Looking for a Work Teacher in the UK

If you're living in the United Kingdom and looking for a Work teacher, this post is for you.

The UK is the country I know best, though I spent many years in the USA and also lived for a while in Israel. In the former, the various groups affiliated with the Gurdjieff Foundation in New York have only a fairly loose association with it, and are not closely supervised by the Foundation - at least, not compared with the situation in the UK. It's much easier to find a group in the USA than it is here. And Israel is the only country in the Middle East that is secure enough to protect the existence of a Work group, and there is one main group, affiliated to the Paris Foundation.

In the UK, however, the situation is very different.

Here, the Gurdjieff Society, located in London, oversees most groups, and it keeps a fairly tight rein on them. Some of the teachers are good, and some are less so. I've known teachers from the Society who frankly bullied their students and hadn't a clue how to teach anything. They might have known a lot about the Work, but they didn't understand how to teach, how to model the Work for their students, or how to create the conditions in which each student could learn for themselves. Others were completely ineffectual, and while the students may have enjoyed the social gathering they certainly didn't learn how to work on themselves.

 Each seeker must decide for herself whether a particular group and its teacher are for her. And it's a difficult process because you simply don't know what to expect.

 A Work teacher is usually quite an ordinary person who makes no claim to supernatural powers or to be able to ensure anyone else's progress in the Work. He doesn't dress outlandishly, most likely won't drive a fancy car, and won't try to impress you with his esoteric knowledge. He doesn't go around telling people he's a Work teacher. He generally keeps quiet about it in ordinary life, because he doesn't want to draw attention to himself. You may or may not like him personally. If not, give him a try anyway.

Run a mile if there is any sign of bullying, any attempt to intimidate students, or to hint at "hidden powers", esoteric knowledge and so on. A boastful Work teacher is a contradiction in terms. Any boasting or bragging comes from arrogance and is part of that person's False Personality, which should play no part in the life of a Work teacher. What's more, a Work teacher must be able to generate and conduct the higher hydrogens which students need for their development. If someone is unable to do this, she will be an ineffectual teacher.

 Also beware of the teacher who seems over-eager to include you. All Work teachers have to turn away more students than they accept, and if they take you on immediately without any kind of interview you should beware of getting stuck with someone who just wants to play the numbers game. Students are not, as they might imagine, eagerly snapped up. To take on a difficult or disruptive student would hinder the progress of the existing group and waste the teacher's energy. On the other hand, a good student, someone with the necessary humility as well as Magnetic Centre, can be a help to the entire group. It's up to the teacher to decide, and to be very discriminating in their choice.

A major problem in the UK is that the groups who trace their descent directly from Gurdjieff and his personal students often give short shrift to Ouspensky, Dr Nicoll, Bennett, Rodney Collin and Beryl Pogson. They consider these teachers to be inferior to Gurdjieff, and they don't usually mention them at all. They discourage students from reading their books, and if you insist you will be asked to leave.
At least, this was the situation until a few years ago, when I had my most recent meeting with a teacher from the Foundation. They were still very rigid in this respect, and it deprives students of a huge range of really important and useful material.

On the other hand, the Ouspensky-descended groups associated with the Study Society at Colet House in London display a similar attitude towards all teachers other than Ouspensky. Some do allow Dr Nicoll's Commentaries to be read, because Nicoll was a close friend as well as a student of Ouspensky. Generally, however, Gurdjieff is anathema to them.

The Nicoll groups, who - as the name shows - trace their descent from Maurice Nicoll, are much more open to other writings. Dr Nicoll studied at the Prieure with Gurdjieff and was a student and friend of Carl Jung as well as Pyotr Ouspensky. All Nicoll groups encourage readings from the three teachers and from others who also illuminate the Work.

When my own teacher, Marian Davison, began teaching, she was encouraged and helped by Dr Bernard Courtney Myers and Dr Francis Roles, the former from the Gurdjieff Foundation and the latter from what become the Study Society. In those days - the 1960s - the situation was much more fluid and there was cooperation between all the branches of the Work. It was only later that barriers began to grow and obstacles were thrown in the way of mutual help. This, to me, was a huge step backwards.

I'm a teacher in the Nicoll line, so this is the branch which I know best, although I've also been fortunate enough to study the Work in groups in America, Israel and in London which were affiliated with the Foundation. (In regard to the latter I met Mme. de Salzmann in New York and was blessed with the experience of studying with Dr Courtney Myers in London, both of them excellent teachers: I haven't met anyone else of that calibre in either location, however). I studied in the only Work group that exists in Israel. But Marian remained my teacher throughout, and I kept in touch with her through letters, notes and phone calls.

When I was authorized to teach on my own, I was initially very reluctant to take on the responsibility. I agreed to do so when Marian gave me her blessing. She said that reluctance is a sign of humility, and it indicated that I was ready to teach. Someone who actively wants to teach is usually not ready, and is discouraged. Such a person may want to call themselves "a Work teacher," and add it their esoteric CV, as it were, but not actually to take on the hard work and inevitable suffering that results from one's labours as a teacher.

(Incidentally, this post is not an advertisement for myself! I'm not currently accepting any new students, because I want to focus on my writing. That is the main way in which I now attempt to disseminate Work teachings).

The various Nicoll groups continued after the death of Dr Nicoll, most taught by Beryl Pogson. After her death, Mrs Davison continued her work and took over Mrs Pogson's groups, while beginning new "nursery" groups in London and Brighton.

Some Nicoll groups chose to join the Foundation after Dr Nicoll died, and they have now merged with it and no longer exist in their own right.

Most, however, carried on their independent lines of work, because they believed - as did Mrs Pogson, Mrs Davison and myself - that to exclude huge areas of study, including the invaluable books by Dr Nicoll and Rodney Collin, among others, was to deprive students of a real aid to development.

We deliberately kept away from the Foundation after we realized that some of their teachers were determinedly trying to take over the independent Nicoll groups, and were shutting down the areas of study with which they disagreed. Indeed, they closed down some groups completely. We thought this was authoritarian and very short-sighted, not in the spirit of Gurdjieff or Ouspensky, and quite contrary to the teaching of Dr Nicoll.

 It's interesting to consider that the three founders of the Work each began with a concentration on a particular centre; Gurdjieff clearly favoured the Moving Centre to begin with, Ouspensky the Intellectual Centre, and Dr Nicoll the Emotional Centre, with his work in psychoanalysis. Of course, as each developed and attained a higher level of Being, they transcended the levels of Man No 1, 2 and 3, and became Balanced before going on to reach even greater heights.

 Nicoll students believe that without any one of the founders, the Work is incomplete, and therefore the Nicoll line seems to us to be the true continuation of the Work, in the sense that Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Dr Nicoll understood it and wished it to be handed on.

Nicoll groups are known for the depth and breadth of their studies, including science, esotericism and the Work.  Some groups learned Ancient Greek and Latin so that we could study the Gospels and similar writings, as well as Old Testament Hebrew so we could understand the Kabbala and Gematria.

We all studied various arts and crafts from weaving to woodcuts, and held Work weekends so that a real community could be experienced. Mrs Davison continued with the methods that Mrs Pogson and Dr Nicoll had begun, and included her own special knowledge of astrology and Sufi teachings. She was a sheikh in the Sufi Order to which I belonged, and so was able to bring a special understanding of Sufism to the Work. Sufi poetry and teaching was an important part of our studies.

We studied the Tarot in its esoteric sense; the Renaissance scholars, including Marsilio Ficino; alchemy; the Greek philosophers; the early Christian fathers and their contemporaries; and some Gnostic writers. From this we gained a sense of the enormous influence of Work ideas on humanity, and their supreme importance to mankind's survival through past and future changes and cataclysms. We now form, we believe, a special type of Ark.

The Nicoll groups today are few and far between. The group I taught in Bournemouth has now disbanded due to the advanced age of its members. A very small, embryonic group existed for a while in West Wales, but it has now closed and there is currently no Nicoll group in Wales. Other groups I know of are located in East Anglia and the far southwest of England.

Unlike the Foundation and the Study Society, we didn't form a strict, hierarchical organization with an extensive administration. Each teacher knows of one or two others, and can ask for a Movements Teacher to visit their group when it reaches a certain size.

For the large number of Gurdjieff groups that existed all over the world, tight organization was necessary and was the only way in which they could have survived. Nevertheless, the Foundation and the Society have both suffered to some extent from this type of structure, which was inevitable.

When you try to organize a spiritual association, you lose much of its original spirit. You can't nail to jelly to a wall. Boxes have to be ticked, hoops jumped through and strict criteria met. The Work loses some force with every new generation of students, because with the best will in the world teachers who never knew the founders of the Work are at a disadvantage and can't pass on the full knowledge of the Work to their students. Creating barriers between the lines of descent furthers the ossification of the remaining groups, prevents the sharing of knowledge, and is unhelpful.

The Nicoll line kept the spirit of the Work best, but by avoiding the pitfalls of over-organization we also lost some of the benefits, mainly that we have no central office to disseminate information about groups and locations.

 In order to meet a Nicoll line teacher, you need to be in the right place at the right time, and to be ready to learn; it is the Conscious Circle of Humanity who will lead you there, if you have Magnetic Centre. Someone will have heard of someone who teaches; sometimes there may be a very small, very discreet notice in a library. If there is no Nicoll teacher in your area, then this contact is impossible. In that case, it is simply not your Fate to meet a Nicoll teacher in your current lifetime. That line of Work may not be right for you; perhaps the Work itself is not for you.

Of course, you always have the option of contacting the Foundation, which I would personally choose in preference to the Study Society simply because it's more open to outside influence, although not very much. The Society people I've met are very likeable, spiritually evolved people, however, and you might find yourself more drawn to them, especially if you are interested in the Sufis, because they are home to a group of Mevlevi dervishes and practice their ceremonial whirling dance.

You'll find all sorts of groups on the internet claiming to be the bearers of the Gurdjieff Work, but there are many charalatans and wolves there, and even with Magnetic Centre it's very difficult for a beginning student to find a real Work teacher.You do need to look at the group's lineage, if it has one. If it does, you may be able to check whether it is genuine by contacting a sister group. If they trace their lineage back to someone who was known to have been excluded from the Work - and such groups do exist - they could be dangerous and harmful, and I'd shun them like the plague.

On the internet, the best contacts are, I believe, the Gurdjieff Society in London, or - if you really prefer Ouspensky - the Study Society.

James Moore, a former member of the Society, left because of the distasteful, behind-the-scenes power struggles into which he was unwillingly drawn when his own teacher, Henriette Lannes, was passed over in favour of another whom he considered inferior. Moore started his own group, in Kent. I have not been to it and I don't know whether he is still alive, but if I lived in that part of the world I would think it worth checking out. He wrote the best biography ever published of Gurdjieff, and his later gossipy memoirs are very enjoyable, if somewhat scurrilous, reading!

 Fourth Way schools surface for a while every couple of hundred years in the West, at times when civilization is in crisis, and then disappear once again. The Work makes itself more accessible at times of great change, and creates Arks wherein its invaluable teachings may be preserved. When its task is done, it disappears. The schools carry on their work in secret until the time is right for a new dissemination of the teachings. The particular form in which it manifested at one time may never recur. This may well be the fate of the Nicoll groups.  If it is, then the Nicoll line has fulfilled its mission for this period of time.

We can't deny that humanity is facing greater dangers than ever before. The atrocities committed by terrorists, whether "lone wolves" or agents of Isis, or other branches of radical Islam, threaten everyone in the world today, especially Christians, Jews, and secular Westerners. They hate mysticism and kill peace-loving Muslims. Nowhere is now safe from their terrible evil. They are hasnamusses, and spare no one who disagrees with them. Other terrorist groups exist alongside them, and all are the enemies of mankind.

Simultaneously, the earth suffers from climate change, which could now be irreversible, and from pollution on a worldwide scale that is killing off many forms of life. Every day, new species become extinct. It is more urgent than ever that each and every Work student realizes the importance of their task. We must contribute to the evolution of organic life in the way that the Work teaches, and we must be willing to form an Ark within ourselves so that this teaching is never lost. If you feel called to this tremendous task, and if it is your Fate to be part of it, then you will meet the Work.

Conscious Humanity will make it possible for you to take part.

I wish you joy and ultimate fulfillment in your search.

What is the Fourth Way, Anyway?

The  Fourth Way - sometimes called the Way of Accelerated Completion - is unique. Unlike other ways of spirituality, which require living for long periods of time in a monastery or ashram and taking vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, the Fourth Way is followed in the midst of ordinary life.

The circumstances in which you are living when you meet the Work are the very ones you need for your development at that time, so you should not change them. As you evolve and develop, so your circumstances will change to suit your evolving needs.

Don't leave your job, or your spouse, or your home when you begin studying the Work. Eventually you may be led to make far-reaching changes in your way of life; then again, you may not. If you do, you will understand what it is you need, and what will help your spiritual development.

 Relationships are vitally important in the Work, which encourages loving, considerate relations in your family, with your husband or wife, your friends and with those you meet in your everyday life.

Unlike Buddhism, the Work does not teach an ideal of non-attachment. Instead, it shows the student how spiritual evolution takes place in our relationships, and how we can evolve by becoming more sensitive, more intuitive, more compassionate towards others.

Of course, relationships are very important in any enclosed community, too. And undoubtedly those formed within monasteries and ashrams are based, ideally, on attentive consideration to others. But in the Fourth Way, we are to practice this type of relationship, which is called "external considering", towards everyone who crosses our path, and most of all within our families and in our friendships.

We don't take vows of poverty in the Work. Wealth is not to be a goal in itself, but a means to help others and to further the goals of the Work, if we are given the opportunity. We are advised in the Work that our goals are to be spiritual, based on our spiritual needs and those of other people, and not "life goals", such as getting rich, buying more and more goods, being admired, or grabbing a promotion. These events, should they occur, are to be used for our spiritual life, and not for feeding our worldly ambitions.

Neither do we take vows of obedience. We respect our teachers and value their instruction and example, but they are not seen as gurus or as possessing superpowers. We don't accept anything in the Work unless we can test it for ourselves, although to begin with we have to take some teaching on trust, to be verified later, when we are capable of doing so.

Unlike New Age or other self-help groups, the Work connects us directly with a higher level of Being, the circle of ascended saints, mystics and teachers whom collectively we call Conscious Humanity. They are headed by Jesus Christ, the supreme example of what a human being may become.

They ceaselessly work through the major religions on earth, and they seek to help everyone who sincerely asks for it. New Age groups and similar structures cut themselves off from help, however, because so many deny the existence of any Power greater than themselves, and claim that any ordinary human being can, without supernatural help, become enlightened. Such an attitude is based on arrogance, whereas for a spiritual seeker humility is an essential quality.

The Work tells us that to reach a level higher than life itself, we need help from an even higher level to get there.

The higher blends with the lower to actualize the middle.

That is what Gurdjieff taught, and he was referring to the need for help from a level far above that of ordinary life if we are to awaken.

The higher level - Conscious Humanity - reaches down to us, the lower level of ordinary human beings in life, and by means of special energies gives us the power to reach beyond our regular state. Our efforts attract the help we need. And the energies which we receive lift us beyond our own life level, to a level intermediate between the state we were formerly in, and that of the members of Conscious Humanity.

This lifting up must be repeated again and again, so our efforts need to be regular and unflagging.

But we cannot do it by ourselves; we cannot lift ourselves up by wishing it were so.

It is absolutely essential to attract the help we need from that higher level, and we must not make the mistake of thinking that the needed power lies within ourselves. That is just wishful thinking. Efforts must be made constantly, but alone they would not take us very far.

The Fourth Way teaches that life provides all the materials we need in order for our efforts to bear fruit. We have everything around us that we may use for our own development. We don't need special circumstances, although Work weekends and retreats can be very helpful in focusing and enhancing our efforts.

The energy we seek is to be found through the efforts we make, through our group efforts, and through our own teacher's ability to channel and conduct energies from a higher level.

To begin with, we absolutely must have a group and an authorized teacher, or we will be wasting our time, playing at spirituality instead of living it. Eventually, we will be able to work on ourselves and life will become our teacher, but even if we find ourselves without a group, as can happen, we still remain mystically linked to the chain of higher beings that leads all the way through the minor saints and unknown mystics all over the world up to the great saints, sheikhs, prophets and holy men and women who have evolved to be much closer to the Holy Sun Absolute.

Without that living chain, our efforts would be far less potent. We could, it is true, live out our lives by following a traditional, spiritual path in one of the major religions, as a Good Householder. But our evolution would be much slower and it would take us many lifetimes to achieve the higher state of Being we seek.

Fourth Way schools appear for a time, carry out their work secretly and in silence, and then disappear.  But the efforts that students make whilst part of such a school can live on forever, and help the evolution of the entire universe.

The Work is certainly not for everyone, and the Fourth Way is not the only way to enlightenment. But it is certainly the quickest, and I remain eternally grateful that in this lifetime I was able to find and become part of such a school.

New Age Bullying - A Subtle Form Of Abuse

"You create your own reality".

"Illness is the result of faulty mental patterns".

"There are no accidents".

"There are no mistakes".

"You chose that lesson".

These statements all sound good, don't they? And so they are, when we apply them to ourselves in order to understand our own situation.  Looked at in the context of our own lives they can be very helpful. Nevertheless, they can't be applied in a general way to everybody. If we force these beliefs on other people, we risk becoming New Age bullies.  And unfortunately, many people, in a mistaken attempt to be "helpful", do just that.

The spread of New Age thinking, as popularized in "The Secret", in books by Wayne Dyer, Louise Hay, and many, many other best-selling authors, can be both deceptive and harmful when applied in a blanket way to people suffering from various illnesses or forms of abuse. It can be a form of abuse in itself, because it blames the victim and can make a bad situation even worse. There is a kernel of truth in all these beliefs, but the error comes when we try to interpret situations that other people are facing by assuming they caused their own problems.

Perhaps they did; perhaps not. We have no right to assume that they did, just because we ourselves are attempting to live more consciously and have some insight into our own circumstances. Most people are not sufficiently awake to be able to live by such truths, and to apply them across the board to everyone is unfair and hurtful.

Let's take a closer look.

First, the idea that "You create your own reality" is, indeed, true in so far as it applies to our own mental state. We know from the Work - and from other traditions - that we have the power to transform our thinking and to let go of negative emotions. If used in this context and applied to ourselves, as spiritual pilgrims, the statement is perfectly true. We have a right not to be negative, and we may all exercise that right whenever we choose, whatever the circumstance.

Unfortunately, it's also often applied to victims of disasters, to those suffering from abuse of various kinds, and to poor and oppressed peoples around the world.

I've even seen it used in connection with the Boxing Day Tsunami that claimed the lives of 250,000 people. How on earth did those innocent victims "create" that reality? Of course, they didn't. It was a natural disaster that was most likely the result of the Earth's response to a lack of higher hydrogens, as we say in the Work.

Nature will from time to time bring about such disasters when more fine energies are needed for the work of evolution, and people caught up in them have nothing to do with causing it. Some may have chosen such a way to perish, of their own free will, before they were born. It is hard to understand why, but it is not impossible. Perhaps they chose to do so in order to become more compassionate in their future lives. But they would have to be highly evolved in order to choose such a situation, and the vast majority were simply people who happened to be in the wrong place when Nature caused this convulsion. And none of them, not even the most spiritually advanced, caused such a catastrophe.

Nor do we have the right to blame victims of abuse. Once, in a terrible distortion of New Thought principles, it was even said about a ten-year-old victim of sexual abuse. She "chose this reality", the therapist insisted to the child's appalled mother. Clearly, this is not only insulting and untrue, it is a form of bullying. If we all create our own reality, nobody is to blame for harming anyone else. Suck it up. You chose it. Even if you're a child raped by her grandfather, as this young victim had been.

How dreadful that anyone should think this way.

Similarly, I once met a self-styled New Age counsellor who told a friend, who suffered from ovarian cancer, that "she had caused her illness through negative thinking".

What arrogant nonsense!

We know from the Work that we live in a fallen creation, and that we are subject to the Law of Accident. Our genes play a part in illness, as does our mental state, but a relatively minor one in many cases. My friend contracted ovarian cancer because she came from a family where there were several such cases in each generation, and at that time nobody had heard of gene therapy, or even knew which genes were faulty.

In a way, we do choose our lives. Before we are born, we each decide which type of life will be most helpful to our own development. This teaching has been a platform of esoteric thought ever since the time of Plato, whose magnificent poem "The Story of Er" illustrates this situation in a very clear way.

But we are also subject to accidents, which can occur at any time. Perhaps the cancer was part of my friend's choice; many people of evolved spirituality have suffered in this way. It may have been what my friend wanted her present life to contain. Equally, however, it may have been the result of an accidental exposure to toxins in the environment or in her food that switched on the genes which  precipitated the disease - things over which she had no control.

The Work tells us that our Being attracts our life. When we reach a certain level, we come under the Law of Fate rather than, as is the case for most people most of the time, the Law of Accident. But we have no way of telling which is which in the life of another person; the most we can do is offer comfort and support, and be compassionate in our approach to the sick and suffering.

And living under the Law of Fate will not necessarily mean living in luxury - far from it.

My friend with ovarian cancer died of her illness. It was, in the end, a way for her to come to terms with negative thought patterns which pervaded her family, and to forgive them, and let them go.  I saw her grow in consciousness throughout the year before she died. So it was, very possibly, part of her chosen life; but it was not necessarily that, and we must not make this assumption, because it's so hurtful to those who are ill. They may come to this realization themselves, but to force your beliefs on them is a subtle but very harmful form of bullying.

Similarly with the statements that there no accidents, no mistakes, no coincidences. Of course there are! For the more awake among us, these happenings may be used for our own spiritual growth, and I hope that is how all Work students - and teachers - take them. Many events which seem like accidents are in fact part of our Fate, but we can't always be sure when it concerns the life of another person.

Gurdjieff pointed out that the Law of Accident is the way most people live, and that we are under a great many restrictive laws down here on Planet Earth, so that bad things can and do happen to good people, as another book puts it. Most people do not create their own reality.

And again, when that phrase is used to blame people for their own poverty and oppression, it becomes bullying. It is exactly like Reaganomics, or Thatcherism! They blamed the poor for their own state. It's a central tenet of American belief that nobody need be poor, that everyone can better themselves, create prosperity, live abundantly. It's preached all day, every day, by tele-evangelists.

Americans love it, because it absolves society of the need to help the poor and sick among them. They don't need to pay higher taxes to provide help to the poor. Why should they, if the poor and sick are themselves to blame for their plight? But could there be anything more unChristian, more harsh, more judgmental than this belief?

It is certainly not what Christianity or the Work teaches.

In our lives, we need to examine our circumstances very carefully to see what negativity we ourselves may have caused by our harmful I's. We can do this, because everyone reading this blog is to some extent spiritually awakened, and able to take responsibility for their own lives.

But the great majority of people are simply unable to do this, and to blame them for their suffering is unfair and inhumane.

And when it comes to teaching "prosperity spirituality", that you can get a lot of "stuff" if you just wish hard enough, this is a stage that most people have outgrown by their early twenties.

Suffering has its place; so does health. We need to examine our own lives in the light of our understanding, but what we cannot, must not, do is to decide for another person that their suffering is "part of their chosen reality", and is therefore somehow their fault.

We may offer help, guidance, support. We can suggest different ways of living, encourage better education, show people who've actually made poor choices that there is a better way to live. But if they had been capable of so thinking without our help, they would have done so before they ended up in difficult situations!

We do not create ourselves, we are created. We can, if we are sufficiently awake, attract the circumstances which are best for our own development. But that will probably not lead to a life of comfort and ease, with wealth and good health in plenty! Then, we would simply stagnate.

So, please don't blame the victim. If they could have chosen otherwise, they would.

Your Higher Power

In AA, as in other Twelve-Step programmes, it's vitally important that we come to believe in a power greater than ourselves, a power that is loving and compassionate, that will restore order into our unmanageable lives.

In the Work, we have the plethora of diagrams, from the Step Diagram to the Ray of Creation, to illustrate the teachings of all mystical religions - that there is a Higher Power, called the Most Holy Sun Absolute in the Work, and by the names for God used by different, valid religious paths.

The Twelve Steps teach alcoholics and addicts how to begin to live a normal life, called in the Work the way of the Good Householder.

Mystical traditions and Fourth Way schools begin with this level of being, and teach those who are willing and able to follow their instructions how to live in such a way that we may ultimately be used by something higher, by God or Conscious Humanity, for transforming consciousness. In working on ourselves, it's not simply our own Being that is raised. Our eventual aim is to become useful in the great work of transformation and evolution throughout the universe.

We can see that the Fourth Way and the mystical path begin where AA and its offshoots leave off.

What both have in common - what is absolutely vital if any progress is to be made in either of these methods of raising our level of Being - is the concept of God, a Higher Power.

And this is where these ways differ from so much of what is taught in New Age thinking.

The appeal of a great deal of the New Age, whether it be casting candle spells, fortune-telling, rune magic and so on, is that the New Age follower is invited to become his or her own higher power. And this, of course, is impossible! We can't lift ourselves spiritually by our own bootstraps. We need help.

Exactly the same methods may be used by the mystic as by the New Age devotee; casting horoscopes, for example, which is used by Sufis and by New Agers alike, or carrying out rituals to impress truths upon the Higher Emotional Centre.

Yet the difference is in the Third Force, that which motivates them.

In the Work, we want to become more conscious not only for our own sake but for that of the rest of the Ray of Creation. We want to help God, as it were. Conscious Humanity, whom we may picture at the level of the Sun in our solar system, has given mankind huge possibilities, but wants something in return - our efforts.

Working for purely selfish ends, for life reasons, might be possible to begin with, but the student who continues to work just for themselves soon realizes that progress depends on a higher level, not solely on themselves and their own actions. We need help. We cannot "do", and we must acknowledge this fact before we can transcend the mi-fa gap and receive the help that is vital if we are to continue the octave of ascent.

In the Twelve-Step programmes, too, a newcomer may wish simply to stop drinking for his or own personal benefit, and although this can be enough to keep them going to meetings, it does not go very far. It is simply Step One, which says that we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, and that our lives had become unmanageable.

Immediately after Step One, however, come Steps Two and Three, which encourage us to seek the help of God as we understand Him.

Later, we learn from AA and the Big Book that the real purpose of becoming sober is so that we may be of maximum service to others and to God. This comes as a real - and salutary - shock to many.

Inevitably, alcoholics and addicts have already made more than one attempt to sober up before they ever enter the world of AA.  They tried doing it themselves, or with the help of family members or friends, and they failed.

They could not do it because they were trying to work on their drinking or drugging problem at a purely life level. But addiction is not simply a mental or physical illness; it is primary a spiritual illness. To succeed in the heroic task of achieving sobriety, help from a higher level - the level that most of us call God - is absolutely vital. We simply cannot do it by purely human means.

I want to draw your attention to the need for a Higher Power in both the Work and in AA because it is what differentiates them from so many New Age teachings which strive to make the follower the sole authority over his or her life.

Granted, there may be vague references to some greater power that can be invoked to help in the devotee's progress, but it is often very fuzzy, and written about as though it were within the follower's power to control; as if God Almighty could become the servant of the New Age practitioner.

This is one of the ways that we can know a false teaching from a true.

True religions, like the Twelve Step programmes, require that we conceive of a power infinitely greater than ourselves. That power is not simply strong. It is a loving, compassionate, merciful and just Power which asks that we live according to certain moral and ethical standards, that we do battle with our uncooperative I's (the real meaning of "jihad" in Islam, by the way); that we become willing to bend the knee, as it were, and surrender control to that God who alone can bring order out of chaos.

Without the help of God, we are bound to fail. With it, there are no limits to our progress except those that we ourselves create,

As AA says, we find that trying to do our own will always leads to failure and even death, whereas striving to do the Will of God is the gateway to life.

A Daily Reprieve

I've just been given a piece of good news from my diabetes specialist - she says I am officially no longer diabetic!

Having kept to a very strict diet for the last five years, I've managed to get my blood sugar levels down to those of a normal, non-diabetic person, and have kept them there for the last four. So I'm now merely suffering from "impaired glucose tolerance". I'll still continue to be monitored regularly for blood sugars, kidney and liver function, cholesterol and so on, but it does seem as though my current regime has effected a cure.

It is not, however, a complete, everlasting cure. If I don't keep to my diet, if I don't constantly monitor my food intake, if I put on weight, then I will at some point become diabetic again.

 To me, this is just like my alcoholism - I don't have a permanent cure, because there isn't one. I do have what the AA Big Book calls "a daily reprieve", and my continuing good physical health is dependent on my maintaining a "fit spiritual condition".

Our spiritual health, of course, depends on our relationship with God, with our Higher Power; on receiving help from Conscious Humanity.

The Work talks of Real I, and Buried Conscience. These are the means by which we may contact God in our daily lives, whatever name we choose to give this wholly beneficent and loving higher power.
We're told, moreover, that God will also speak to us through our Higher Centres, whether in images (as in dreams) or in thoughts, but the problem is that our minds are filled with so much low-level chatter for so much of the time that we simply can't hear what those centres are saying to us.

Marian Davison, my Work Teacher, explained it thus: We don't have to create or develop our Higher Emotional or Higher Intellectual Centres. They are already there within us. They constantly try to communicate with us, but we fail to listen, or mistake the voices of various I's in our lower centres for those coming from a higher level.

This is an easy mistake to make. On a minor level, we may all be tempted to think that giving in to this or that petty I is the "Will of God". On a major level, such errors bring about terrible destruction. Think of the "holy" war now being waged by radical Islamists in the Middle East and increasingly in the West. The homicidal bomber thinks he is doing the will of his god, as though any good, loving God would will the destruction of human beings, his precious creatures.

For an historical example, we may look at the dreadful, tyrannical way in which Henry VIII forced his will on his subjects, destroying churches and monasteries, putting innocent people to death and forcing the kingdom to break away from the Catholic church in the mistaken belief that his lust for a particular woman was a manifestation of the will of God.

Such mistakes can easily happen to us. If we don't make the Work our priority every day, we will soon lose the ability to hear our Higher Centres. This is why we must always begin the day with the Morning Exercise.

 No matter how busy our schedule may be, no matter what exciting - or boring! - events we may be planning, the Morning Exercise will ensure that we start out in our right mind. Then, during the day, we have a touchstone to which we may return, an experience of self-remembering that will remind of us of the state in which we ought to live each day.

It was explained to me early on in the Work that we are given a certain amount of higher hydrogens overnight, in sleep. By remembering ourselves at the very start of the day, and by returning to moments of greater consciousness during the daily round, we build on and increase this store so that we can - if we are diligent - end the day in a state of peace and equanimity. Gradually, this process enables us to create our Higher Being Bodies, which we must have if we are to progress further after this limited Earthly life.

It takes a long time before we are able to do this. And one of the main problems we all face is that we leak energy so easily! Someone says something which offends us, a motorist cuts in in front of us, we drop a favourite plate and break it - any small incident can lead to the loss of the entire day's store of higher hydrogens, and leave us depleted, with no energy at all.

Unless we learn to observe ourselves continually throughout the day we cannot avoid losing force in this way. But, after perhaps years of patient observation, we gradually come to know ourselves better and learn what takes energy from us, and how to avoid such situations; if, nevertheless, they do occur, we learn how to disidentify with the negative thoughts and emotions they elicit, stand back, and refuse to let our force be stolen by those I's.

It is, just like addiction and like diabetes, a daily reprieve. We are not "cured" of being negative, or of having various harmful I's. We always need to be on our guard against letting them take over. But eventually, just like the alcoholic or addict who makes each day an occasion for recovery, the new way of life can become a reality which brings about a deep change within us.

It takes many years. But it is, just like an addiction, a matter of living "one day at a time". We cannot have tomorrow's energy today; we have just enough help, just enough higher hydrogens, for this day. And living this day well, we are more likely to do so tomorrow, and tomorrow, and the day after that.