We've moved! Now we're settling in to our new life by the sea, in a little Arts and Crafts house which we're filling with our books, art and music. It will take months before we've finished putting it all together, but already we can confirm that it's a wonderful move, and that this is the place where we intend to spend the rest of our lives.
The Work tells us that our Being attracts our Life. After more than 40 years in the Work, half as a student and half also as a teacher, I can attest to the way in which our circumstances change according to our needs.
If we're living "in the Work", then Conscious Humanity arranges for us to have the very best surroundings for our own development. To someone brought up in a palace, this could well mean life in a tiny apartment with few belongings. Their task would be to learn to do without the material goods and luxuries that they may have depended on before they met the Work.
For me and for my husband, however, both of us in the Work, we've found that each house move has brought us different tasks and challengers, to meet which we have had to change and adapt, observing ourselves and externally considering those around us in order to live in harmony.
This final move - at least, we hope and pray that it proves to be so! - has given us the most beautiful surroundings, by the sea, in a lovely, genteel resort town with huge parks and lakes, and with plenty of resources of every kind.
We feel that we are at last planted in the place where we most truly belong, out of all the many we have inhabited in this life; different continents, different environments, and different neighbourhoods. All have given us material for our personal work. But here, in this little seaside town, we're more free than ever before to concentrate on our inner lives and our closest relationships, since we're now living near to our families.
Christianity has always taught that God will bring good out of every situation as long as we are honestly trying to do His will.
And the Work goes further: Conscious Humanity - all the great saints and holy ones, at the head of which is Jesus Christ - takes a keen interest in the wellbeing of anyone sincerely working on themselves.
They do so because our own personal transformation is of tremendous significance to them. When we evolve, when we become able to cooperate with them in aiding the evolution of our planet and ultimately of our part of the Ray of Creation, they rejoice greatly! They are constantly looking for men of women of "good will", as the Bible says, people who can join in the Great Work of the evolution of the universe.
And, because the Fourth Way is so demanding and intense, and can produce results in a much shorter time than any of the religions, Conscious Humanity willingly helps us by giving us the very best circumstances for our development.
They ensure that we will meet exactly those challenges that we need. And that does not mean we will have an easy time. Far from it!
Depending on our individual situation, we could be placed in financial hardship, causing us to work harder to support ourselves while at the same time keeping in mind our ultimate goal of spiritual growth; or we might find ourselves embroiled in difficult family situations, that encourage us to purify our emotional centre as quickly as possible so that we can externally consider others and see what needs to be done.
It might be that - as has happened to me quite frequently over the course of my 70-something years - we are called to physically move over large distances, so as not to become too dependent on our physical or human environment, and to be willing to leave behind everything familiar in order to follow our higher purpose.
The Work will do this for us, and while we always have a choice in these matters, we will slowly become more able to understand what's best for our development, and hence be able to adapt to many different circumstances - just as Gurdjieff did over his long and eventful lifetime.
Someone living according to an orthodox religious path will be able to see the hand of God at work in their lives, and will see what conduces to leading a good, conscientious life in the midst of challenges.
But the Work is quicker! It speeds things up! And if we can see what each change calls on us to do, how we can best develop in understanding and Being with every new situation, we will find ourselves one day in the best of all possible worlds - for us, that is.
Of course, this life is only one stage in our pilgrimage. Our development continues after physical death, though in exactly what form we cannot know. But we can trust that the unfoldment that has begun here and now will give us the very best circumstances now, and in eternity - and that, in God's wonderful celestial economy, what is good for us is ultimately good for the universe.
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