A Daily Reprieve

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Second Force And How we Survived It

We've just moved house, and it has involved the strongest Second Force I have ever encountered.

From the moment we put our old house on the market, the problems began. We found a buyer soon enough, but she made a ludicrously low offer, which we refused. She said she loved the house but wanted to carry out some expensive building works! We politely pointed out, via our estate agent (realtor in America), that her offer was far too low, and that we could not take into account what she might wish to do after the house was sold! 

She then made a sensible offer, which we accepted, and we thought our problems were over. Unfortunately, the buyer turned out to be a truly tricky customer. She had a secret agenda. House-buying in England involves locking most people into a chain, where one person's sale is the means by which they buy their next property, and chains can comprise as many as eight buyers and sellers. It is an incredibly silly and ungainly way of buying and selling. We decided to remove ourselves from such a complex web by renting our next property, so that our own sale did not involve our next purchase. It should have made the sale an easy process.

Our buyer, however, wanted to delay completion as long as possible. In April, when we agreed to accept her more realistic offer, she said she herself would also like to complete the transaction as quickly as she could; she said she already had a mortgage offer in place, and was ready to move in a very few weeks. 

This was untrue. Her first pseudo-problem arose when she said she had lost a vital building certificate and had to order a replacement. Then she said her own buyer had a similar problem. These two alleged losses cost us all two months' delay, but this was not the end. She complained that her boiler had broken down and that she had to get it fixed before she sold her own house, and when this was fixed, that she had lost yet another vital document which would take time to replace.

One problem after another meant that we were no closer to completion at ten weeks into the deal. A normal house sale takes 6 to 8 weeks. In despair, our solicitor and estate agent both advised us to put the house back on the market, which we did.

The next day, our buyer rang up in tears, complaining that we were "scaremongering". We took no notice. And then, miraculously, she "found" her lost certificates, her own buyer also "found" hers, and all their problems evaporated into thin air! The sale was completed one week later!

It emerged that both she and her own buyer were in collusion. They had school age children, and wanted to time their move with the beginning of the school holidays, at the end of July. Rather than take out bridging loans, which would have been the obvious solution, they both chose to delay and delay, prevaricating and obscuring the truth until our patience was exhausted. At that point, they realized they had to act if they were to secure the houses that both wanted. And so the sale went through, at last.

The next part of Second Force concerned our rented bungalow, where we're now living. So many delays, legal knots and miscommunications held up our agreement to the point that we were not actually sure whether we had anywhere to go at all! Eventually all this, too, was solved at the last moment and through apparently miraculous events. 

But it has been the most difficult sale we have ever made, and our next house purchase will, we hope, be our last. 

We've found the house where we want to spend the rest of our lives. It's in a beautiful seaside resort on the northwest coast of England, a cosy, Tudor-style house on a quiet street, with a large garden. This time, our purchase is proceeding at top speed. There are no obstacles, only the time-consuming legal form-filling and searches which accompany all property transactions in the United Kingdom. We are not in a chain, and neither is our seller, so all may be completed in four to six weeks.

Second Force seems at last to have been lifted. Thank God!

What have we learned from this? That the strength of Second Force can be extremely powerful, and tests our resolve to the limit. Had we not wished with all our hearts to move to the northwest, we might well have given up the struggle, at least for this year.

We carried on, however. Why? Because our desire to move house, our First Force, was motivated by a Third Force of a spiritual nature. And this fact gave us the necessary impetus to continue our battle and not to give in. 

Had it been merely a Life motive - wanting a larger or smaller home, perhaps; moving to a more desirable neighbourhood; or simply wishing to free up money by downsizing, as so many older people do - we would probably have abandoned the project, at least for the foreseeable future.

Our Third Force stemmed from our Essence wishes, however, and carried us through the tidal wave of lies, manipulation and obstruction that we had to battle.

We wanted to live in a home that satisfied our Essence needs for peace, harmony and beauty. A safe and cosy place in which our spiritual lives could find maximum expression. Where we could be closer to our families, be there to help them out with their problems, and in our turn be helped by them when necessary. And in times of peace and plenty to enjoy one another's company, to deepen our relationships with the people we love most on Earth, to strengthen the ties which bind us all together.

We had found living in an isolated, rural area very limiting to our ability to participate in the Twelve Step Programmes which have played a huge part in both our lives. In our chosen home town, we will be able to sponsor new members, volunteer for group offices, and support the local recovery community.  We'll also be able to take a more active role in our Catholic church community, since our  new church will be much closer to our home than was our former church in the Fens.

We plan to join the North West Friends of Israel, an important and influential lobbying group which combats media inaccuracies and lies, and promotes peace education and informative programmes about the reality of Israeli life in local schools and religious organizations. My cousin is already a keen and active member of the movement, and the group includes Christians, Jews, agnostics and atheists, all in support of peace and against the terrible anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism which are now the scourge of Europe and particularly in the UK. There are, it is rumoured, even one or two Muslim members, though they have to keep a very low profile for fear of recriminations from their own communities.

For many years I've supported Israel and the Middle East peace movement in my own way, through my writing and lobbying efforts, but to be part of a united, ecumenical group will help tremendously to reinforce my own efforts, and I'll be able to use my communication skills to help this vital cause.

And our new house will give me my very own quiet office, a luxury I've never enjoyed before, so that I can continue blogging about the Work, and can write at least two more books on spirituality that I've been planning over the past year, but lacked the time and a peaceful space in which to complete them.

These motives are the Third Force for both my husband and me. Our Essences are united in these aims, and since we are both convinced of the benefits of our new house in this regard, we have been steadfast in sticking to the plan. Our Third Force is truly a Work motive, truly a reconciling force in so many ways, and we have felt the love and support of Conscious Humanity throughout our trials.

We're still in the tiny, rented bungalow - but hope in a couple of months to be gradually moving ourselves, our remaining books (still in the hundreds, if not thousands!) and our goods and chattels, not forgetting our beautiful, loyal Maine Coon cat companion, Tolstoy, into our new and permanent home.

God willing.

Summer and Harvest Rituals

Last week we looked at the significance of the Summer Solstice, the Full Moon which took place then, and the northern hemisphere festival of Midsummer (St John's Tide), on June 24th.

The entire season traditionally lasted for one month, although celebrations were not held continuously because of the need to bring in the harvest. Fruits, vegetables, and the first grain harvest are all ripening now, and the predominant feeling at this time is one of gratitude.

From the middle of July until the beginning of September the harvest will be gathered in and eventually celebrated in ancient church rituals, which have a pagan origin.

In earlier times, if the weather had been bad and the harvest a poor one, the tribe's king might be sacrificed and his blood used to moisten the earth, in a grisly foreshadowing of Christ's sacrifice on the cross. Such rituals show that even from prehistoric times men and women understood that the Earth was a living being, ruled by powers they did not understand but which might well need propitiation. The tribe could plant, could sow, could weed and nurture, but ultimately the results were not within their control.

Today, we in the Work - and many other Good Householders all over the world - know that there is  one God, one Spirit, the most Holy Sun Absolute, who created all that exists. We also know that there are Beings of unimaginably high existence, far above all that we can see, Archangels, Cherubim and Seraphim, who guide the conditions for growth on all planets and help the evolution of the universe.

And the Work teaches that sacrifice is indeed necessary for evolution to continue, and for Nature to be able to work as she should. We make this sacrifice voluntarily - by Conscious Labour and Intentional Suffering - or involuntarily, when large numbers of people are killed in disasters or wars around the world. Nature demands a certain substance that is produced only by the Sacred Rascooarno, and if we do not work on ourselves and make this substance of our free will it must be taken from humanity involuntarily.

So our early forebears, who dimly apprehended that sacrifice was necessary in order for the natural world to continue to bear fruit and support the population, were actually not far off the mark.

Today, we are beginning to reclaim the idea of Earth - Gaia - as a sacred, living Being. More and more people are working to cleanse, support and nourish the planet, but at the same time, unless there are more conscious people working on themselves to produce the very fine substances needed by Nature, these efforts will not eliminate the need for large numbers of human "sacrifices".

It is more urgent than ever that we should make these sacrifices voluntarily, psychologically, to avert even greater disasters.

And by doing so we ensure the continuation of life, with all its possibilities for evolution, especially for those of us three-brained beings who understand why we are here and who embrace our duties with joy and gratitude.
                     
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FYI: In accordance with the needs of my Essence, and that of my husband, we are moving next week to live close to the sea and close to our families.

This blog will therefore take a month's break, while we are in the process of moving house. There has been much Second Force surrounding this move, but the Solstice and the Full Moon brought about a miraculous breakthrough and we are now finalizing all the arrangements.

It is really important for everyone that - as far as we are able - we live in surroundings that nourish our Essence. It's not always possible to choose exactly where we live, but in our own case, now that we are both retired, we are free to fulfill a long-held dream: to return to the seaside and to spend much more time with family.

See you in a month!

Summer Solstice and Full Moon - A Rare Combination

Today, June 20th, sees the conjunction of a Full Moon with the Summer Solstice, a rare event which last occurred in 1967, just before the famous - or notorious - "Summer of Love".

Can we expect a similar configuration of energies in the summer of 2016?

Yes and no. That a large, somewhat unfocussed, outpouring of energy is taking place now is evident.  We have already seen a series of violent events take place across the globe, from the mass shootings of homosexuals in a Florida club to the assassination of a Labour MP in England; everything taking place against what has sadly become a familiar backdrop of atrocities committed by Islamic State and other terrorist groups in the Middle East.

They are assassinating Christians, Sufis, Ahmadiyya Muslims, Jews and anyone who does not share Isis's horrific and literally diabolical world view. For I am quite certain that this movement comes straight from the depths of hell. It has so much in common with Hitler and the Nazis, and we should remember that the Nazis and the leaders of various hate-filled Muslim groups at that time were great friends and allies in their aim to exterminate Jews and Christians.

 I'm reminded of Gurdjieff's comments about war, that wars occur when men are stimulated by cosmic tensions, especially when Mars is involved. And Mars has been retrograde in Scorpio for some time now, and will turn direct only on June 29th.

But the cosmic energy itself is neither good nor evil. It depends on how we assimilate it. Cosmic tensions can be used for our own spiritual growth if we are aware of them, and of the I's which they stir up in us. The effort not to identify, to go against the crowd of negative I's in the emotional and intellectual centres which various planetary aspects are now stimulating, can give us a powerful boost on our spiritual path.

Let's look at the significance of the Solstice, and then consider the effect of the Full Moon and the various planetary aspects at work right now. And remember that the cosmic events themselves, though lasting only for a short while in linear time, exert their influence for months, possibly years, to come.

Anthroposophists believe that influences absorbed at the Solstice reach their fruition in nine months' time, just like a human pregnancy. And nine months from today culminates in the March Equinox.

There is much truth in Anthroposophy, which is basically an esoteric form of Christianity, as of course is the Work itself. Theosophy, one of the chief influences on the anthroposophy movement, contains a number of esoteric truths, though unfortunately it became somewhat muddled and ineffectual as the movement spread and was watered down. Ouspensky was a strong supporter of Theosophy in its earlier years, but abandoned it later because he thought it had lost its way.

Anthroposophy, however, reclaimed much of the Theosophical teachings on astrology and solar cycles, and related it to the Christian festivals in a coherent and enlightening manner.

According to this viewpoint - which was espoused by Beryl Pogson, and later by my own teacher, Marian Davison, from whom I learned much invaluable astrological knowledge - the Summer Solstice is the point when the Earth reaches the culmination of its out-breath, so to speak. Immediately afterwards, the Earth begins once more to breathe in, and will reach this maximum point at Christmas.

The solar year is divided into two clear parts; the Winter Solstice, when the Earth begins to breathe out, and the Summer Solstice, when once more the Earth takes an in-breath. The whole cycle is therefore one "breath" of the Earth, each with different emphases and effects.

At each solstice there is a pause between the breaths. At the Winter Solstice, which takes place on December 21st, the pause lasts through to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. In the intervening days the sun appears to stand still from the viewpoint of the Earth.

At the Summer Solstice, occuring on June 21st, the sun again appears to stand still until St. John's Tide, or Midsummer Day, on June 24th.

And at this point, the Summer Solstice, "the soul of the earth rises in longing towards the heights, seeking communion with the universe, with the light and warmth of the sun and his companions, the stars .... her long outbreathing is completed, and her whole soul (the collective soul of humanity) has gone forth in devotion ... Matter seeks Spirit, returning to its origin" (from The Christian Year by Evelyn Frances Capel).

In a confused way, not knowing or understanding the real origins of their longing, crowds gather at significant planetary points such as Stonehenge for the celebration of the Solstice. They seem to realize there is a special energy available now, that of the collective human soul and the telluric energies of the Earth itself, which reaches out towards the sun during these special days. This energy can help the individual to become more aware of her deepest spiritual longings, and to see where she is on her individual journey. It increases her power to wish, in the Work sense, from which can come much fruit.

At the Summer Solstice, if you are sensitive to these energies - as most people in the Work surely are - you may experience a real inrush of spiritual growth and insight. If you are wise enough to ask a question now, you will surely receive an answer. You will be shown what you need to do in order to take the next step in your spiritual ascent.

The conjunction of this event with a rare Full Moon gives the whole Solstice a very special coloration.

This Full Moon is the second to occur in Sagittarius - the last one took place in May this year - which is, in itself, a rare event. The archer is reaching forth to shoot her arrows of insight and change into the areas of our lives where we most need this impetus. Each soul must determine for itself what those areas are, and a careful and thorough reading of your own birthchart will show you precisely what you need to change. Everyone interested in cosmic astrology should own an ephemeris, should know the sensitive points in their own birthchart, and be able to relate the heavenly events to their own horoscope. This is real astrology.

I can, however, offer some general remarks. First, the planets are now forming a Grand Cross, though somewhat loosely, which reflects the scattered nature of the energies now. Change is in the air for everyone, and along with this we will all be experiencing some degree of tension, possibly anxiety, concerning major events in our lives. For some, the temptation to identify with worrying I's will be almost impossible to overcome. Yet, it must be done, for otherwise a great opportunity for transformation will be wasted in petty anxieties.

The Sun is conjunct Venus, and this means that, even though change may come more rapidly than we would like, it will be overall positive for all who can take advantage of it. Venus is always beneficent, and if there are stresses in relationships she will help us to find harmony and peace with people who may have been a source of tension.

At the same time, Mars is still retrograde in Scorpio, and will continue to be retrograde until June 29th. This adds to the stirring up of tensions, and means that we need to re-examine some of our past actions and attitudes. Where we ourselves have made mistakes and caused problems for others, we will find we want to resolve them now, even though this may involve some deep psychological and spiritual searching. The process will be painful for some, but it must be undergone, otherwise the tensions will remain and the beneficial effects of Venus will be blocked.

After June 29th, transformation will be rapid - if we have worked for it. We will experience a real breakthrough in situations we had thought impervious to change.

And the Solstice, which is always a gateway for cosmic energies to pour forth upon the Earth, will facilitate these changes in a very positive way.

Mercury in Gemini is opposing Saturn in Sagittarius now, further emphasizing the need for detailed analysis to be accompanied by far-reaching willingness to change. Jupiter is also conjunct the Earth's North Node, showing that all efforts to work on ourselves are under very beneficial influences.

Putting all this together, there could not be a better time for personal work on oneself.

We are now able to offer all that we have learned in the previous year to the heavens, to Conscious Humanity, as embodied in the Sun and the planets. Our offering is joined with those of everyone on a spiritual path who is able to make this offering consciously. And this offering, this festival, is symbolized by the figure of St John, or John the Baptist.

Why this particular saint? Because it is he, the Baptist, who awakens the buried conscience which shows us the way to God.

Lament for a Brilliant, Lost Alcoholic

Last month I wrote a eulogy in praise of my uncle, a Good Householder. Today, however, I have a much sadder task - to write about the tragic, completely unnecessary death of a young alcoholic, in the hope it may warn others about the dangers of ignoring this illness.

Julio (not his real name, of course) was only 40 when he died. An autopsy disclosed that he had cirrhosis of the liver and a large tumour in his stomach. We don't know which of these conditions actually brought about his death, but we do know that they were both caused by his chronic alcoholic drinking.

His death was unnecessary, because both problems were treatable if only he had sought medical help. And what makes his death all the more tragic is the fact that this young man was himself a brilliant doctor, and must have understood only too well what his symptoms meant.

Yet he was unable to stop drinking, even so.

Julio was a friend of my daughter. They lived in different States, but met because they had both been "talent spotted" by an Ivy League American university, in a special programme which scrutinized teens in the talented and gifted classes of high schools to identify the most all-round, gifted students. Their university mentors then sponsored the select few into summer programmes and early university admissions.

These students were the "creme de la creme" of their age group. They all had dazzling careers before them, and the university wanted to make sure their gifts would not be wasted.

Julio and my daughter attended summer school together, at a well-known and highly respected University, and later both went on to receive scholarship funding for their degree programmes. They became good friends, and often visited one another during holidays, keeping in touch by phone and email throughout the years.

The death of this young man was a shocking event. It came completely out of the blue.

What could have made him ignore the many warning signals he must have noticed? The concerns of his friends and family, who saw him drinking his life away? His repeated depressions, his dysfunctional relationships, his lost opportunities?

The answer, of course, is the nature of his illness - alcoholism. It's the only disease which tells you that you don't have it. Denial is part of it, and it keeps millions of alcoholics in subjection to its relentless ravages until one day time runs out, and they die.

Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant. In other words, it's a downer - it brings about a state of depression even in those not usually prone to it. And if you are already depressed, as it seems Julio was, then alcohol, far from offering relief, makes that depression a thousand times worse.

Alcoholics die from their illness, and that death comes via many routes. It may be that the alcoholic's organs simply give out, exhausted, so that the body can no longer sustain itself. Sometimes alcoholics die through choking, alone, with nobody to help them. Many alcoholics commit suicide, unable to face the terrible situations their illness has brought about - the broken relationships, the alienated children, the failed career, the utter and desperate loneliness.

Sooner or later, an alcoholic who continues to drink will die from it.

When you try to warn them, it's amazing how persuasive the alcoholic can be! Nothing much wrong with me, they assure you, nothing I can't deal with. Yes, I'll stop drinking. Tomorrow. Just one last party, one last night out .....I can handle it. Don't worry about me.

And their families accept their assurances because they love them and fear for them. They hope against hope that this time the alcoholic means it, and is really going to get help.

Sometimes spouses or parents make appointments for the alcoholic to get counselling. Of course, the alcoholic doesn't show up, or makes it for only one or two appointments, and then drops out. Why? Because it's too hard to keep denying the truth, that it's the drinking that's causing the problems, and they leave before they actually have to admit it, even to themselves.

The only way an alcoholic can survive is to stop drinking. And the best way to ensure recovery is for them to start going to Alcoholics Anonymous, find a sponsor, and keep working the programme.

Very, very few alcoholics actually do recover. The statistics are depressing in themselves, but one key fact emerges again and again, all over the world - AA is the best and safest route to sobriety.

Julio never took that route. He said he was too scared to get help, that if he did, he might lose his medical licence. In fact, that was simply another excuse to keep drinking. AA respects the anonymity of all who seek help, as millions of recovering alcoholics - including me - can confirm.

In AA, I've met recovering doctors, lawyers, teachers, airline pilots, religious ministers and priests, counsellors and psychologists. Everyone is supportive towards everyone else, and the newcomer is always given a warm, sincere welcome. It is a safe place: everyone knows how much is at stake - their lives, their careers, their families, their very existence - and nobody betrays their fellow alcoholics.

I write this because if you, dear reader, have an alcoholic friend or relative, or if you yourself suspect you may suffer from this terrible disease, I hope you will be spurred on to get help.

And if you are struggling to cope with an alcoholic in your own family, please, please make the effort to go to Alanon. Alanon is an anonymous organization which supports people living with, or affected by, an alcoholic. Like AA, Alanon respects your own anonymity. And also like AA, it offers a wholehearted welcome and ongoing support, because it is entirely run by fellow sufferers, people who - like you - have the problem of how to live with, or stay close to, an alcoholic loved one, how best to help the alcoholic without losing their own sanity.

Alcoholism is one of the worst scourges of our times. I hope and pray that anyone reading this who recognizes themselves or someone they love in this situation will get help at once. There really is no time to lose. The clock started ticking when the alcoholic took his first drink.

Why Love Matters

Why does love matter?

Because without it, life would not be worth living. Without it, we would be less than human. And without its irreplaceable influence in our earliest years, our brains would not develop to their full potential. We could not become fully functioning three-brained beings if we had not been loved as infants.

Psychologist Sue Gerhardt's book, "Why Love Matters," now in its second edition, is of the greatest interest to anyone who cares about human development, personal psychology, abnormal psychology and personality theory. This surely includes everyone reading this blog, and I can't recommend it too highly.

We all know now that the personality of the baby is formed by a complex and delicate process of interaction between the genetic endowment of the child - in Work terms, the Essence with which she is born - and the environment in which she lives. In the world of the tiny baby, the influence of the mother is paramount, and that intimate relationship has the greatest effect of all on what kind of person her baby will become.

Will the child grow to be a secure, well-loved adult, someone capable of loving and empathizing with others? Or will she become an addict, a narcissist, an anxious, obsessive-compulsive sufferer or even a psychopath?

We bring our own special and unique DNA into the world. This is most often a less-than-perfect inheritance; for example, you may have genes that could predispose you to alcohol or opiate addiction, to overeating, or to aggression. But whether or not those genes eventually hold sway over your adult personality depends to a very great extent on the type of mothering you received in the first two years of your life.

Nothing new, you may think. After all, John Bowlby, Melanie Klein, Erich Fromm and many others have written on the various stages of child development and described how the family influences the type of personality, and of course to us in the Work, the false personality, that the child will eventually acquire.

You would be wrong, however, for in this book what Gerhardt does is to actually describe - with diagrams - the effects that different types of mother-baby relationships have on the brain's formation. And this is something new and infinitely valuable for our understanding of how personalities - and, of course, false personalities - come into existence.

As an example, if a loving, empathic relationship is not present for the baby at the very earliest age, that child's orbitofrontal complex does not develop as it should. This part of the brain is responsible for the ability to delay gratification, to manage feelings and to participate in relationships. Early deprivation means that the baby may never fully achieve these abilities. If the opportunity is missed in infancy, the growing child, even if adopted into a loving family, may forever be robbed of his full potential.

Even in pregnancy, stress experienced by the mother can shape the developing brain of her unborn child, influencing the volume of the hippocampus or the amygdala. Some babies are born already stressed, and the mother may experience the baby's crying and refusal to feed as a rejection of her, and then may emotionally withdraw further from her child.

It is the quality and strength of the parents' love, particularly that of the mother, which enables the brain to develop normally. Mothers who are under stress, whether through being a single parent without the support of a partner or family, or through low income or poor housing, or in an abusive relationship, are often unable to show their baby the quality of love that is necessary for proper development. There is good news, however, for with professional help, especially if this help is given at a very early stage, the mother and baby bond may be repaired sufficiently so that the child can develop normally.

Much depends on the ability of the mother (or the primary caregiver, if this is not the biological mother) to understand and manage her own feelings, and in particular to be able to tolerate uncomfortable feelings and relationships without letting them affect her behaviour towards her child.

The ways that children develop will follow certain patterns, which are of course also dependent on the genetic makeup of the child.

Some children may respond to their mother's discomfort by learning to hold back their own feelings, denying them sufficiently that the adults around them may see them as calm, unconcerned children with whom all is well. Underneath, however, many children are a filled with alarming, painful feelings which they know will only distress their caregivers; such children put on a false mask of "OK-ness" which does not reflect their true states. To those of us in the Work, we may see this as one basic characteristic of what will become that child's false personality. It seems that the beginnings of false personality, though not its full-blown manifestations, can arise at a much earlier age than was previously believed.

Some children may become hyper-sensitive to the state of their parents' emotions, so that they learn to read them with an almost psychic attunement. In reality, they have learned very early on to pick up signals from the adults which show when they are most likely to be attentive to the child. The child then times their own demands so that they will get maximum attention, but at the cost of repressing the child's pain. Such behaviour has been observed in many adult children of alcoholics, though this is not the only environment which can elicit it. Any disorganized pattern of parental care may be the trigger for this type of psychological hyper-awareness. It may even seem to be an asset - "What a wonderfully sensitive child!", people may exclaim - yet it is not, because it eventually traps the adult into a pattern of codependence.

Yet other children become extremely emotional, over-vocalizing and over-dramatizing constantly, because they have learned that unless they do so their needs will be overlooked. Quite often these children grow up to be "borderline" patients, who have enormous difficulty in regulating their own feelings. Internally, they feel as though they are on a constant roller-coaster of emotions which threaten to overwhelm their already very fragile sense of self. They can no longer distinguish between "real" hurt and artificially exaggerated feelings, and they may be known as the drama queens (or kings!) of their families.

Psychotherapy later in life can help enormously in bringing calm and stability, as we all know. But such therapy is painful. To learn to re-programme our feelings, we have to re-experience them in all their complexity, so that we can then "do differently". Such therapy is vital if adults who have experienced very difficult childhoods are to be able to lead organized, fruitful lives, or as we say in the Work, to become Good Householders.

And babies do not have to be subjected to cruelty to undergo the sort of brain changes which Gerhardt describes. Sometimes, the mother is simply unavailable, even when physically present, because she is not at ease with the baby's feelings and does not know how to soothe them. Some mothers have to leave the baby with caregivers to go out to work, and they may not be aware of the way those caregivers actually treat the baby when she herself is not there. Perhaps the caregivers are simply interested in earning money and care little for the child's needs.  Gerhardt points out, however, that a patient, loving caregiver can be just as good as, if not better than, the mother herself; what matters is the quality of the care that is given, rather than who is giving it, a fact which should reassure many working mothers.

Fortunately, as stated above, much damage can be repaired if the adult is able to go into therapy. Without such help, however, the outlook can be bleak. Later, in an attempt to lull emotional pain, the adult who was an unhappy, emotionally neglected baby may take to alcohol or opiates. Again, the genetic predisposition will influence which escape route seems easiest or most effective.

Of particular interest to Work students is the new understanding that the brain works best when both emotions and instincts are operating harmoniously together. The ability to achieve this harmony depends wholly on our early life experiences. When this state is present, the rational faculty is also able to function at its best.

"The brain constructs representations of internal bodily states," Gerhardt says, "links them to other stored representations, and then signals back to the body in a process of internal feedback, which may then trigger off further bodily feelings in a cyclical process".

We may call these "stored representations" different I's. This is why, in the Work, we strive to be conscious in all centres, for many I's are stored in each centre, and will influence us without our awareness unless we are trained to observe ourselves. We cannot truly understand ourselves and observe our various I's unless we are conscious in our moving/instinctive centre, our emotional centre and our intellectual centre.

 All three centres may either work together productively, as is our aim, or may, as is often the reality, hinder each other because of repressed and unconscious I's that interfere with the centres' efficiency.

Gerhardt's book is too long and too complex to be easily summarized, but I hope I have given you a sufficient taste of it to make you interested in reading her work for yourself. Many counsellors and psychologists have read the first edition as part of their coursework, but in 2015 a new edition was published which incorporates new research in genetics and mental development.

The book is: "Why Love Matters" by Sue Gerhardt - ISBN 978-0-415-87053-5
Publisher: Routledge
2nd edition 2015

Supposing We Lived From Essence .....

We know that eventually, one of the goals of personal work is to be able to live from our Essence. For many people, that seems quite impossible. Modern life emphasizes the importance of the Personality, and we really do need to have a well developed, thoroughly rounded Personality in order to function in life. And this is right, for one day, the riches in Personality will be useful in feeding Essence, helping it to become strong enough to direct our life.

Unfortunately, the world facilitates to an even greater extent the growth of False Personality. You know how much global capitalism deliberately exacerbates anxiety, fear, anger, greed, lust and so on. Advertising leads us to believe that by satisfying these traits we will achieve happiness. But they are insatiable! As someone wise has said, our needs can always be satisfied; our wants, never.

The False Personality I's can so easily direct our lives. For many people this is exactly how they live. You have only to watch any soap opera to see how this is so. And the media themselves, through those very soaps, dramas, films, and so on portray this lower form of living as the norm, so unless people are living as Good Householders and no longer believe in life they easily succumb to this propaganda.

But suppose we disidentified from our False Personality? We saw in the previous post how much more freedom we would enjoy if we lived under 48 laws rather than the 96 that False Personality imposes.

Suppose we used our Personality just as much as is necessary for life, and then allowed it to feed our Essence?

Essence would then be able to express itself, and ultimately to guide our entire life. We would live under 24 laws, with much greater freedom.

Gurdjieff remarked that very often you find people who've lived all their lives in the country are closer to Essence than are city people. The disadvantage they face is that their Personalities are less developed and so are unable to feed their Essence. Their Essence cannot then grow.

Today, this is less common. Mass media reach everywhere, and the growth of the internet and computer technology means that many people are now influenced by them, even those living in the depths of the countryside.

But generally, older people from rural areas really can be closer to their Essence. What they are like will depend a great deal on their culture and national character. In England, much of the population is under the influence of Saturn, and in many areas of the countryside people do tend to be slower to speak, are suspicious of strangers, are extremely clannish and slow to change. This is also true of Scotland, whereas in Ireland and to a lesser extent in Wales much of the population are more mercurial in their Essence, more voluble, eager to strike up conversations with strangers, and willing to look beyond their own village for inspiration. This is all part of their Essence.

It's quite common in the Irish countryside to see older men and women sitting outside their houses, hoping to hold a conversation with stray passers-by. This satisfies an Essence need for them. You rarely see this in England.

But to take your own Essence - what does it long for?

We know that every Essence carries a longing for the heavenly realms whence it came. That within us is a nostalgia for that beauty, that love, that true perception of reality, that peace and fellowship with other Essences.

No matter how covered up our Essence may be, the closer we come to living from it, the more these desires will manifest.

But those desires will express themselves in very different ways, and with different emphases. For one person, a longing for beauty means craving for art; another prefers the beauty of nature; for some, it is music that most satisfies that craving; while for yet another it is the loving fellowship with family and friends that is most important.

In the Work, we observe ourselves to see what is real and what is unreal; what is from Essence, and what is from Personality and even False Personality.

When you feel a longing for the peace and quiet of the countryside, or for the beauty of the sea-shore, this may well be your Essence expressing its wishes. If you can, try to satisfy them. Seek out the surroundings that bring joy and gratitude to your Essence; you will discover from observation what they are.

 For me, it is the seaside that is one of my preferred environments, rivaled only by the beauty of hilly countryside with woods and running water in rural settings. When I am in any of these surroundings, my Essence is filled with joy. It feels at home.

Another Work student prefers the countryside, especially woodland areas, and likes to live in a caravan or some other small shelter so that she may be closer to nature, not hemmed in by four walls.

 Buildings which express sacred architecture are also very vivifying to Essence. Whether it's a Gothic cathedral, such as Chartres or Salisbury; an exquisite mosque, in Samarkand or Bokhara; or a Zen temple and surrounding garden in Kyoto, all these spaces were created by conscious men and women to elevate our perceptions and delight the Essence. They can lift us to the heavenly dimension that is the true home of Essence.

If you lived according to your Essence, you would seek out such settings and enjoy them as often as possible. Your Personality has a part to play here, for you may need to make travel arrangements in order to satisfy this longing. You might even want to move house to live closer to a setting your Essence loves.

As well as choosing your surroundings, if you lived according to your Essence you would seek to create a peaceful atmosphere wherever you happen to be. You would avoid quarrelsome, angry people like the plague they are. You would refrain from watching violent films, dramas, or television programmes, or listening to the deadening vibrations from much popular music.

Living according to your Essence would mean that you paid close attention to everything you did, because no detail of your life is too insignificant to form part of your spiritual evolution. The Kabbala tells us that every action should be carried out with the intenton of liberating the sparks of holiness that reside in each particle of matter, in every human soul, in every animal. In Essence, we offer love and gratitude to all that nourishes us, to everyone who crosses who our path. Essence delights in creating order and beauty in our surroundings, and cleaning a room can be satisfying and holy work.

To find out more about your Essence, think back to your childhood. What did you enjoy doing? What absorbed you and brought you joy? For me, it was painting, writing, exploring, and enjoying the beauty of nature. Even as a very young child I loved to pick flowers and chase butterflies, and later tried to draw them and write about them. Music, too, was a very early delight. The day I found an old piano in a barn and sat down to play it was the start of a lifelong love affair. What sparked your own childhood joy and delight? What happy pursuit do you remember most vividly?

You know you are not living according to your Essence when you feel vaguely that something is wrong, that all is not well. That you need something, but you don't quite know what. When you experience the "great nostalgia", that is your Essence clamouring  to be heard. Your task is to listen. You may not be able to give Essence what it wants right at that moment, but by remembering yourself and observing the I's that are trying to express themselves you give Essence the honour and relief of being heard.

If we all lived according to our Essence, there would be no wars. No disputes between neighbours, no misunderstandings between friends. The lion would lie down with the lamb, as the Bible puts it. Of course, this means our inner lion, our inner lamb; all our instincts and positive emotions would exist comfortably together, and be governed by Real I.

If only we lived according to Essence!

Living Under Fewer Laws

We're often told in the Work that as we become more conscious, we will be able to live under fewer laws.

In my early days as a Work student I wasn't at all sure what that meant. Mathematics was never my strong point, and I puzzled over the different levels of laws, trying to see what it could mean for my own personal evolution and that of others.

The greatest help to my understanding was Dr Nicoll's "Commentaries", where he explains the concept very clearly and gives examples of each level.

Firstly, we know that different parts of the Ray of Creation are under appropriate numbers of laws. The Moon is said to be governed by 96 orders of laws, the Earth by 48, the Planets by 24, and so on. The Sun itself is under only 12 orders of laws. All these levels are possible for us to contain within ourselves, but the higher levels come only when we work on ourselves. They are not found naturally in mankind.

Beyond the Sun comes the level of the galaxy, the Milky Way, at 6 orders of laws; then the sum of all galaxies, at 3 orders; and finally, the Absolute itself, which we cannot comprehend with our limited intellect, under only One law.

 As we are, without working on ourselves, we may collectively live under the 48 laws that are proper to life on Earth. And most of us, without such work, actually live under 96 laws, because of the compulsions of False Personality.

To live at a higher level, we must be able to come under fewer laws.

 We know that the level of the Sun corresponds to Conscious Humanity; I think of Jesus Christ in this connection, as He is at the level of the Sun for us. And the Work says that we may have the Sun within ourselves, that we can become a Sun to our own individual microcosmic solar system.

 So, according to our degree of evolution, we may be living under 96, 48, 24 or 12 orders of laws.

What does this mean in practical terms?

Think of False Personality. That is the part of us which restricts and confines us, which distorts our Personality and compels us to behave in ways that are incompatible with our highest understanding. If I am living under the laws of False Personality, it means that, for example, when someone treads on my toe I don't simply feel the pain and then let it go. I nurse it and encourage it; it sparks anger in me and that anger turns into long-standing resentment.

I then feel a great dislike towards the person who stepped on my foot - "Who do they think they are, to step on me! Don't they know how important I am?" - and a sense of outrage that is fed by pride and arrogance.  I may seem to accept their apology, but deep down I see them as my foe, and a wish to similarly harm them may arise in my False Personality without my awareness.

In all of the above I'm governed by 96 orders of laws. I am under a compulsion to retaliate, a law which arises from my negative emotional centre, which should not exist amongst three-brained beings, but which does because I, like everyone else, have been raised by people who themselves were compelled to act in certain ways by their own negative emotional centres.  I am unable to control my own manifestations and must arouse antagonism in everyone around me.

All in all, this is a psychological prison.

If, however, I live at the level of Good Householder, that of a "normal" life on Earth, I will come under half the number of laws. This level corresponds to Personality, and if my Personality is developed, and if I'm living according to my Real Conscience, I know that over-reaction to an accidental injury is quite unnecessary and will damage me and the person who caused me pain.

I accept their apology, and if they are quite unaware of having stepped on me I choose not to draw their attention to it, but simply let it be.

I feel the physical pain, let it go, and remain unaffected by it. I may choose to avoid getting close to a particularly clumsy person, but I won't hold any anger or resentment towards them. I go on my way, and give the matter no further thought. I'm not imprisoned by my False Personality.

Such a level of life will be under only 48 orders of law, and you can see how much more freedom it brings me.

This level - 48 laws - is that at which all of us three-brained beings are meant to live, at the very least. Good Householder should be the "default setting" for all of us, but because, as I have mentioned, we have all been raised by people with False Personalities we find that, without a good emotional education such as that which one of the great religions or the Work can give us, we fall back on our own False Personality at the slightest provocation, and live under far more laws than is necessary.

Disidentifying with False Personality I's gives us a real taste of freedom. We have more room within ourselves, and we give other people more room. These conditions can lead to an increase in consciousness.

If we have worked on ourselves, either by a traditional religious discipline or through the Work itself, we may eventually reach the level of Essence, the level of the planets. Then, our Essence directs our entire life. This is freedom indeed! We live by the values of Essence, which among other things include love of truth, justice, harmony, compassion, beauty, and peace. At this level, we are not imprisoned by the habits of Personality and we have left False Personality far behind.

After many years, perhaps many lifetimes, of work, we may one day reach the level of the Sun, with only 12 laws governing us. This is the level of the man or woman with good will. It is the level of Conscious Humanity.

Ouspensky puts it this way, "A growth of what belongs to a man means a growth of Essence. A growth of what does not really belong to a man means a growth of Personality". As that which does not belong to us gradually falls away, only the real, the Essence, is left. This is a huge increase in freedom.

Someone living at the level of Essence knows what she needs, and what other people need, in each situation, and is motivated by love, compassion, the search for harmony, and the desire for truth. She controls her manifestations so that these values are furthered, and not those of Personality or False Personality. If we are in the presence of such a person, we may know intuitively that they are living at a higher level, and we are aware of a different quality in their Being, a quality which - if we are able to receive it - helps our own transformation to take place.

This is the secret behind the Eastern practice of darshan, seeking out the presence of "saints", "mystics", "gurus", and evolved spiritual beings of all religious persuasions. We feel their difference from us, and we long to become more like them. These people may be quite unknown to others, may never have achieved fame or recognition beyond their own sphere, but we know when we are in the presence of someone higher than us, and we are grateful.

For any transformation to occur in us, for any change in Being which will allow us to come under fewer laws and live in greater freedom, we all need to let ourselves be transformed by higher energies, the energies of the Work.

What would it mean to live at the level of the Sun? Although it's difficult to imagine, for most of us are far below it, we know of the many verified accounts of conscious beings, or saints, that they can perform seeming miracles, may appear in two places at once, may appear to others after their own physical death. Such people are not bound by the 48, or even 24, laws which govern the rest of us. They seem to make nature obey them.

 Jesus manifested this power when he stilled the winds and waves of the Sea of Galilee. In recent times, saints such as Padre Pio have shown similar powers, appearing before other people at a great distance, performing miracles of healing and prophesying the future.

One day, if we work for it, we may reach the same state. It may take many lifetimes. But it is not impossible; it is within our reach some day, and it is the condition of which St. Paul speaks when he says that service to God is perfect freedom.

Sex, Drugs, AA and the Work

Aha! Thought that title would get you!

Seriously, though, it's important to know where both AA and the Work stand on these subjects, whether you want to follow the Twelve Steps or to work on yourself as a student of Gurdjieff - perhaps both, as I do.

Drugs first.

Don't.

Just don't.

In AA, we avoid drugs because they spoil our sobriety. You might not think you have a problem with pot, for example, but if you want to stop drinking you need to avoid any substance which skews your thought processes. You can't recover from any addiction as long as you are using a mind-altering drug; only prescription medications are allowed.

In the Work, I've known one or two people who smoked pot at weekends, but they usually didn't last very long as Work students. Here, too, we seek for absolute clarity of mind, at even greater depth than is needed for the Twelve Steps.

In the early days of the Work, we read that G sometimes administered drugs to students, with their full consent, as he believed that doing so could give them and their fellow pupils a glimpse into Essence and enable them to experience Higher Centres. But such experiments were strictly monitored, and very rare. Today I don't know of any Work group or teacher currently carrying out such a procedure. There's no call for it, anyway. Almost everyone interested in mysticism these days will have tried some sort of psychedelic drug, and realized that it was a dead end.

All cultures use mind-altering drugs of some sort, including alcohol. Higher hydrogens exist in plants, and can be extracted for various reasons. But dependence on drugs is extremely dangerous, as we all know, and there's no certain way of knowing who will turn out to be an addict before the drug is used.

Moreover, although drugs such as LSD and peyote do open Higher Centres, the experience is short-lived and uses up the body's own store of higher hydrogens in the process. Long-term damage may result, even death. This is why deep depression - sometimes insurmountable and leading to suicide - is not uncommon among drug users and alcoholics.

As for one's sexual conduct, there are very few general guidelines. Everything depends on the needs of the individual. If someone is a sex addict, clearly they have to become abstinent in order to recover. On the other hand, there are many AA members and Work students who live fulfilling sex lives, and this is fine, as long as nobody is being coerced or exploited.

Neither the Work nor AA asks followers to be celibate. But both advocate conducting one's sex life in a responsible manner, not simply using another person's body to fulfil one's own desires.

Those who wrote the AA Big Book certainly had a sense of humour, for the section concerned with sex begins on page 69! And then, if you turn to page 96 and read it as a continuation, there's a very interesting and funny juxtaposition ... at least, that's the case in the original Big Book. I don't know whether it applies to more recent editions, but knowing how clever and creative alcoholics are, it probably does.

Both AA and the Work advocate moderation, but each person has to live their relationships, including those of a sexual nature, according to their personal needs and those of their partner.

Nothing must be done to another person without their consent, and as sex stirs deep emotions we have a responsibility to our spouses or partners to honour their feelings as well as our own.

This is true for the Twelve Steps and for the Work. I have known Work students to be thrown out of their group for acting irresponsibly towards other members in this way. One man in my teacher's senior group attempted to sleep with all the female members, one by one, and was told in no uncertain terms to leave.

But the Work is not puritanical. It can encompass all sorts of relationships, which to others might seem irregular, as long as those relationships are conducted lovingly and responsibly.

AA says something very similar: it asks members to think of the well-being of the spouse or partner in a sexual relationship, and to put it before our own. If we do that, we will be living according to our conscience, and will have nothing for which we need reproach ourselves.

Living by the standards of Real Conscience is one of the chief aims of Work students, of course, and by conducting every relationship, whether sexual or not, in its light, we will be acting according to our highest standards.

And it's good to remind ourselves that the Work teaches that every sexual encounter, because it's so deeply physical, is a meeting of Essences.

What's more, our society is so fraught with sexual anxiety, fed by advertising and exacerbated by constantly comparing ourselves to others, that it's good to remember that absolutely no harm ever came to anyone by living a celibate life - if that is your circumstance.

Eulogy for a Good Householder

What is a Good Householder? An obyvatel, Gurdjieff tells us, is someone who lives at a higher level than most people. He or she follows their conscience, lives ethically and responsibly, supports themselves and their own family, and yet "does not believe in life".

By not believing in life, Gurdjieff meant that the Good Householder does not think the ultimate purpose of existence is to accumulate wealth, fame, sensual pleasure or any of life's other rewards. These things may be enjoyed if they come to us, but they are not the goal of life.

Instead, the Good Householder, who may be of any religion or none, finds the meaning of his or her life in fulfilling duties, or dharma.  A Good Householder may be rich or poor, of any profession or trade, and does not necessarily own a house. Usually, a Good Householder has a family, but he or she may live alone. If that is the case, however, they are generally involved with the community in some way, since they want to contribute to the good of the world, not to simply exist.

When I think of a Good Householder, I think of my Uncle George, who died peacefully this weekend at the age of 95.

George Vandenburg was born into a poor Jewish family in London's East End in 1920. According to Jewish tradition, education is highly valued, and George was very well educated despite his parents' poverty. What little money the family had left after feeding, clothing and educating their six children was spent on books, concerts and the theatre.

The family was unable to afford a university education, however, and there were in any case limits to how many Jewish students a university would accept. Then, as now, anti-Semitism was rife. George went to work in a factory when he left school, and was quickly promoted to manager. But World War II saw him called up, like most able-bodied young men, and when the war ended he had to start again at the bottom of the ladder.

The vicissitudes of post-war economics meant that secure jobs were very hard to come by, but George's abilities and managerial skills gained him an excellent reputation and he was always sought after, so that he was unemployed for only a very brief period.

He married, raised three sons, and rose to a high position in his field; but then, once again, misfortune struck and the factory where he worked was forced to close.

Without complaining, George found a new position hundreds of miles away, and he and his family relocated to the North of England, where none of them had ever lived before, and where they knew nobody.

They soon settled in, however, and when his children were accepted into university he took on extra work so that they should not have to start their lives with a huge burden of debt. 

So far, this could be the story of many people's lives. What, then, was so remarkable about George?

First of all, what struck everyone about him was his cheerfulness and refusal to give in to self-pity. This is life, and in life bad things happen, and all one can do is to get on with whatever task we are given. Such was his philosophy, learned from his parents, and eventually passed on to his children. It is what Mrs. Pogson calls turning our attention to "the very next thing", and it is the attitude that George had learned and which he embodied.

His philosophy affected me profoundly, for I too was an honorary member of his family when I was very young.  George acted as a father towards me for several years, when my own father was in hospital, recovering from tuberculosis. My mother, my younger brother and I went to live with my grandparents and with Uncle George, who was still a young man, still living at home.

I remember his unfailing kindness to everyone, especially towards children and those weaker than himself. He devoted many hours to taking poor children from the East End on picnics and outings, and he was tireless in his efforts to bring hope into their lives. 

He was a very even-tempered man, whether by nature or by training, and I never knew him to lose his temper. He did, however, act the part of an angry father when one of the children had actually done something reprehensible, such as lying about their homework, or about their whereabouts. He would explain why they needed to be punished, so that we all knew what we had done wrong, and why it was wrong. And then we accepted our punishments calmly, whether that was the loss of pocket money or the cancellation of a planned outing. 

In this way, he modeled the ideal of fatherhood to his own children and his nephews and nieces. And in everything he did he was unfailingly wise, reliable, loving and compassionate.

And George was also fun to be with. He was a well balanced person, although he'd never heard of Balanced Man, playing the clarinet, learning foreign languages even into his 80s, and teaching football and cricket to his sons.

He believed in no particular religion, but thought that the world would be much better run if it were  ruled only by kind people - men and women who really cared about others and were not in politics for their own ends.

If he had a fault, it was in being too compassionate and too trusting. If he had been in the Work, he would probably have been asked - as I was - to read and understand the story of King Appolis, in All and Everything. Work students will recall the tale of the very kind king who placed too much trust in his servants, but in my uncle's case his trust was seldom misplaced; the only ill-effect it had was on his own and his family's finances, when he loaned money to a relative who was unable to repay it. The phrase "generous to a fault" could have been coined for Uncle George.

He died as considerately as he had lived, quietly and without fuss, in a nursing home where he'd been admitted after a short illness. Nobody was at his bedside when he passed away, and I believe this was deliberate on his part. Knowing how distraught his wife and children would have been, and wishing to spare them as much pain as possible, he died in solitude, a peaceful expression on his face.

When someone like this dies, the world is the poorer. Although he'd never heard of the Work, he created higher energies throughout his life, and released a great amount of spiritual substances at his death. 

A Good Householder is a very valuable person; he or she contributes much to the spiritual evolution of mankind, and although they are unknown and unsung, they are no less valuable - and often much more so - than many of the so-called great and good who occupy the headlines.

In the past, I believe it was easier for people to live as Good Householders than it is today. With today's more chaotic economic circumstances and the destruction of so many traditional values, it's getting harder to affirm the need for a life based on conscience and ethical duty. Global capitalism - or Mammon, as the Bible calls it - opposes evolution and seeks to condemn us all to becoming passive consumers, looking to money and objects to fulfill our deepest desires, which of course they never can.

People like my Uncle George, of blessed memory, remind us that what matters is how we live and who we are, how we treat others, and not what we have.

May Good Householders everywhere flourish, may their lives be cherished and their example copied.

Synchronicity: When Everything Really Does Happen for a Reason

"All things work together for the good of those who love the Lord" - St. Paul

Sometimes everything really does happen for a reason.

Last year I wrote a post debunking the commonly-heard remark that "everything happens for a reason". I called it the EHFAR attitude. It's much favoured by New Age acolytes, because it sounds profound and casts a rosy - and often misleading - glow over all kinds of mistakes and problems. If we can't recognize when we've made a mistake, we can't change. So the EHFAR philosophy, applied too broadly, kills spiritual progress.

For instance, one New Age-y alcoholic of my acquaintance once took a wrong turn and ended up in Miami, Florida, hundreds of miles from his destination. The fact that he was drunk at the time didn't stop him from claiming that it had "happened for a reason". The reason, he said, was that he had been given an unexpected stay in Miami, which he'd always wanted to visit. But, I pointed out, spending 48 hours semi-comatose in a motel was hardly "visiting Miami". Still, he so much wanted to justify his drunken spree that he clung tenaciously to the idea that all had happened for the best, in the best of all possible worlds.

As an example of self-justifying, this was a typical response by someone who wasn't ready to see their own mistakes.

Years later, when at last he came into recovery, he saw that spree - what he could remember of it - as yet another one of the really stupid things he'd done while drunk. Which, of course, it was. And he made amends to his family for the harm and distress he had caused them, which he had never realized before.

Many, perhaps most, people live under the Law of Accident. Nothing then happens for any kind of sublime, spiritual reason. Things just happen. They go the only way they can go, and the result is entropy, sometimes chaos. We can all slip to that level if we give up trying to become more conscious.

But, if we are living at a higher level than that of life, everything really does begin to happen for a reason.

I'm assuming that you, dear reader, are living at this higher level, or at least that you would like to, that you are making real efforts.

In this case, everything may well be happening for a reason in your life, and you can very often see that reason quite easily.

Not only those of us in the Work may experience this higher level. A Good Householder, someone who follows the path of duty and lives according to his or her conscience, will also often find that events have worked out well in unexpected ways, and that benevolent "coincidences", which Jung called synchronicity, occur far more often than chance.

Those following a religious path, whether in the world or in monasteries, also frequently live at this higher level. They understand what Sufis call "the Cause behind the cause", and see how seemingly unconnected events may actually be joined at that higher level and lead to spiritual progress.

Accidents happen all the time at the level of life. There is nothing but mechanicalness in many people's lives, because they don't even know that a higher level, a higher purpose than just eating, sleeping and reproducing, exists and that they could reach it by making efforts. We see this most clearly in the lives of active alcoholics and addicts, whose series of accidents will most likely end in death and on the way destroy the happiness of those around them.

But we may choose to live more consciously, and then God - Conscious Humanity, Jesus, the saints - can reach into our lives and bring about miraculous happenings. This is what St Paul meant by his cryptic statement at the start of this post.

Let me give two examples from my own experience.

After a Work week in New York I was returning with a group of friends, driving back to Georgia. We lost our way in the maze of highways around Washington, DC (this was long before the days of satnavs). But, as we were there, I felt very strongly that we should visit a Sufi sheikh of my acquaintance, who taught at a well-known university in Washington.

This sheikh was surprised to see us, but accepted our visit in the spirit of Sufi hospitality. We were all full of the higher energies generated by a week of intensive work, and he could see this. He was free that afternoon because a tutorial had just "happened" to get cancelled. And, by synchonicity, a friend of this sheikh, a well-known Middle Eastern sheikh of another Sufi Order, also "happened" to be visiting him at the same time.

That sheikh, whom we met that day for the first and last time, was in Washington only for a very short stay, and that night he had been invited to hold a special tekke, or service, in an apartment near the university.

We too were invited to join the circle, and that night we experienced what I can only describe as another world; the chanting and prayers led all of us into an even higher state than we had reached in New York, and it was a life-changing experience for all of us. All kinds of mysterious but clearly fated events began to happen to us after that, and all of us felt that our time in the Sufi circle, so different from anything we'd experienced before, acted as a catalyst for an amazing series of "happenings" that changed us all for ever in the months that followed.

This was real synchronicity. Our "getting lost" had happened for a reason, and the reason was that we could come closer to the Law of Fate, and experience, even though temporarily, what it would be like to live at a much more conscious level. Because I was in a higher state of consciousness my intuition functioned perfectly, and I knew we had to visit the university where the Sufi Sheikh taught.

On the journey back to Georgia, we experienced many more synchonicities. They came thick and fast, and we reached our homes much earlier than we'd believed possible.

But there was one small synchronicity that amused us very much.

One member of our party was married, and he said, in mock gloom, "I'll really be in the doghouse when I get back. We've taken two days longer than we were supposed to, and my wife's going to be furious."

And then, just a few seconds later, we passed a dog-grooming parlour outside which was a huge sign proclaiming "Kim's Doghouse".

And our friend's wife's name was Kim!

We all thought that was a significant sign from Conscious Humanity that we were indeed on the right path.  God has a sense of humour, after all. And in that little synchronistic event He'd shown us that He was with us, even in the very small things, and that confirmed the rightness of what we'd done.

My friend was indeed in the "doghouse" when he got back, but that too turned out well, and he made some beneficial changes in his life as a result. He become a much better husband and father, living more responsibly from then on.

I suspect that you, my reader, have also experienced many synchronicities in your life. When they happen, we can be sure we are on the right path, living according to the Law of Fate, approaching closer to our destiny.

And sometimes they seem to happen in advance of our living at a higher level. God knows when we are in a more approachable state, when we just might be willing to pay attention to our level of consciousness and rethink the way we've been living.

Such a synchronicity happened in the life of my alcoholic friend. He was arrested for drunk driving, but instead of being sent to the town "drunk tank" he was shown a video of a rehab centre and he chose to apply for a place there. His motive was to avoid a jail term, but the result was that he came into recovery. The arresting officer would have immediately locked him up in the cells, but for the fact that a social worker, visiting another suspect, "happened" to be present when my friend was brought into the police station.

That social worker saw something in my friend, some deeply-buried longing for recovery, and responded - albeit unconsciously - to that longing. She persuaded the deeply suspicious police officer to show him the video she "happened" to have with her.

God had anticipated my friend's recovery, and given him a nudge. And today, that man has been sober for more than 20 years and is very active in AA, visiting alcoholics in their homes and persuading them, often successfully, to try going to AA.

God does indeed work for good in the lives of those who love Him.

Nostalgia - Friend or Foe?

Thinking of Passover again, with the holiday due to start this weekend, I've been reflecting on the different types of Israelites who followed Moses into the wilderness. Of course, they're all I's in us, all commonly found reactions to new experiences, and they can all teach us something useful about ourselves.

Perhaps the most sympathetic, to me at least, are the "murmurers" in the crowd. You know, the complainers and grumblers who kept on and on reminiscing about the wonderful leeks, cucumbers and melons they'd enjoyed back in Egypt, when they were slaves.

The food back there was really great, they told Moses, but now all we have is this weird stuff called "manna". Why ever did we leave Egypt? It was better to be a slave and enjoy good food than to chase after a Promised Land and have to exist on "manna". We should never have left! It's all your fault for bringing us here!

The reason I can relate to these sorry individuals is that - as an alcoholic and as a human being - I too can, if I choose, look back to a mythical past and compare it with present troubles. In that imaginary past, everything was easy and fun, and life was much better. 

If alcoholics think this way in relation to their drinking, it's known as "euphoric recall". The same is true for any addiction. The path to freedom is difficult and involves giving up much that we have enjoyed in the past; even though, with drugs and alcohol, the enjoyment quickly turned to sackcloth and ashes, in our own false memory we were much happier then.

It's a dangerous way to think. Persisted with, it can lead to relapse. And in everyday life, too, even if we're not tempted to drink or use drugs, we can easily live in a place of illusion rather than in the present, with all its problems and challenges.

For freedom is a challenge, an opportunity that many refuse to take up. We're so used to having our brains follow the well-trodden paths, to repeating old patterns and habitual attitudes. They're not happy experiences, but they are familiar. If we want to change, we must abandon these old ways of thinking, which means - in counsellor talk - moving out of our "comfort zones". Physically, new neural pathways must be forged. We must move into the unexplored parts of our minds to experience something new, to be free from the backwards drag of the past.

In the Work, we speak of "metanoia" or thinking in a new way, undergoing a renewal of our mind. This is possible only when we give up the old ways, but that giving up seems threatening, because when we start something new we have no assurance that it will end well, that we really will reach whatever our Promised Land may be. 

Such an attitude was epitomized for me by an elderly lady I once knew. In her late 80s, living in a beautiful, comfortable bungalow with a loving husband, and with her children and grandchildren frequent visitors, she nevertheless managed to feel sorry for herself.

Her complaints would begin with anything that happened to be going on at the moment, whether it was a poor telephone connection, bad weather or a meal that hadn't turned out as expected. And she always ended with "I never should have left the island". 

The "island" was a real place, the location of her mythically happy childhood. In her childhood reminiscences the sun always shone, her mother was always happy, her sister always ready to play on the beach. There was no school, no discipline; life was a perpetual holiday with no work and no compulsion to do anything except enjoy herself.

Of course, it wasn't like that at all! But such is the power of nostalgia that it can make us long for a time that never was in a land that never existed. We give up all chance of enjoying the present and of working on ourselves if we lose our bearings in nostalgia.

Yet, there's a different type of nostalgia that is actually a spiritual experience. It's the longing, the ineffable yearning that all of us sometimes experience when in the presence of great beauty. It may be the natural beauty of the forest or the sea that triggers this nostalgia; it may suddenly descend on us when we're in a Gothic cathedral complete with soaring stone arches, stained glass windows, and a choir singing hymns of surpassing beauty. I've felt it in a beautiful mosque with its gorgeous tiles,  sacred architecture and atmosphere of utter peace. It may surround us when we hear Gabrieli, or Monteverdi, or Palestrina; when we look at a great, objective work of art such as Rembrandt's Prodigal Son, or pages from the Book of Kells; or when we see a beautiful, innocent child playing on a patch of grass, utterly absorbed in her dolls or puzzles.

This is the feeling that the Sufis call "the great nostalgia".

It is given to us to remind us of the fact that we do not belong only in this material world, but that our Essence comes from somewhere far above it, which is our true home.

The beauty we experience on earth - whether in a cathedral or mosque, or in a Zen temple; or whether in unspoiled Nature, or in art - is only a reflection of what our true home is like.

That place, which many people call "heaven", is where we originated. It is the place to which we shall one day return, and for which, unconsciously, we always long. The times when the great nostalgia descends upon us are spiritual experiences because they remind us to look above and beyond the material, and into the realm of the spirit itself. They are a form of self-remembering.

Then, nostalgia is not a looking back to a false past, but a looking forward to a future which is more real than anything we know on Earth.

Praise God for the "great nostalgia" which calls us home!

 

The Month of Nissan - Moving Towards Greater Freedom

The Hebrew month of Nissan, which began last Saturday, marks the beginning of the spiritual New Year in Judaism. As with other great religious festivals, this timing reflects the special cosmic energies which reach the Earth at different times during its annual orbit of the Sun.

The better-known secular Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, takes place in Autumn, but Jewish mystical thought sees Nissan as the time of spiritual renewal and growth towards greater freedom.

The increase of light, the flowering plants and trees, the birth of young animals and birds, and all the joyful signs of Springtime shine forth now as the Earth passes through the Aries-Libra axis. Many ancient cultures celebrated the New Year at this time, just after the Spring Equinox, because the renewal of life is so obvious now.

Conscious men and woman situated religious festivals at the most propitious time of year for their celebration; clearly, it was appropriate that the great drama of Christ's Passion should take place now, so it was timed that both the Passover and Easter were to take place at this very special time of year. Jesus knew that His death and resurrection would have to take place directly preceding the Passover. Both Easter and Passover are about the redemption of mankind from slavery and death, and He came to deepen our understanding of this process and to show us how we may participate in it by our own self-sacrifice and personal resurrection.

Passover marks the passage of the Israelites from their life of slavery in Egypt to the freedom they were to enjoy in their Promised Land, Israel.  When they left Egypt, the Jews had been conditioned to endure life as slaves, rather than to live as free people with the power of choice. They needed time to become free within, as well as without. This time we know as the period of wandering in the wilderness, when the Jews underwent a lengthy purification to make them ready for a life as free men and women, subject to the laws of God rather than slaves to Pharaoh.

Psychologically, today Passover has become a festival of freedom for oppressed people all over the world. It's celebrated in many churches, because it was at the festival of Passover that Jesus chose to suffer death on the cross in order to win a greater liberation for all. He showed us how we must die to all our mechanicalness, all our self-seeking, all our slaveries - our addictions - in order to rise to greater life in God.

In the Work, we see how the festival of Easter brings the completion, the universal fulfillment, of the spiritual possibilities given to the Jews at Passover. No longer limited to a particular people in a particular time and place, Easter makes redemption a possibility for everyone, no matter what his or her life circumstances may be.

To better understand the underlying meaning of Easter, we need to look at Passover. Jesus, as a Jew, celebrated Passover every year with his family. Whenever possible, Jews went to Jerusalem to keep the feast, because that was the location of the Temple where sacrifices were offered. We've seen in previous posts how important in the ancient world was the enactment of the blood sacrifice. Initially, conscious men and women instituted the sacrifice of animals, repugnant as it was, because it was a necessary half-way stage from human sacrifice, as practiced by pagans, to the ultimate sacrifice of Christ, whose own blood purified the Earth and brought the chance of redemption to everyone. That is why animal sacrifices were no longer necessary after the crucifixion of Jesus.

Before the Jews could escape from Egypt, they were told by a messenger of God to sacrifice a lamb in each household. The blood of the lamb was then to be daubed on the doorposts of each Jewish house, so that the Angel of Death would pass over these dwelling places and spare the inhabitants from the terrible fate of the Egyptians, whose first-born sons were to be taken.

As Christians, we read what we call the Old Testament and are often horrified at the apparent blood-thirstiness of God and the ancient peoples. But Kabbalists, the mystics of Judaism, read the Bible just as we in the Work also understand it, as a series of tales to be seen on two levels. There is the literal, physical event, and the metaphysical, inner meaning. No doubt many terrible sacrifices and wars did occur, but both Jewish and Christian mystics, and we in the Work, read the stories as spiritual truths, still valid for us today.

Thus, something of great value - just as a lamb was extremely valuable, especially to ill-fed slaves - must be sacrificed so that we can experience greater freedom.

The Jews could then escape to the wilderness under the leadership of Moses, where their wanderings constituted their time of purgatorial cleansing from all the harmful habits of thought, speech and action they had imbibed as slaves.

Today we see that there are many forms of slavery, and that we are all in some way slaves to our habits. Some have obvious, easily-defined addictions - to alcohol, drugs, sex, co-dependence and so on. These mental and physical enslavements can kill the body: they certainly prevent any spiritual growth while they govern our behaviour.

And there are other, more subtle, types of enslavement, symbolized by the prohibition of hametz during the eight-day festival of the Passover.

Each Jew must ensure his or her house is completely from hametz. Hametz is the leavening agent of baked goods. This may be yeast, baking powder or any similar substance. Sometimes water alone causes the swelling up of flour, and attracts hametz. Bread, many types of cake and other foods are usually leavened, so the house must be cleansed of all crumbs to ensure that no hametz remains within. That is why the Passover is also known as the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when only unleavened baked goods, such as matzoh (a type of crispbread) and specially prepared cakes and other foods may be eaten.

What does this mean for us, in the Work? Hametz, or leaven, is that which puffs up, or inflates, the substance in which it is placed. To us, as to the Kabbalists, this symbolizes pride. Pride, vanity, arrogance, self-importance - these are all at root the same kind of evil; they keep us bound, like slaves, to our False Personality. They keep us from reaching inner freedom.

The process of cleaning out the house to make it free from hametz is undertaken intentionally, with the simultaneous cleansing of our minds and hearts to free them from False Personality I's.

The enactment of this cleansing ritual by Orthodox Jews is very powerful. It involves walking round the home at night by the light of a candle, entering every room, opening cupboards and searching every nook and cranny, and carefully sweeping into a bag all traces of crumbs and yeasted bread that may be found. In fact, to make sure this ritual is fruitful, the head of the household will have carefully put pieces of bread in hard to reach places beforehand, so that the rite can be acted out in full.

 When it is done in this way, the ritual gives to the Higher Emotional Centre an unforgettable image of how we as individuals must undertake our own inner cleansing. We may not have much light, but if we are careful and have the right intention, we can bring that light into all the dark, neglected corners of our False Personality and sweep away the harmful I's that lurk there.

The completion of the ritual is the burning of the hametz. This can take place at the synagogue or in the home; wherever it is done, it involves the gathering in one place of all the crumbs of hametz, and their careful burning in a small fire.

To watch the flames burn away the harmful remains of pride, vanity and arrogance is a very powerful experience. We may symbolically add to the fire all those I's we know must be sacrificed so that we can draw closer to God and experience greater freedom.

When we do this, we symbolically open ourselves to positive energy and create greater possibilities for newness in our lives.

Of course, traditionally it is a rite performed by Orthodox Jews. But anyone may carry it out. More and more, Christians are being invited to take part in Passover seders; in the same way, before attending the seder, many now carry out the hametz cleansing ritual to prepare themselves.

There are obvious parallels here with Easter and the Resurrection. Both tell a similar story. It is our own story, in the Work, as we gradually sacrifice all that is false in us and move towards what is true and of real value - our Essence, and ultimately, Real I. 

A Work task for this time of year is to find examples of our own self-important or arrogant I's, and then deliberately sacrifice them for one day. At the end of the day, write your observations on how successful - or otherwise - you were. Practiced every day for a fortnight, this exercise can be very illuminating in showing you precisely where you need to make sacrifices so that your Essence may be set free.

At the end of this period, the written list may be burned, and the ascending smoke seen as a visible sign of the sacrifice of all the hametz we have noticed in ourselves. A real wish to be free from pride, made as the fire burns, will draw strength from the ritual.