentioned at the start of this post, the chronically negative, complaining individual who loves to argue for its own sake, is not likely to last long in the Work unless they are willing to change these profoundly unhelpful habits of thought, the opposite type is just as difficult to teach.

I'm thinking now of the student who's read each and every self-help book, studied every esoteric system, as far their mental capacity allows, and who completely approves of them all. Such a person can't possibly appreciate the Work, because they can't understand how the Work differs from all other systems. They have no critical ability.

Such a student may have read, say, Louise Hay, and loved it. They loved it so much they got identified with it! Then they went on to read A Course In Miracles, and loved that too. Again, they became identified. When the Celestine Prophecies came along they devoured that too, as they did with The Power of Now, Rosicrucianism, Anthroposophy and everything else they could find.

They did not ponder each system of ideas. They did not see how each differs subtly from the rest, how each has helpful ideas but also theories which contradict other systems. Because they did not perceive these differences, they accepted them all uncritically, and when they met the Work they could not see how it differed from all their previous studies. They simply tried to add it on to what they had already read, and the result was a muddle.

It's as though such a student has gulped down everything they could find and has a monumental case of mental indigestion!

Asking them to explain how each system differs from the others, and to outline each one's stronger and weaker aspects, let alone compare any of them to the Work, proves fruitless. They identified with each set of ideas as they came across them, and they are so thoroughly glued to them that they can't break free and judge them objectively.

They have completely neglected to apply the negative side of their Intellectual Center. They probably didn't even know they had one. And unless this sort of casual, uncritical acceptance of any and all "spiritual" ideas can be broken, such a student will not get very far in the Work.

Unless we can begin to think in a new way - to undergo a true metanoia, or repentance - we will stay at the same level. We will not progress. The Work contains many fertilizing ideas that can shock us into thinking differently, more profoundly. But we need to reflect on, not just uncritically swallow, these ideas.

To ponder in the Work sense means to apply both the Emotional and the Intellectual Centres in thinking about a Work idea. We can often feel the good of the Work before we can truly understand it, but the work on Knowledge - carried out by the correct functioning of the Intellectual Centre - is absolutely vital to spiritual growth.

All genuine thinking, says Dr Nicoll, requires an effort, and this is something that people are generally unwilling to make. Without real effort in the Intellectual Centre, however, the Work will fall on stony ground. It will lead nowhere.

We must constantly evaluate what we have heard and read about the Work. We must "think longer thoughts", as Gurdjieff said. Unless we do this, we will not be able to change our thoughts, will not undergo this essential metanoia, which Jesus Christ and all the great spiritual teachers have urged.

We must discard our mechanical associations, our mechanical likes and dislikes. We must thoroughly digest and apply the Work ideas until we can think about Life from the point of view of the Work - and not the other way round.

When we do this, Dr Nicoll says, "You will begin to occupy higher divisions of the Intellectual Centre, and through this maybe you will change the state of your being".

Maybe,

There are no guarantees, but genuine effort and perseverance will meet with eventual understanding. And that is the use, the necessity, of having what Gurdjieff calls "a critical mind".