Four Types of Suffering: (1) Unnecessary suffering

Suffering is an inevitable part of being human. Gurdjieff called our Earth a pain factory, and said that while much suffering was unavoidable, there was also a great deal that was unnecessary and caused by our own defective psychology.

We are all born into families where parents suffer from negative emotions. We were not designed to be unhappy, but due to a flaw in Creation - described slightly differently by the Bible and by the Work, but essentially leading to the same situation - we have all imbibed negative emotions with our mothers' milk.

Our parents were negative because their parents were negative, and so on, back to the earliest human beings on Earth.

Why? Because we have disobeyed God, says the Bible, and inherited the fallen nature of Adam and Eve. The Work says we have all suffered from the consequences of "Kundabuffer", a mysterious organ which caused us to see everything the wrong way round.

Whatever the origin, the fact of suffering is undeniable.

There is a story of an old lady who begged the Buddha to relieve her suffering. Her child had died and she could find no relief from her distress. The Buddha told her to enquire at every house in the village until she found a family which had experienced no suffering; then she was to return to him.
The woman obeyed, but of course she found no such family, because every single household experienced sadness, sickness, poverty or another source of suffering; sometimes all three.
But her search taught her to live with her suffering, because she now realized it was part of the human condition.

We have been raised, most of us, by sleeping people. We are fortunate indeed if our parents were Good Householders. Today, the zeitgeist leaves most people in limbo; their religious faith is being rubbished in the media and in society at large; we are surrounded by a sea of technology, most of which drowns us in trivia; we struggle to make ends meet in a fiercely materialistic and selfish culture; and our world is threatened with catastrophe from climate change, pollution, and wars.

A family headed by Good Householders teaches children to lead their lives without undue fear or anxiety, but with circumspection. Until about sixty years ago, most societies had an accepted religion, and whatever abuses may have been committed in its name, the overall effect was good. People knew there were natural laws and written commandments about our behaviour, and their consciences were less buried, less confused than is becoming the case for many today.

Most people believed in God. This belief helped them cope with the daily sufferings and stresses life placed upon them, and consequently they were able to teach their children to bear such suffering with equanimity, yielding neither to despair nor to false optimism.

But now, with Christianity and Judaism being persecuted in many areas of the world, and with the whole idea of religion being quietly abandoned in favour of materialism, even the level of Good Householder is now very hard to reach.

And even when parents are Good Householders, they may still be at the mercy of many irrational fears and anxieties, or subject to genetic flaws which create addictions and mental illnesses. The flaw in Creation, "original sin", gives rise to imperfections at every level.

Imagine, then, the state of children raised in families which are not Good Householders. In many segments of society, this is the norm. People have no ideals to pass on to their children, no common behavioural standards which all are expected to observe. Children are at the mercy of their parents' every passing whim, every fit of temper, every manifestation of addiction - alcoholism, codependence, and many, many more.

Or, as Philip Larkin said,

They f*** you up, your Mum and Dad,
They may not mean to, but they do;
They give you every fault they had,
Then add some new ones, just for you.

Indeed. And so many now reach adulthood in a state of emotional chaos, having been given a neglectful, muddled upbringing with no worthwhile goals to aim for except the survival of the fittest.

It is this type of suffering, our neuroses, defence mechanisms, phobias, aversions, addictions and codependence, that Gurdjieff tells us is unnecessary. And thank God that it is.

This is where counselling and therapy can be of enormous help. A wise, insightful, accepting counselor helps clients to understand the internal sources of their suffering, and by seeing them, to be increasingly more free of them.

Counseling is not the Work, of course, as I explained in an earlier post. But it can help people to reach the level of living as Good Householders.

AA and other Twelve-Step programmes are also vital resources for those beset by addictions. They have saved countless lives and helped millions of people to free themselves from addiction and become Good Householders.

The suffering which comes from internal disorder is entirely unnecessary. We can, and must, sacrifice it if we are to make any progress towards living responsibly, let alone to be able to work on ourselves.

If things are not quite as bad as that, if we can manage to see our troublesome negative emotions and identify the I's associated with them, we can begin to make changes. Whether or not we've had counseling, an intuitive Work teacher can help the student see these I's, and offer tasks which can help overcome them. Gradually, the negative emotional I's die away; they still live on, in the basement, but gradually they become less and less influential, like vicious dogs whose barking can still be faintly heard but who can no longer bite us.

The Work tells us that we have a right not to be negative. Not, you note, that we have no right to be negative. We have every right, if we wish, to carry on objecting, complaining, being abused, being self-righteous or angry. The whole gamut of negative emotions is paraded every day on television, in the form of soap operas; clearly, many people still enjoy seeing them and can identify with them.

But we, having begun to work on ourselves, can see how useless such emotions are, how they leak away our precious energy and cause us no end of trouble from their interference in our lives. We don't judge ourselves, nor do we criticize ourselves, for being as we are. We can't help it; we didn't cause it, and we are not to blame for the state we are in when we begin this work.

Once embarked on it, however, we see more and more how such suffering must be given up completely. We can allow negative emotions no voice in our lives. We don't repress them; we simply look, and in the light they gradually start to shrink in power.

When my family and I first came to live in Atlanta, we rented a studio in a rather run-down apartment complex. It all looked all right in the daylight, but in the dark, if you went into the kitchen, there were dozens of cockroaches crawling all over the surfaces. It was a nightmare. One remedy was to switch the light on, and leave it on. They all slunk back to their crevices, and as long as the light was on, they didn't come back.

This is how it is for us in the Work. We try, as far as possible, to live our lives with the lights on. Then those I's which cause us unnecessary suffering will, over time, leave us alone.

The Shock of Step Three

Step Three says we "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him." (Italics in the original).

Sounds easy, doesn't it? We don't have to do very much at this point, merely "make a decision". But in that sentence is concealed a major shock for many people. We have to absolutely give up on the idea that we can control anything, except, in limited ways, ourselves.

We can't control other people, places and things, as we saw in Step Two. Moreover, in Step One we realized that we were powerless over alcohol, and our lives had become unmanageable. We'd made a complete mess of our lives. We'd failed the people who needed us, we'd neglected our work and our household, we'd repeatedly risked everything so we could carry on drinking, drugging or behaving codependently, and we'd forgotten the all-important truth - maybe, indeed, we never knew it for the truth - that we can do nothing without help from our Higher Power.

In America, I found that most people in AA had no problem in believing in God. Despite vigorous efforts from secularists, Christianity there is far from dead. Most people in the rooms of AA in America take Jesus as their Higher Power; many take God the Father; the relatively few agnostics or atheists take the group as their Higher Power.

In England, we're well on the way to discarding religion completely - except, of course, for Islam, which everyone knows they'd better show overt respect for, even if they don't know anything about it, as otherwise they could be targeted by militants.

At English AA meetings, I did find that today most alcoholics here do accept the concept and the reality of a personal God, whether they call that God Jesus, Our Father, or simply "the Almighty". But there's a growing and highly vociferous number of resentful newcomers who are unwilling to even try to believe in any Higher Power. Reluctantly, they may accept the group as such, but many have been so turned off by having misguided religious ideas forced on them at an early age that as adults they have very little faith in anything.

And yet, despite all evidence to the contrary, they still have faith in themselves! So many newcomers and older "dry drunks" persist in believing that they just had a run of bad luck, that next time will be different, that they can stay sober by themselves, with the occasional meeting from time to time because their counsellor recommends it, but with no submission at all to a Higher Power.

What arrogance! What insanity!

 Relying on ourselves was what got us into our mess in the first place. Relying on ourselves to get sober and stay sober is like asking the drunk on the corner to take over our lives for us - because that's who we are, just another common-or-garden drunk, or codependent, or addict. The I's that speak to us from our inner addict tell we can manage quite well without any sort of God. That God is a man-made idea, rather than Man being God's idea! And then they relapse, and have to rethink their position.

The first Three Steps have been summed up as "I can't; God can; I think I'll let Him".

But first we need to get out of the driver's seat! That alcoholic, that codependent, is driving our bus for us, so we need to get off and ask the God of our understanding to please take over.

Without the necessary humility we will never reach this Step. There are many people in AA who are not really recovering at all, but simply doing the first two steps over and over because they can't bring themselves to acknowledge the existence of a loving God, let alone humbly ask that God to run their lives for them.

In many cases, it is sheer laziness that prompts this blind attitude. If we really don't believe in a personal God, have we even tried? Have we prayed for faith? Have we talked to our sponsor and asked how he or she came to believe in God? (Tip: if the sponsor doesn't believe at all, find another sponsor fast).

Reading the chapter "We Agnostics" in the AA Big Book can be very enlightening. Others have faced the same dilemma and overcome it. Sometimes people have had startling spiritual experiences that immediately confirm the reality of God. Mostly, we find Him through our intuitions, understandings, through wise words heard at a meeting, from our sponsor, or by reading spiritual books and keeping an open mind.

But the open mind is a necessity here. We can't just close it and say we are own Higher Power. Our lives up to this point have shown how wrong that is.

And the God to whom we entrust our lives must be a loving, compassionate God, someone who wants the very best for us, who can be our best friend and inner guide, leading us gently out of the chaos of addiction to the sanity of sobriety.

So in order to be able to sincerely take Step Three, we must have the first two steps firmly in place. And then, if we're agnostic or atheist, we vow to keep our minds open to the possibility of God, and meanwhile place our trust in the group or in AA as a whole.

If we persevere, most of us will come to believe in that God and will have a direct, personal relationship with Him.

As the Big Book says, "May you find Him now".

And that experience of God, when it comes (and it will come for those who really want it and persevere in their efforts to find Him) is a wonderful shock! How happy we are to have been wrong!

Arrogance and Humility

When we begin the Work, or when we come into recovery from addiction, we're told that complete honesty is necessary. But we can't bear to see ourselves as we truly are. We don't want to let go of the false image we have of ourselves, and we lie constantly to ourselves and to everyone else about who we really are.

We know that the beast who lives in our mental dungeon is ugly, destructive and fatal to our spiritual progress. But we want others to think well of us. We want to impress our Work teacher, our fellow students, our counsellor or our sponsor. We think that if they knew the truth, the real truth, they would reject us. Perhaps even God would reject us! So we hide, and duck, and dive, and look away.

And what drives that denial is the arch-enemy of our spiritual life, Pride.

Pride is considered by the church to be the very worst of all sins, for good reason. Pride fuels the engine of denial. Pride tells us we really are our Imaginary I, our False Personality, that hypocritical creature who wants to impress everyone with its knowledge and its power, its fine achievements.

It's Pride that keeps us from being really honest. We can't bear the truth, so we shut it away and slam the door. No one will ever know, we tell ourselves. We can pretend we are the wonderful person that we'd like to be, that kind, caring, insightful man or woman who impresses everyone with their knowledge and understanding.

But the truth keeps intruding, like an annoying guest who keeps knocking on our shut door until finally we open that door a crack. And more often than not, bang it shut again.

The reality is portrayed by Holman Hunt in his picture of Christ as the Light of the World, saying "Behold, I stand at the door and knock".  In that picture, the door has no handle on the outside. Christ can only knock; we ourselves must open the door. 

And the miracle is that sometimes we feel secure enough to actually begin to admit the truth to ourselves, to let that light in, the light that heals as it shines. Enough light is needed for our spirit to grow, but that light can be so very painful when we first allow it in.

Our pride, our vanity, our arrogance is what most keeps us from seeing ourselves as we really are.

We like to pretend that we don't need any help from anyone, either human nor divine. We can do it all ourselves. We can pull ourselves up spiritually with our bootstraps! 

This attitude, so common and so fatal to progress, reflects a sort of Thatcherite approach to the spiritual path. It is the very opposite of humility, the one quality we need above all others before we can begin to grow.

Humility comes from the word "humus", the Latin name for the topsoil, the only layer which is fertile and fruitful. Humus must be worked in order to nourish plants, and we must be humble enough to let the Work form us from within, so that False Personality can die and Essence may grow.

In one of Marian's groups, a student claimed credit for writing an admittedly well-researched and clearly written paper on astronomy, which she read aloud to the rest of us.

Marian thanked her, and the student replied, "Yes, I know I have a good intellectual centre, so I can be pleased with that, can't I?"

"No," Marian said. "You can be proud of the efforts you made, only that. Your intellectual centre was given to you by God. You didn't make yourself."

Taken aback, the student was silent, and we all digested the new impressions that we'd just received.

Because, of course, what our teacher said was absolutely true. We hadn't made ourselves! We were all university students, all secretly proud of our achievements, but suddenly we saw that we needed to be more grateful, more humble, for the intellectual gifts God had allotted to us.

The attitude of arrogance underlies the whole problem of admitting that we cannot "do" in the Work. It's exactly the same for AA or NA members when they confront the reality of their powerlessness.

And it's why, in my view, so many New Age self-help books crowd the shelves of every bookstore. They sell well, because they lie to us and tell us we can do anything we put our minds to. And it's not true. Because we want to feel powerful, we buy the books and absorb their flattering contents, and pretend that we're inventing ourselves, all by ourselves with no help from anyone else, not even God.

Of course, it doesn't work, so out goes the old book and in comes the new, the latest version of this ancient lie that will, we hope, this time prove true. We can "do", we do have power, we are quite all right. We can remake ourselves, all by ourselves. And we are all perfectly fine people, anyway.

The Work never tells us that we are fine just as we are. It says the opposite; that we are not fine, but that we can learn to become better people, more insightful, more able to live by our Essence values and be of service to our Creator, as long as we are willing to  keep looking at ourselves and stop hiding from the truth.

And, like the Twelve-Step programme, it shows us that truth very gradually and gently, without judging or condemning us. We are as we are because, without help from a higher level, that is all that can happen. We cannot change ourselves on our own. 

But when we reverse our attitudes, when we become humble enough to ask for help, that help is always given. It comes from Conscious Humanity, from the level above life, and it may be expressed in an intuition, an insight, a wise word from a teacher or sponsor who's progressed further along the path than we have, and can see with clarity where we are and what we are like, because they were once like that too.

The higher blends with the lower to actualize the middle, Gurdjieff taught. Practically, help from that higher level blends with the lower - ourselves - to bring us to a higher level than before. Without that help, we could never reach it but would always remain at the level of life. We can change our looks, our jobs, our homes, anything at all on a life level, yet nothing will change spiritually for us until we ask for that help from above. And then, everything can change.

As our Being grows, so will our life circumstances change. The Work will arrange for us to have exactly what we need for our best progress. But it all depends on our having that basic humility.

That is why Jesus said that the meek, the humble, were blessed, because they would inherit the Earth. Only those who admit their powerlessness will ever be able to achieve real progress in the spiritual life. 

A Power Greater Than Ourselves - for everyone

The second Step of the Twelve Step programme says that we "came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity".

That Power is usually conceived as being God, or, as AA puts it - knowing that alcoholics are incredibly stubborn and self-willed - the "God of our understanding". This phrase, of course, allows the recovering alcoholic (and anyone else with a problem of addiction, which is most of us) to think of God in a way that makes sense to him or her. The saying is, "You can always tell an alcoholic, but you can't tell him much". And that's so true! AA is full of mavericks, men and women who find it very hard to accept anything another person tells them. And this includes advice about God. So, although AA was founded on Christian principles, it doesn't insist that our Higher Power has to fit any Christian denomination's idea of God.

But our Higher Power does have to be a Power that is on our side, that loves us unconditionally and wants only the very best for us. To me, only the Christian and Jewish God, God described as an infinitely loving Father, fits the bill. The Christian God has the added advantage in having the person of Jesus Christ, a real, living human being as well as God, as a model for our behaviour and our ideas about God. Nobody could be more loving, more concerned with our wellbeing, than Jesus. For those of us who believe in Him, including this writer, He is the God of my understanding who's always with me, who will never leave me or forsake me, who was there in my after-death experience and who emanated love, compassion, and understanding as He allowed me to return to life to look after my children.

Jesus shows us the knowable side of the unknowable Great Creator. He tells us, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father". And we can all see Him with our spiritual sight, if we wish to; all we need do is ask Him to show Himself to us.

But not everyone can bring themselves to even try to believe in this God. Many people have had a harsh religious upbringing, which portrayed God as the great magistrate in the sky, ready to impose fines and punishments at the slightest infringement of his rules. Others, in perhaps an even worse situation, grew up without any religious education at all. They don't know the Bible, the Koran, the Hindu texts or Buddhism. They think men and women are lonely beings, set adrift in an uncaring universe. There is no help and no hope for us in this picture. Thank God it isn't true.

Some think of God as an ineffable force, so far above us that we can't conceive of him or understand His ways. There is some truth in this. God the Creator is that unknown, unknowable energy, of whom nothing can be said, who can be defined only in negative terms - not this, not that. In the Work, the Ray of Creation shows the whole ladder of being, with, at the very top, the Absolute, His Endlessness, the great force beyond all knowing.

But thanks to the work of Jesus Christ, who created the Side Octave to the Sun for us, we have a picture of God as a perfect human being to whom we can truly relate and who offers a way through our struggles and temptations. He helps us at every step of the way, because He wants only our highest and best good. He is always there for us, if we call on Him. The Catholic and Orthodox Christian traditions speak of a "treasury of merit" stored up from the sacrifice and suffering of Jesus and all the saints, the great men and women who have heroically imitated Him and contributed their own sacred efforts to renew and repair the world through the ages. Many are known, many more are anonymous.

In the Work, we speak of higher hydrogens, special particles of energy created by this type of effort, that we can make as we remember ourselves, sacrifice our self-will, our False Personality, and suffer the remorse of conscience that comes from seeing ourselves as we truly are.

When I came into AA after many years in the Work, I had no problem at all with thinking of God as Jesus, and understanding the operation of grace and mercy that had preserved my life and enable me to reach the point of recovery.

But for those suffering alcoholics and addicts who want to work the Steps but who can't find a God they can believe in, then - at least at first - the idea of the AA group, or AA as a whole, as their Higher Power will work very well. AA, a group of recovering alcoholics who've found a way to sanity, has much more power than the newly-dry drunk. The wisdom and knowledge that AA has accumulated are available to anyone who asks, and a personal, individual sponsor can offer specific advice and recommendations as the alcoholic begins to climb the ladder of the steps.

Some ideas of the "Higher Power" are bizarre, however. There's one story - possibly apocryphal - of the just-sobered-up alcoholic in my home town of Bournemouth who claimed that her higher power was a yellow double-decker bus! She really believed it at the time. She justified her choice by saying the bus was much bigger than she was, had a lot of horse-power, and would kill her if she didn't get out of the way! Fortunately, it was not long before someone offered to be her temporary sponsor and quickly set her right.

Another new recruit to AA saw "nature" as his higher power. He thought of the healing work of nature, repairing our wounds and fostering young animals. But someone pointed out that nature was also heartless and cruel, and the tsunami that killed 250,000 people early in this century proved how accurate that was. So the new recruit, and the girl who'd come up with the "yellow bus" idea, were persuaded to take the group as their higher power, and listen to the advice that others gave.

We certainly need a Higher Power if we are to recover and stay sober. We need to be able to draw on a fund of wisdom greater than our own very limited experiences, and we also need to feel the love and caring of a kind, compassionate God. This love, this caring, is often felt in an AA or NA group. It is felt there more often than in many churches. It is the beginning of the true Christian community, or the society of the Friends of God, as the Sufis put it.

And everyone, whether alcoholic or addict or just a normal person trying to live according to their conscience, needs that.

Powerless - On Taking Step One

"We admitted we were powerless over alcohol ... that our lives had become unmanageable".

That simple declaration, Step One in the Twelve-Step Programme, is almost impossible for the drinking alcoholic to make. He thinks he is powerful, and that he can control his drinking. He could stop any time he wanted, he just doesn't want to! Add to that a terror of what might happen if he were actually to give up his alcohol, and he simply can't bring himself to utter Step One.

When I was still drinking, I believed against all the evidence that alcohol was the only way I could cope with my chaotic life. If I were to stop drinking, I would fall apart! No matter how many friends and family members told me I was an alcoholic and needed to go to AA, I refused to consider the idea. Me? An alcoholic? How could that be true? I had a good job, fine house, nice car, expensive clothes, a maid and a gardener. In counselling speak, I was FINE (F----d up, Insecure, Neurotic and Egotistical).

Alcoholics stop drinking only when they reach their rock bottom. Yet, waiting for that catastrophic event, whatever it may be, is exactly what may kill them. And it does kill millions of alcoholics, all over the world, those who never find their way into the AA rooms, and those who do, but relapse.

If you're wondering about someone you know whom you suspect of being an alcoholic - or perhaps you're thinking about your own alcohol consumption and want to check whether you can really control it - there's a simple test.

For two weeks, you have either one, two or three alcoholic drinks every evening. You pick the number before you begin the test. And then for fourteen consecutive evenings you must stick to that number, no more and no less. For me, that would have meant two glasses of wine each evening. Someone larger and used to greater alcohol consumption would probably be able to have three, but it's a good idea to discuss the amount with your doctor first. (It was my own doctor, an addictions specialist, who suggested this test to me when I first began to admit my secret drinking habit).

You must not have more than the number you choose, but neither must you have less. You must consume the drink of your choice every evening, with no nights off. And if you can manage to do this for two whole weeks in succession, you may well not be an alcoholic.

If you succeed, take the test for another two weeks. Anyone who can manage to control their drinking for an entire month, drinking every night with no abstinences or excesses, is almost certainly not an alcoholic.

I didn't make it past the first four days.

An alcoholic finds it much easier to abstain from drinking altogether than to control their habit. This test is not a scientific experiment, but it does give a very good indication of someone's drinking status. If he fails (and please note I'm using the masculine gender only for convenience, because it applies just as much to women), he may consider that just possibly he might be an alcoholic.  If he then begins to go to meetings and work the Steps, he can avoid much heartache and perhaps even save his own life.

But most alcoholics carry on drinking until that terrible rock-bottom hits them, and they're forced to assess their own drinking behaviour from a hospital bed, a divorce court or a prison cell.

It's not only the alcohol that we alcoholics can't control: it's our entire lives. When we sober up long enough to see the messes we've made of everything, our broken family relationships, our lost jobs, our financial and emotional bankruptcy, we begin to get a glimpse of what powerlessness means.

And paradoxically, it brings with it a gleam of hope.

The moment I began to think that I might be an alcoholic was after a botched, drunken suicide attempt. Afterwards, I couldn't remember why I'd felt so anguished, what had happened to precipitate it; I'd had an alcoholic blackout, and all memory of that night had vanished.

Coming round the next day, I picked up the AA Big Book and read it through, cover to cover. And then I went to a meeting. That was 25 years ago, by the grace of God, and I'm still sober. I wouldn't get my "control" back for anything! I'm really, really happy to acknowledge that I'm powerless over alcohol and over people, places and things. Because that means I don't have to try to control it any more - any of it.

I couldn't control it anyway, but how I tried! I switched from one type of drink to another, from wine to beer to vodka and back to wine. I tried only drinking with meals. I tried staying sober for one day a week. I moved to a different apartment. Nothing worked. As counsellors say, "Wherever you go, there you are". And there I was, in a mess of my own manufacture, full of self-pity and resentment, and I would drink again, and I'd be back at square one, all control gone.

These days, I never try to control anything except my own state of mind. That is where the Work comes in. For alcoholics, the full Twelve Steps will take us to the level of what the Work calls Good Householder. We will be able to manage our feelings, and our circumstances will begin to improve as we apply our newly sober minds to solving our very real problems.

Although I was in the Work before I began drinking, the Work alone was not enough to help me stop. My Work teacher wasn't an alcoholic, and I needed practical advice from people who were. Once I began to climb back up towards the Householder state, I could put all that I'd learned about the Work into practice, but first I had to be free of the killer addiction that had gripped me.

Denial, as everyone now knows, is part of the disease of addiction. It's the only disease which tells you that you don't have it. That's where the rock-bottom event kicks in, because when we're brought face to face with the dreadful consequences of our drinking, the wall of denial begins to be breached. A chink of daylight is let in.

Powerlessness is real, and for the sober, recovering alcoholic it's a huge relief. I don't have to try to control the world any more! God didn't make me the general manager of the Universe, after all.
What a blessing!

Esoteric Studies and the Work

Do esoteric studies have any place in the Work? Of course! The Work itself is called Esoteric Christianity, with the emphasis on both words. We believe that much of what Jesus taught was never written down, but preserved in an oral tradition which was driven underground due to persecution from religious authorities. As that danger receded, so the secret traditions were gradually allowed to emerge. But only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were conditions favorable to releasing greater amounts of knowledge into the public domain. 

The Work, the Sufi sciences, the Tarot, the Kabbalah and astrology were all part of this great stream of "lost knowledge" which surfaced en masse at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

As a practising Jew, Jesus certainly knew all about the Kabbalah, gematria and astrology. Although there are many warnings in the Bible about using astrology and occult methods for divination, they and other studies are perfectly permissible when used to achieve more understanding, both about oneself and the Universe. Jesuits and Franciscans use astrology, the enneagram and the kabbalah in this way. The Kabbalah, for example, teaches that the ten sephirot on the Tree of Life are the energies of God, which are released to the world in an intricate dance of permutation and transmutation. By studying them, we can find our own personal path as well as better understand the workings of the hidden realms of heaven. The Kabbalah says that each soul has its root in a particular sephirah, and by studying that sephirah we can better understand our own self and its special mission in this life.

In the Work, we don't attempt to use these studies in order to change anything in the world. We know we cannot "do". We can, however, deepen our understanding of how we think and react, we can begin to change ourselves accordingly, and we can better understand how events and processes in the external world are actually brought about. When we become more conscious, our circumstances do begin to change. As more and more people achieve higher states of consciousness, the world as a whole will reflect this change. This is the only way, G taught, that the planet will ever change for the better. Political attempts to bring it about are doomed to failure, although they may stave off catastrophe for a while. But a change in people's collective consciousness is the only certain way to achieve any real, lasting progress. That is part of our responsibility in the Work, and it is vast.

With my teacher, Marian, our Work group studied the Kabbalah, learning the Hebrew alphabet and its correspondences so that we could practise gematria and understand some of the hidden meanings in the Bible. We studied the Tree of Life in depth, and found many connections and implications that we had not suspected, all of which greatly helped our personal work.

We studied the Tarot, using the private writings of Marian's own teacher, Beryl Pogson, and the book "Meditations on the Tarot", by an anonymous author whom I recently learned was Valentin Tomberg, the anthroposophist who converted to Catholicism. Tomberg's depth of understanding was profound. He writes about mysticism, about the different layers of meaning in the Tarot, and of how we are to understand each card in the Major Arcana. He relates the whole to Christianity, and shows how, through studying and working on ourselves in relation to the Tarot, we can see our own level of Being and the direction in which we need to move. He also points out the dangers inherent in such studies, and how to avoid becoming ego-inflated, which is always a problem for students of the Tarot  and similar subjects.

In addition to all this, we studied Plato; the neo-Platonists such as Marsilio Ficino who, in the Renaissance, led an outpouring of suppressed, underground knowledge into the consciousness of the time, in spite of repeated attempts at suppression from the church authorities; Dante; Goethe; Shakespeare; the New Testament in Greek; and astrology.

The Nicoll groups have always been known for their scholarly approach to esoteric studies, and have led the way in promoting them. Not all groups studied them at such depth, but we all worked on them with the aim of increasing our knowledge and understanding. 

But there are, as I've said, dangers in studying these matters. The church always warned of the problems inherent in divination. First, we may be wrong, and cause unwonted distress; second, we may be right, and succumb to ego-inflation, as Tomberg pointed out, which cuts off our spiritual progress; and third, relying on these methods takes us away from reliance on God, and this is the greatest danger. 

In the Work, we learn to accept that what happens to us comes from the Will of God, through Conscious Humanity. In order to change our lives, we have to change our level of Being. There are no magical short cuts, and in any case we don't necessarily know what is best for us. Jesus told us that whatever we asked for in His name would be granted us, but that implies some understanding of what He wants for us, and we need to subject our own small wills, composed of little, insignificant, contradictory I's, to the great Will of God, which arranges things for our best and highest good.

For example, I frequently use astrology to help me see patterns in my own life and the lives of my family. Rather than looking at how events are likely to unfold, which, for the above reasons, is a rather foolish and simplistic way to practice astrology, I like to concentrate on the birthchart and on progressions and transits relating to the natal planets. These changes indicate psychological states, and can help me understand what's really going on during particular periods of time. I do consider general conditions, such as retrograde planetary periods, noting how they might affect events in my own life and what I can do about it, but this is very different from trying to predict the future. Nothing is written in stone, because everything depends on our attitudes. Astrology can help, but, as Max Heindel says, "The stars only incline, they do not compel".

The birthchart is a map of the Essence. As such, it's invaluable for understanding our own Essence qualities and challenges, as well as those of other people. We look at the Sun in particular, its sign, house and the planetary aspects to it; but other factors, including the Rising Sign, the Moon and the placement of other planets, are all important in the overall makeup of the Essence. 

Using astrology rightly brings huge benefits. Simply contemplating the chart can bring insights. The more we study it, the more we are shown, and so it is with the other esoteric subjects I've mentioned in this post. All are invaluable when used aright.

Overall, however, as humble seekers we remember we are dependent on God for whatever happens to us. He it is who created the stars and planets, who inspired the artists of the Tarot and the philosophers of the Kabbalah. All comes from, and returns to, Him, the Source of all.

In the Work we know too that every event, however pleasant or otherwise, that happens to us is meant for our benefit, to increase our consciousness. And as long as we remember this, we may study esoteric subjects as much as we like, for they will do us nothing but good. 

 

Problems with the Golden Dawn and its offshoots

"I can call spirits from the vasty deep!"

"Why, so can I or so can any man:
But will they come, when you do call for them?"

- Wm Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1

This little snatch of dialogue between Glendower and Hotspur in Shakespeare's drama shows how ancient is the desire to control the world through supernatural means. From the earliest writings in the Bible to the present day, the supernatural world has become an obsession.

Today, every teen seems to want to have "magic powers". Thanks to the
 plethora of fantasy TV and films, the myth that we can obtain power over others and over events by simply uttering magic words or casting a spell has become very pervasive. The recent surge in interest may have started with Harry Potter, but unfortunately it didn't end there.

When Gurdjieff met Alistair Crowley, the notorious Golden Dawn "magician", he entertained Crowley at the Prieure in Paris. At the end of his short visit, Gurdjieff told Crowley to leave and never to return, because he was "all filthy inside".

Ever since, the Work has been very careful to screen out those seeking such powers, and warns new students that the path of ritual magic is harmful to their development. But why, exactly? Don't we all use rituals and visualizations in our daily lives? What's wrong with taking it further?

The short answer is that the ultimate aim of the Work, and of all the religions that Gurdjieff recognized as genuine, is to align our small will with the Will of God, the Most Holy Sun Absolute, so that we can assist in the evolution of our planet and solar system and in the process become ever more enlightened. In doing so, we have to make our Personality passive and our Essence active. False Personality must be eliminated, as it has no place in religion or in the Work and our Imaginary I must be discarded so that we may one day reach the level of Real I, the sacred temple within each of us where alone we may meet God.

All Work teachings are designed with this aim in mind. False Personality and life aims - the desire for money, possessions, power, sex, and so on - have no place in the Work. It's the same with Christian, Jewish and Sufi teachings, the paths I know best. New Sufis are warned not to seek "siddhis", or magical powers such as clairvoyance, influence over others, or material benefits, by using magic rituals, and if they persist in practising them they are told to leave their Order. I once witnessed two people being expelled from a Sufi conference precisely because of this. They were quite well known figures in the world of "magic", and Pir Vilayat told them publicly they were not genuine seekers but spies, and must leave at once. They did.

In the Work, life aims are not our Third Force, although as we develop insight and control over our own different I's we will naturally find it easier to reach life goals. But here, too, would-be magicians are not tolerated. In Haifa, I witnessed the public expulsion of one such student; in London, I was present at another, that of a member actually in my own Work group. He had sought to use the "magic powers" he had cultivated in Golden Dawn type rituals in order to seduce women. He was found unworthy to continue in the Work, because, as my teacher explained, "The Work doesn't want such types and has no place for them".

So-called magical rituals are aimed at making the practitioner feel powerful. The groups which encourage them are full of individuals who believe that they need to harness supernatural powers in order to fulfil their dreams. In real spirituality, however, whether it's the Work, a traditional religion, or a Twelve Step group, it's the other way round: we must accept our utter powerlessness, our nothingness, our dependence on God, before we can begin to become enlightened. Golden Dawn type groups encourage the reverse.

Many seekers who find their way into "magical" groups are motivated simply by the wish to learn more about esoteric subjects and increase their understanding, and if they don't stay too long with the society, and if they avoid practising ceremonial magic, they can emerge unharmed. But simply being a member of such an organization exposes them to the subtle promotion of magical rituals, and if students remain with them too long they may well succumb to the attraction, and set off on a harmful path.

Many websites exist today which attempt to lure in vulnerable individuals with the promise of material success. They cloak themselves in spiritual language, but actually encourage a materialistic outlook. In this respect they remind one of the more obnoxious tele-evangelists who tell viewers that if they send in their money to the Rev. So-and-So, and pray for prosperity, God will make those viewers rich!

Ritual, of course, is an important part of religious ceremonies. It helps create the right atmosphere for worshippers to become aware of God, to reach their deeper I's. Counsellors may also use rituals  to help clients achieve psychological freedom and insight. But there is nothing supernatural about such therapeutic use. Participants are not required to call up spirits, or forsake their own religious beliefs.

The rituals and the methods the Golden Dawn style groups use try to change the individual's circumstances from without, rather than from within. Students of ceremonial magic align themselves with material forces and associated spirits, and as they get more deeply into the practices they strengthen their False Personalities.

And worse, there really are supernatural powers - evil, malignant psychic entities - which exist on other planes and which can obsess and take over the unwary practitioner.

Groups affiliated with the Golden Dawn and its offshoots often claim to be serving "the Light", or some such vague concept. But they never specify what the aim of this "light" is, and such a "light" is most certainly not the light of God.

In the Work, in true religions, as in any genuine, esoteric school from earliest Egypt to the present day, the aim is to do the Will of God on earth. That God is a benevolent, compassionate Being who wants the very best for His followers' spiritual development. He may endow us with various supernatural gifts as we grow in our knowledge and understanding, in order that we in turn may be of greater service to others, but He is most definitely not an archetype or spirit to be summoned up at will for selfish purposes. He is not at our command; we belong to Him, not the other way round.

All true esoteric teachings, as well as the great religions, stress the role of suffering in helping us to make spiritual progress. Suffering is not only an inescapable part of life,  it is also the very means by which we grow. We have to sacrifice our unnecessary suffering, Gurdjieff taught, and to accept the conscious, voluntary suffering which comes to us when we see ourselves as we really are. Christ gave us the supreme example of sacrifice through love. When we imitate Him, we create a very fine spiritual substance which the Work calls "higher hydrogens", and which is necessary for our own progress and that of the universe. There is no other way but suffering in which we may create it.

No Golden Dawn type path would ever consider suffering and remorse of conscience to be part of their teachings. Their members want only to escape from such states. But without this suffering, our Essence cannot grow and we cannot reach Real I.

Magical rituals and the beliefs that go with them encourage the building up of False Personality at the expense of Essence. Eventually, such a path will make spiritual progress impossible.

The Golden Dawn and their imitators offer the unwary student a sham path to a sham god. They claim to be spiritual, but in fact worship materialism and a material spirit. At best, practitioners of magic rituals find themselves leading lives shorn of real spiritual comfort, at worst ending up in the clutches of the Father of Lies.

The most notorious ritual magicians in the 20th century were, of course, Alistair Crowley and Adolf Hitler's Nazi occult clique. Witnesses of Hitler's appearances have described how they saw him taken over by a powerful spirit as he addressed his audiences.  I'm describing extreme cases here, of course, but the danger of occult possession is ever present when people dabble in such practices.

Followers of this way risk losing all possibilities of spiritual progress in this life and in future lives. This is what is meant by the legend of "selling one's soul to the devil". It really can happen.

As Hotspur concludes, "And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil -
                                        By telling truth. Tell truth and shame the devil."

Indeed.


POSTSCRIPT :

Some weeks after writing this post I received an email from someone who did not agree with what I'd written about the Golden Dawn-type societies and their members. This person had taken some courses with one of these organizations and found them helpful. They had subsequently left the society, had never practised any of their rituals, and thought I had unfairly castigated the type of organization with which they'd studied. Naturally, what I've written in this post would not apply to someone like my correspondent, who'd had only minimal involvement with that society and did not feel it had harmed them in any way, but had helped them in their spiritual search.

But had they persisted with the organization concerned, they could well have been drawn into the ceremonial practices which are so dangerous.

I consulted an Orthodox Jewish rabbi in Jerusalem, a respected religious leader who teaches kabbalah to carefully selected students, and he pointed out that among the many dangers associated with such rituals is the possibility of becoming addicted to them. He confirmed they are strictly forbidden by the Torah, i.e. by Jewish law and tradition. Nobody should practice them, and if they did, he would expel them from his class.

If someone wants to study esotericism, it's much safer to do so with groups who don't encourage ritual practices at all, or by oneself, with the many aids to study available in bookstores or on the internet today.

If you're in the Work, then the best way to study would be with members of your Work group under the direction of an authorized teacher or a senior member, as I've done in the past.

To protect one's future spiritual possibilities, one should avoid all "magic rituals" and the groups who promote them. Otherwise one risks compromising one's mental health and cutting off future progress. This is why no Work group and no genuine, spiritual path would ever encourage or permit them.

If anything I've written in this post has caused offence to readers, I apologize. It was not my intention to hurt anyone's feelings, but to warn them in strong terms to keep away from a dangerous practice and the people who promote it.

Does Everything Happen for a Reason? Some Thoughts on the Law of Fate and the Law of Accident

Yes,everything happens for a reason, says cartoon character Maxine. Usually, she adds, it's because somebody screwed up!

I can relate to that because, if I'm honest, I can see that in many trying situations the person who screwed up was - me.

The idea that "everything happens for a reason" - call it EHFAR for short - has become so ingrained into contemporary thinking that people use it as an excuse for all kinds of avoidable mishaps.

"There are no coincidences" is a similar idea, with New Age overtones. Both, in my view, can be sloppy and even dangerous ways of looking at life for those of us trying to follow a spiritual path. Of course there are coincidences! It isn't always God's way of staying anonymous. Sometimes it is, often it isn't.

Synchronicity is different, and occurs only when we're in a higher state of consciousness, able to attract our Fate.

At the simplest level, EHFAR can merely be the response of an habitual optimist, always trying to look for the good in each situation. And that is fine. The more positive we can keep our attitudes in life, the better the outcome will be.

And it's certainly true that, as St Paul says, "all things work together for the good of those who love the Lord". But note, the second part of that sentence is just as important as the first. God can certainly bring good out of apparent evil, and make everything that happens to us work for our benefit, but only as long as we are following a spiritual path. Otherwise, we are simply living heedlessly, submerged by life, where accidents happen and entropy increases all the time.

The Work teaches that we are living either under the Law of Fate or the Law of Accident. If we're striving to become more conscious, then we will be brought increasingly under the Law of Fate. Conscious Humanity will ensure that our circumstances, the people around us, and the events that happen to us will be such as can increase our awareness, help our Work efforts.

Similarly, St Paul points out, God - sometimes interpreted in Twelve Step Programmes as an acronym for "Good Orderly Direction" - will help us to overcome our obstacles and bring good out of the mess we've made of our lives.  For this to occur, we have to invite Him to take over. God doesn't gatecrash our lives, but, like a true gentleman, waits to be asked.

But when we're living mindlessly, we expose ourselves to every accidental event that comes along. There's no guidance, no overall direction. We may like to calm ourselves by repeating the EHFAR mantra, and trying to justify our own mechanicalness, but in more conscious moments we know this is just not true. And seeing how we have behaved can be very painful indeed. It's part of the real suffering we must undergo for our own development, and to begin with we all try to avoid it. Hence the popularity of EHFAR.

In counselling, it's the client's ability to be truly honest that will enable them to be "cured" of seemingly intractable conditions. Honesty about their own codependence, their laziness, their willed helplessness. Their mechanicalness. And so it is for all of us, without exception.

The only "reason" for many things is the simple Law of Cause of Effect. And that alone won't help us to become more conscious.

While the Law of Accident tends downwards, deeper into matter and entropy, and away from consciousness, the Law of Fate will attract to us exactly what we need for our own development.

But the difference between the two can be very hard to see.

Take a road accident, for example, like the one I describe in my book "A Raging Thirst". Looked at from the outside, it seems merely the result of mechanical behaviour, a random event. But looked at from the viewpoint of the Work, it is clear that it truly did belong to my Fate.

How do I know this? And how can we see the marks of Fate in our lives, in general?

First, there will be obvious benefits to the situation, even one as dark as an accident that leaves someone disabled and in pain. The outcome gave me much more material to work on, and enabled me to turn back to the Work with all my being; without this spur, perhaps I would simply have drifted away from the Work, or at least abandoned it for so long that it grew cold in me, and I lost the ability to make real efforts.  And my present condition helps me to help others, in a very special way, by example. What'smore, I rediscovered my Christian faith, which has been a tremendous support in my personal Work and in my relationships, and I believe that in no other way could this have happened. God had to grab me by the scruff of my neck. Then I paid attention.

Second, the event could be clearly seen in my astrological chart. Everything pertaining to our Fate will be in our birthchart, from the map of our Essence to the sequence of Fated events that will be presented to us in our lives. For a long time, I couldn't see how my car accident manifested in my chart, but when the planet Chiron was discovered and its orbit mapped, it was immediately obvious. Chiron had formed an exact opposition to my native Sun and Mars on the day of my accident. At the same time, Mars and Venus had recently conjoined in my seventh house, foreshadowing the "spiritual marriage", the ultimate blessing,  that would be made possible if I truly worked on myself and avoided sinking into self-pity and denial.

Third, there will be hints and types of the Fated event in our earlier lives, although we may not understand them at the time. A spiritual guide such as a Work teacher is very helpful - indeed, absolutely vital - in encouraging our discernment of what is Fate and what is Accident. In my case, as a very young child I was always, inexplicably, frightened of the sight of people on crutches or with walking sticks, and even of women with bandages or plasters on their legs. I would cry and run from them, and sometimes have nightmares about them. Nobody understood why this happened, but with hindsight it's clear to me that my Essence recognized the Fate which was waiting for me, yet because it was still undeveloped it was unable to cope with this knowledge and tried to flee from it.

Even with these glimpses, the difference between Fate and Accident is usually very, very hard to see. Was that relationship with an addict, that caused us so much despair and wretchedness, our Fate? Was the very disease of addiction, if we are among those who, like me, suffer from it, our Fate? In the latter case, I would yes, definitely, because it must be at least partly manifested in our genetic inheritance, which is included in our Essence.

But what about the plane we missed because we were rushing around looking for our toiletries? The job we failed to get because the interviewer happened to favour a relative for the post? The ornery neighbour we find ourselves living next to, who complains every time we play music, even quietly? All these events and circumstances could be seen as either Fate or Accident. We must be very careful in trying to decide which is which. The difference is tremendous.

Still, we can trust that, even though we don't know exactly what our Fate may be, when we are truly working on ourselves, or working a Step, or obeying the spiritual demands of
our religion or our conscience, then our Higher Power will orchestrate our lives  so that we can use every person, every situation, for good.

This is the true alchemy, the gold which can be refined only from the base metal of our lives.

Myths of the Fall - the Garden of Eden and Kundabuffer

A Christian pastor trying to explain the notion of "original sin" to a rabbi summarized it thus: "It means that I'm an imperfect being living in an imperfect world." The rabbi, coming from a tradition that did not contain the idea of "original sin", could then understand exactly what it conveyed to his Christian colleague.

And as far it goes, this explanation is obviously true.

Many religions have attempted to explain the flaws in Man and in Creation. If there is a God, and if He is perfect, how can He have created such a clearly imperfect world? As Westerners, most of us were raised with the Bible as our background. The Garden of Eden is our primary myth of the Fall of Man. Most Christians and Jews interpret it as reflecting humankind's disobedience and the resulting expulsion from the original Paradise we were created to inhabit and tend. We lost that blissful state because we refused to accept God's condition for living in it - that we refrain from eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Having disobeyed, we were then embarked willy-nilly on the journey of self-development.  Now we have to learn to make right choices, to work on ourselves until our centres become balanced and our orientation is towards the spiritual rather than the physical world. In the process we suffer pain and hardship, but there is no other way, no short cut back to Paradise.

 Having been raised among sleeping people, we are sleepwalkers in our own lives unless we have a method of awakening. Our psychology is profoundly unbalanced; we are at the mercy of negative emotions of all kinds, and of the huge illusion that we can "do", which results in so many social and psychological problems.

And our very DNA reflects the fallen nature of mankind. Flaws such as a tendency to alcoholism and other addictions now form part of our nature, even though this was never intended by the Creator. Various inherited conditions, including disabilities and fatal illnesses, are today part of the human gene pool, and although they can provide excellent material for working on ourselves, they are also a source of real suffering. The Bible points out that the disobedience of Adam and Eve infected the physical world, causing thistles and thorns to grow and life on Earth to bring pain and travail to everyone.

In Christian teaching, I think that, as a friend recently pointed out, these flaws in our DNA as well as those in our psychological world form what's traditionally termed "original sin". Each human child inherits the results of that first fall from grace. Baptism can give us the possibility of overcoming it, and takes away the original "stain" of that sin - our inherited tendency to concupiscence - by transmitting the grace of Christ to the child or adult entering the Christian life. But we all have to bear the consequences of that original fall, and to battle against the tendency to sleep and apathy which constantly threatens to overcome us.

In Gurdjieff's own mythology, the history of Kundabuffer, while not exactly the same as the Biblical account, does parallel the story of the Fall. The organ Kundabuffer is said to have been implanted in Man by higher beings, after a cosmic "mistake" was made, in order to prevent mankind's premature spiritual development. In this story, it was necessary for human beings to transmit a certain type of energy for a while, and Kundabuffer was placed in us so that we would see things the wrong way round, and not develop too fast. When the necessity for it was over, Kundabuffer was removed, but its consequences have unfortunately remained in our psychology and are responsible for our fallen, sleeping state.

Students of Gurdjieff have made strenuous efforts to analyze the exact nature and placement of Kundabuffer, but none of these attempts are wholly convincing. Gurdjieff was adamant that his mythology should not be too easily comprehended, because simply analysing facts with the intellectual centre would bypass the essential emotional work that is truly beneficial for our understanding. When a student read aloud to him some of "All and Everything", G thought he had made it too easy to understand, and said he had to "Bury the dog deeper"!

Of course, the student questioned G - did he mean "bury the bone"?

No, Gurdjieff insisted - he really meant "bury the dog"!

And subsequently all kinds of speculation have arisen about what "the dog" meant - was G alluding to Sirius, the so-called "dog star" around which our own solar system revolves? Certainly, he may have been. It's an intriguing possibility, but to become too bogged down in any detail of G's writings can mean missing the overall effect he wished to produce, that of awakening our deeper thoughts and feelings, which alone can help us become conscious.

For me, as for my own teacher and for Mrs Pogson, the overall message of both the Kundabuffer myth and the story of the Garden of Eden are very close. Both say that we come into this world in an already imperfect state, with flaws in our Essence, in the psychology of those who surround us, and in the nature of the physical world in which we must live.

Our struggle is against sleep, the sleep so easily produced by all these obstacles, and consequently against everything in us that tends to send us to sleep. 

Mrs Pogson taught that the Fall of Mankind is repeated every day as our personal fall into a lower state of being. When we wake each morning, we are in Essence. As soon as we begin to think in categories of "I", "me", "mine", then we fall into limitation. 

Kundabuffer caused mankind to take unreality for reality, to see everything upside down. The Work exists so that gradually, through intense effort and suffering, and with the help of Conscious Humanity, we will eventually be able to see reality - and to become real ourselves.

Some Q's and A's on diet

After my previous post, a number of friends and family members expressed surprise and concern that I'd "gone over" to eating meat! Among the questions they asked were, was I now Paleo? Atkins? Did I think vegetarian diets were a mistake? And so on. So here's a selection of some of the questions, and my answers.

Q: Do you now eat meat every day? Have you become an "Atkins" diet convert?

A: No to both. My husband has similar genes to mine, and we find that eating red meat once or twice a week, plus one or two poultry meals, keeps us feeling healthier. The rest of the time we eat meals based on fish, or vegetarian courses that include dairy foods. My body does seem to need some first-class, animal protein every day, but a lot of the time that's just a tin of tuna or salmon for lunch!

Q: Couldn't you have got all your needs met from a vegan diet with supplements?

A: No again, in my own case. Yes, in theory, for able-bodied people with lower protein requirements. But to obtain all your needs from vegan food, even with supplements, you have to eat a minimum of 1500 calories per day. That's an achievable goal for most people, and if your body responds well to grains, soy and legumes this can be a healthy way of eating. But for me, relatively immobile and in a wheelchair for much of the time, if I eat that many calories I put on weight. This is what happened to me over several years, and culminated in my becoming overweight and developing Type 2 diabetes and hypothyroidism. When I reduced my calories to 1350 a day, I lost the weight, but I could no longer meet my needs for protein. The result was a constant, debilitating tiredness which meant that on most afternoons I needed to sleep, and the rest of the time barely managed to drag myself around, even in my wheelchair. I felt as if I were dying, and in fact my body was desperately trying to tell me that that was what I risked if it didn't receive the right food.

Q: Why do you need so much protein? Most vegans and vegetarians are fine.

A: I blame my genes. Really. When I changed to including meat in my diet, I had a full genetic analysis of my dietary needs, and they confirmed exactly what my poor moving/instinctive centre had been trying to tell me all those years. I need much more protein than most people, and at the same time my body can't digest grains and legumes very well. Soy is out when you're hypothyroid, so the answer is, at least for me, to have animal proteins.  My body handles dairy foods very well, so that's now part of my diet. It's wonderful to be able to eat Brie again!

The analysts also recommended that I limit the amount of grains I eat to 3 servings per day (I usually manage 2-4). Otherwise, I should avoid wheat, because I carry genes for celiac and Crohn's diseases, and celiac can strike at any moment without warning. I don't at present need a gluten-free diet, thank goodness, so I eat spelt, rye and oats instead of wheat.

In addition, I also have the so-called "thrifty genes", which means I easily store fat and find it very hard to lose. With that and my diabetes, I have to limit my calories every day. These genes would have helped my ancestors to survive hard, northern European and Russian winters, but are a real nuisance in our food-rich world today.

Q: What kind of meat and fish do you include now?

A: Mostly the "kosher" variety. Whether it's my Jewish ancestry or my body's aversion to certain kinds of foods (and perhaps the former causes the latter), I find pork products very hard to digest and I avoid them. I'm allergic to shellfish, so oysters, shrimp and crab are also out. That leaves lamb and beef, all kinds of poultry, most kinds of fish, and lots and lots of fruit and vegetables. In my house we easily manage 8-10 portions of fruit and veg a day, and my body loves this. What we eat now is a plant-based, Mediterranean diet. The plan we follow these days is low-glycemic and medium carb, but higher than normal in protein.


Q: What do you think of vegetarian and vegan diets?

A: I was so happy to be vegetarian and then vegan for many years, and felt really virtuous. I wasn't hurting any animals, I was helping the environment, and my abstention from meat and fish made me healthier, or so I believed.

There's an interesting and controversial book which address all these concerns - "The Vegetarian Myth" by Lierre Keith. I found her conclusions surprising but logical. She shows that eating an omnivorous diet, if we're careful about insisting on the highest standards of animal welfare, can actually contribute to the wellbeing of the planet.

It's true that many people live happily and healthily for years on vegetarian, even vegan, diets. They obviously don't have the same genetic makeup as myself and my husband. For lots of people, less protein is actually better for them, and they thrive on a carefully planned, meat-dairy-and-fish-excluding diet. I'm not one of them.

Q: How can most people know which type of diet suits them?

A: Notice your body's demands. Don't let your intellectual and emotional centres, exclusively, choose your food for you, as I did. Don't let sentimentality interfere in your food choices: that's the wrong work of the emotional centre. Particularly note how well your body heals after cuts and bruises, how your immune system is functioning, whether you're getting tired more frequently, whether you have any unexplained symptoms that could relate to a food deficiency.

And then, if you're not sure, get genetically tested. It's not cheap, but the health benefits are inestimable.

And, although human beings are omnivores and can adapt to a wide variety of diets, there's something immeasurable but real in the way our bodies respond to different food. It's a wholistic response. It may well be that some people - like me - could include every nutritional supplement known to man, and base our food on a vegan diet, and still not thrive. There could be something about the overall effect of including animal foods that, for people like us, provide a clear benefit, even though the individual components of the supplements might theoretically be able to do the same thing.

Final note: When I was a vegan, I was pleased that I had removed myself from the animal-eating food chain. I was no longer part of the dietary regime that had grown out of the hunter-gatherer needs of our common ancestors. But I was too proud; I suffered from hubris. My body protested in its own way, and showed me that, like other people of my genetic type, I had to follow the laws of eating animal foods. I didn't like that thought at all, but in accepting it and eating accordingly I've become more humble and more grateful for my food.

Gurdjieff said that we all contain a wolf and a sheep within us, and we have to learn how to make them live peacefully side by side. He wasn't talking specifically about diet, but I think the same picture can illustrate our dietary requirements. Those of us who need meat must accept that fact, and be grateful that we can obtain it. Some believe that meat exasperates aggression. I don't, but even if that were true, it would just mean that we need to be more observant and notice when aggressive I's are lurking.

Science helps here, although sometimes it's faulty and is later disproved. For example, the Blood Group diet mandates that everyone with blood group A (as I have) can live happily on a vegetarian regime. I used that theory to back up my vegan dietary choices, but it just wasn't true for me. the theory was disproved through observation. The science was incomplete. We are all individuals, and only careful observation and - if necessary - scientific testing to confirm our hypotheses, can show us the best way to thrive. Our instinctive/moving centres are telling us what we need at every moment, if only we would listen.

What of the belief that eating veggie food is more "spiritual"? After all, Buddhist and Carmelite monks and nuns stick to vegetarian food. But needless to say, I don't believe it affects one's spiritual growth, except that if we're not in good health it's harder to be observant and attentive. If a teacher of the stature of Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan can encourage some mureeds to eat meat, who am I to disagree? Again, it's a matter of individual type and bodily needs. Only sincere, unclouded observation will help us know what our best diet is.

And it's been pointed out that some of the side-effects of lack of Vitamin B12 - a common problem with vegan diets, even when supplemented - include a feeling of spaciness, light-headedness, and problems in concentrating. Misinterpreted, it could mean that some obligate carnivores eating vegan are misguidedly thinking they're becoming more spiritual when actually they're on the path to pernicious anemia! This happened to me, and it's serious. Observe, observe, experiment and observe some more. And then, if you still want confirmation, get genetically tested.

Eating mindfully, eating consciously

I want to share some thoughts about diet and eating. Of course, those of us in the Work have often had the task of "eating consciously", and for many this is now the way that all food is consumed, at least, as far as we're able to maintain our more conscious state during a meal, that is. And that state, of course, increases with practice.

But recently there have been a number of books on "mindful eating". Is this the same as "conscious eating"? If not, how does it differ?

I think there's a real difference, and that the two practices are based on different understandings of what it means to eat with greater awareness.

For the mindfulness practitioners, the process of being more "mindful", more aware, is something that begins with a form of meditation and can gradually be extended to cover more areas of daily life. So far, this sounds a lot like the Work, and there's no contradiction between the two.  But the difference, in practice, seems to be one of depth. In the Work, we want to become more than just "mindful"; we want to deepen and extend our consciousness so that our whole life becomes a way of reaching a higher level of Being.

Mindfulness itself is a good thing. It's like the beginning stages of self-observation, and if it helps people to become more awake and less mechanical, that can only be helpful to the individual and to the collective.

But in the Work, we wish to go further.

Of all the books I've read on mindful eating, many seem to describe a process of tuning in to our intellectual, emotional and sensual reactions to food, and the vast majority then go on to recommend a mostly vegetarian or vegan diet. This, supposedly, is the result of considering what and how we eat.

I found in my own experience that this approach worked for me for a while.

Let me digress a little and share my diet journey with you. I began eating macrobiotically during the 1970s, studied with Michio Kushi and had cookery lessons with his wife, Aveline. They recommended a vegetarian - in effect, a vegan - diet, supplemented with a little fish.

On the other hand, when I was initiated into the Sufis, during the same period, my teacher, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, specifically told me not to promise to become a vegetarian. All the other mureeds undertook this pledge at their ceremony, but Pir Vilayat told me that I would need to eat meat at times, even though I wouldn't like it.

As a determined macrobiotic eater, however, I chose to ignore this piece of advice. My reasoning was as follows: lambs and calves and chickens are very sweet and lovable creatures; I enjoyed watching them and cuddling them when I had the chance; therefore, since I liked them so much, I had no business eating them.

I calculated my needs for protein, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients so that I could be pretty sure I was getting the right diet for my individual body, and occasionally included fish so that I would have the fish oils that I didn't think my body could make.

I ignored the fact that over the years I was getting less healthy, not more so, and that IBS had become a constant, unpleasant state. I was always tired, but put that down to my diabetes and hypothyroid (which in itself might have been precipitated by the large amounts of soyfoods I was putting away on my supposedly healthy macrobiotic diet).

But one day my husband had to have a blood test, and it turned out he was anemic. The doctors said it would be advisable for him to eat red meat, as he would assimilate the iron better than from plants or from a supplement, so I dutifully cooked him shepherds pie, spag bol, roast chicken and chili until his test results improved.

I usually cooked separate meals for us both so that I didn't have to eat meat myself. I didn't enjoy cooking his dishes, but did so with love and awareness that the health of a human being, especially one so dear to me, was more important by far than the life or death of an animal, however cute the latter might be.

After a particularly tiring day, however, I lacked the energy to cook two different main courses, so I took the plunge and shared his shepherd's pie. And it was a revelation! Within half an hour, I felt a distinct sensation of warmth and relaxation, a sort of "groundedness", permeating my body. An hour later, and my IBS stopped. My tiredness lifted, and I felt a strong sense of wellbeing, so much so that I slept better that night than I had done for years.

Clearly, my instinctive/moving centre was trying to tell me something, the same message that Pir Vilayat had given me all those years ago: I was an omnivore, and I needed meat.

Checking my DNA, which I'd had tested at 23andme, I saw that most of my ancestors came from very cold countries in northern Europe and Russia, where vegetarianism would have meant starvation. I was programmed to eat animal protein, whether I liked that fact or not.

And then I realized that I'd been using the wrong centres with which to select and enjoy my food. I'd left out the most important one of all - that of my own body, which had been trying to tell me it needed different food, but which I'd overridden by insisting on my attachment to vegetarian and vegan food and the accompanying feelings of virtue and "purity" it brought.

I'd been using my emotional centre when I should have been aware of my instinctive/moving centre. Instead of taking notice of the latter, I'd also brought in the intellectual to calculate my nutritional needs - not in itself a problem, but insufficient to guarantee that I was really getting what I needed.

And this, I think, is what much "mindful eating" advice does: focuses on the emotional and intellectual centres to the detriment of the body's own needs. Of course, there are exceptions, and for many people, especially those whose ancestors come from warmer countries, vegetarian/vegan regimes may be beneficial. But for a northern European like me, they couldn't fill the bill.

So now, for me, eating consciously means being aware of my physical needs as well as my emotional reactions to food, and my intellectual awareness of various nutrients. If I listen to my body, all is well. If I don't, I will slide back into that constantly tired, depleted state. It's no use my being sentimentally aware of the adorableness of baby lambs - I'm a three-brained being, and my needs must take priority.

I'm sorry if I've shocked anyone. I know people become very attached to their own dietary regimes, because I was myself until my road-to-Damascus moment.

But Gurdjieff tells us that we must strive to have in our presence everything "really necessary" for our planetary existence, and for many of us, that includes meat. He was certainly no vegetarian, far less a vegan. He deplored faddiness and sentimentality over food. He did hint that in the right circumstances a vegetarian diet could be beneficial, but he clearly didn't consider that those conditions existed for most people, and certainly not for himself or his students.

We must feed all of our centres when we take in this first being food, and we must be aware through experience and constant awareness just what it is that we need.

Now, my emotional centre no longer interferes with its annoyingly sentimental I's, but instead I'm full of gratitude that I can eat exactly what I need. Grateful that I can afford to buy it, that I'm fit enough to cook it, and that I can share it with those I love. Grateful to everyone whose efforts have brought it to my table - the farmers, the butchers, the shopworkers - and for the fact that I can also afford to insist on free range, healthy meat.

Animal welfare is extremely important, whether we're vegetarian or omnivore. And so I also extend gratitude to the animals whose lives have been taken so that I can enjoy better health and wellbeing. In our house, we always say grace before meals, and this, for me, is the epitome of eating consciously.

And one final thought - I believe that no one diet fits everyone, all the time. So, if you discover the way of eating that best suits you, be aware too that your needs may change, and that by remaining vigilant to your body's reactions you can stay as healthy as possible.

Alcoholism - a fault in Essence?

Gurdjieff describes the Essence as being "everything that we're born with". In contrast to Personality and False Personality, which are formed in childhood as a result of our interaction with our environment, Essence is the kernel of our Being and is already present in us at our birth.

Essence is born immature and needs educating, and normally this is the task of the Personality. We can see Essence in a very young child, who is spontaneous and innocent, yet in need of guidance and protection. In the Work, our Personality begins to feed our Esssence as we develop awareness and consciousness and see what needs to be done so that Essence may grow up and take its rightful place as the source of our behaviour.

But G said that Essence may be born with a fault that needs correcting. And I'm wondering whether this might be true of alcoholics - are we born with a fault in our Essence? Or is this terrible disease a result of environmental influences, and therefore part of Personality and False Personality only?

When I write of alcoholism, I'm including drug addiction as well. There are less immediately life-threatening addictions, too, such as gambling and codependence. But alcoholism (along with addiction to drugs) is the most immediately dangerous form of addiction. Without help, it will kill you. Millions of people die each year from the disease, and it takes enormous amounts of help as well as constant effort to overcome it.

Of course, we can argue, as Richard Rohr does in "Breathing Underwater", that we're all addicted to something. Some people are alcoholics, others may be workaholics or addicted to shopping. But while this may be broadly true, it's no help in trying to understand alcoholism, which is such an extreme form of addiction, involving a life-or-death struggle and requiring the help of a Higher Power in order to recover.  Alcoholism kills.  Not many people die from buying too many designer handbags.

But does this disease originate in the mind or in the body? And if in the mind, what part?

Brain scans and other investigations show clear differences between the brains of alcoholics and those of "normal"people. Different areas of the brain light up in response to stimuli; different chemicals are found in the blood; different patterns of behaviour are observable. 

But, just because we can see changes in the brain and its chemistry, this doesn't necessarily mean that alcoholism results from a purely physical defect. After all, such differences could be the end result of years of living in a depressed or addicted state, probably exposed to depression and addiction in the family of origin, since such diseases do run in families. An alcoholic parent raises his or her children very differently from the way a normal, non-addicted mother or father would behave. And this in itself might be enough to cause the different brain patterns and chemistry we can observe.

So which comes first?

One interesting and disquieting piece of research suggests that the brains of children as young as eight can show the beginning of unusual patterns that would indicate alcoholism in adults. But again, is this cause or effect? And what can we do with such findings? Even if they are found to be infallibly predictive of adult behaviour, would that give the State the right to ban alcohol and begin early therapy in such children?

Twin studies give more indication of the physical origins of alcoholism. Identical twins, sharing the same genes and separated at birth, will usually show similar behaviour in regard to drugs and alcohol later in life, even though their family environments have been very different.

The physical differences in the brains of alcoholics include the apparent lack, or the inability to process, endorphins that in normal people create a feeling of calm and wellbeing. Serotonin and dopamine are either present in much lower quantities, or the receptors that process them are defective or in short supply. The result, for the alcoholic, includes feelings of jumpiness, anxiety, depression, anger or chronic fear. This is why the alcoholic is sometimes spoken of as having "a skin too few". That's exactly what it feels like. And I talk from experience here, as a recovering alcoholic who will, please God, soon celebrate her 25th AA anniversary.

These differences account for the strong, ungovernable urge to drink to ease the pain. Drinking is a learned behaviour, a way of self-medicating. Alcoholics commonly report experiencing extreme euphoria after their first drink, at least in the early years of the disease, a form of relief from the mental stress that other drinkers don't experience, at least to that degree.

And the brain of the alcoholic then goes on to play a nasty trick: it loses the ability to discern when to stop drinking. Control goes, and it's not a problem of will-power. The brain simply doesn't recognize the need to stop drinking, as happens with normal, social drinkers.

 It also malfunctions in terms of memory; in an alcoholic blackout, the drinker can seem to be perfectly normal in speech and behaviour, and yet the brain is laying down no memories at all. Later, it's impossible for the alcoholic to recall what he or she did, and although this often seems like a cop-out to friends and family, it's literally true. The alcoholic will never be able to remember what they did, because the memory is simply not there. 

If alcoholism originates in the physical body, there should be indications of the disease in our DNA. And recent studies suggest that in fact there are. Different combinations of genes seem to be present in alcoholics and addicts, as compared to the DNA of those not addicted to these substances. Different physical reactions occur in relation to alcohol or opiates in individuals with these patterns.

So, although we can't say for certain whether the origin of the disease is physical or mental, I believe there are now enough indicators to say it is, most likely, a physical problem before it becomes evident as a psychological disease.

And if so, does this mean that alcoholism is a fault in Essence?

It would seem that it is. Perhaps it is the fault that we alcoholics have incarnated in order to overcome. Perhaps we took on this struggle willingly, seeing how dangerous the disease is and how it affects generations of families. Could it be that we chose to live life as an alcoholic, knowing the high risks, but knowing, too, that we could receive help from Conscious Humanity, our Higher Power, if only we remember to ask for it?

Or could it resemble the Sufi vision of life between incarnations - that as a soul begins its descent from the heavenly realms into its conception on Earth, it meets returning souls who ask it - perhaps implore it - to do battle with the very fault that the returning soul was unable to completely overcome? 

There's much to ponder here. I don't know the answers. But, if alcoholism is indeed a fault in Essence, the good news is that it can be alleviated and prevented from causing further damage, as long as the alcoholic remains aware of his or her spiritual needs and dependence on God.

Before the 20th Century, recovery from alcoholism was very, very difficult, perhaps impossible. Today, we have the Twelve Steps, AA, and NA, and it may be that we alcoholics incarnated now because at last real help would be available to us in our daily struggles.

Thank God for those Steps.

Passover: Freedom from the Slavery of Addiction

Recently, a spectacular Solar Eclipse followed by a red Blood Moon heralded the arrival of Easter and Passover. Many religious leaders have speculated about what these "signs in the sky" might mean. Some predict the imminent return of Jesus Christ, while others see grave danger to Israel and the Middle East, possibly signaled by a controversial "nuclear deal" proposed between the US and Iran.

 Leaving aside these possibilities - which obviously can't be verified yet - it's interesting that Passover and Easter often fall on the same date, even though they're calculated slightly differently. We know the Crucifixion took place at Passover, because the Last Supper was a Passover meal, or "seder".

The word "seder" means "order", and at every Passover Jewish families enjoy a special festive meal, which consists of a story-telling service and a celebration dinner. The story itself concerns the Jews' escape from slavery to freedom, when Moses led the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt, contrary to Pharaoh's commands. The escape had to be made in a great hurry, which meant that there was no time for bread dough to rise, so the Jews took with them bundles of crispbreads, known as matzoh.

To this day, the Passover meal is celebrated with matzoh and includes a roast dinner, usually chicken or lamb; bitter herbs; a sweet paste, called haroset, which recalls the paste used by the slaves to make bricks in Egypt; a roasted egg; salt water; and a lamb shankbone. These items are arranged on a specially decorated seder plate, and the story tells of the escape to freedom, and the role that each object plays in that tale. Special prayers, songs and time-honoured rituals make this meal memorable. If you're ever lucky enough to be invited to take part, do go; it's enlightening and beautiful.

The word "Passover" comes from the commandment of Yahweh, who told the Israelites to daub their doorposts with the blood of a lamb. Because Pharaoh would not let the Jews go, the Angel of Death was to visit all the Egyptians' first-born sons, but would spare the children of the Israelites; the Angel would know who they were because of the blood of the lamb on their doorways.

Clearly, this story foreshadows the Crucifixion. Jesus is the new "lamb of God", whose blood is to redeem the Christians and spare them from eternal death. The Passover meal at which He washed the feet of the disciples and shared with them the bread and wine of the "new covenant" was a retelling of the familiar story, and the disciples would all have known every detail by heart.

During the Israelites' forty years of wandering the desert before they reached the promised land, God gave them the Ten Commandments. The lengthy period of dwelling in the wilderness allowed a whole generation to be formed by the ethics of these commandments, the like of which had never before been seen. Other nations had laws, but the Ten Commandments go much further.

If we follow these Commandments, as Jews and Christians are all supposed to do, they shape our way of life into that of the Good Householder. They form the basis of community living, and they appeal to our Real Conscience. There must be no wanton taking of life, no theft, no lying, no adultery and no idolatry. Family life is sacred, and the worship of the monotheistic, ethical God is mandatory.

Considering that the tribes of Canaan and other regions where the Jews were to settle were worshiping a horrible, destructive deity who demanded that their babies be thrown alive into a fire, these Commandments separated the Israelites from their neighbours, and gave them a loftier moral and ethical code by which to live. It was vitally important that they keep these Commandments rather than conforming to the evil ways of the surrounding tribes. God was to shape this ramshackle group of runaway slaves into a people who would give rise to the Messiah.

Jesus, when he instituted the "new covenant", did not annul any of the Ten Commandments. They still form the basis of civilized life in the West, as far as we can lay claim to any form of civilization today. He took them even further, telling His disciples that obedience must involve the head and the heart, as well as the body; all three centres, in a Work sense, must take part if we truly wish to follow Him.

Behind the story of the Exodus lurks the memory of the years of slavery in Egypt. Even today, at Passover meals each participant is commanded to take the story personally, as though he or she has been individually saved from slavery.

Those of us in recovery have no problem with that, because the Exodus is the story of every alcoholic or addict in the entire world, and everyone who's been rescued from any form of addiction.

All of us in recovery have been slaves in "Egypt". Whether we've been drinking ourselves into a stupor, dulling our brains with drugs, taking on unnecessary suffering in the form of codependence, gambling, or workaholism, any of the myriad forms of slavery which constitute addiction have held us captive for many years. Addiction is a cruel Pharaoh who doesn't want to let us go.

But we could not come into recovery before we were ready. And here, it's interesting to note that before Passover may be celebrated, Jewish households must conduct a thorough search of their home for any leftover "hametz", or yeast, which could contaminate the Passover festival.

In this context, the Rabbis teach that "hametz" means sin, and specifically the sin of pride. "Hametz" is that which puffs us up, makes us swell with our own vanity and conceit, and prevents us from seeking help. Unless we can lay aside our pride, we will never be able to take the steps which will lead to recovery.

We have to bow our hearts and minds before God, acknowledging that we have made a complete mess of our lives and that only He can rescue us. The God of our understanding doesn't have to be Yahweh or Jesus. It can be the AA programme as a whole, or the individual AA group, if the practicing alcoholic or addict simply can't recognize the God of religion. But it must be a God in some form who can offer real help, real love and friendship, and firm guidelines which - in the form of the Twelve Steps - can show us a way out of slavery and into the promised land of recovery.

Pride is the worst sin of all, because it keeps us from seeing ourselves as we are, and it's the one which every alcoholic and every addict suffers from, above all. Alcoholics have been called "people who look down on others from their place in the gutter". And it's true. All of us alcoholics have thought we knew it all and were somehow above the laws which everyone else had to follow. We disregarded other people's warnings and followed our own self-will, which nearly killed us. As the song says, we did it our way. Until, that is, we saw the pit of hell to which our way was leading us.

As the saying goes, "You can always tell an alcoholic, but you can't tell them much"! We alcoholics and addicts have to be brought to our knees, to our rock-bottom, before we can envisage turning our will and our lives over to anyone else, even to God.

But once the "hametz" - the pride, vanity, and illusion of self-sufficiency - has been cleared out of our lives, we're ready for the great escape to freedom.

This Easter, as we saw, Passover again coincides with the Christian festival. And I, as a grateful, recovering alcoholic, am celebrating both!