I am a seeker, an independent thinker — I am not what the LDS church would consider an entrenched member — in fact, according to their surveys and research, I’m more likely to leave the church. This may be one of the blessings of the covid pandemic — I had to stop going to church. At the time, I was one of the gospel doctrine teachers. I did one Zoom class, and then the stake decided to split off the members in one area and assign them to another ward. That included me. I was surprised that the stake would do this during the covid shutdown. It seemed so impersonal. It was. Then, I stopped going to Zoom church.
Perspective is individual. The pause button allowed me to relax, think, and look. My perspective was enlarged. And when the ban was lifted, I was content not to go back to church. I felt free. Now, to others, their perspective may have been entirely different. They may have thought of it as a trial to remain faithful during covid shutdowns and go back to church as soon as possible. That’s fine; we are all unique.
I love to seek, to find, to think, and try to solve problems. I change my opinions. I may move from one interpretation to another. During the Covid hiatus, I had more time to reflect on my views.
I’m reading a couple of books on spiritual esotericism. Or something like that. But it is fascinating and awakening. In reading a book about Mary Magdalene, the author mentioned the teachings of the fourth way, and its author — Gurdjieff. I tracked that author down, found a book about it, and began reading. I started by listening to the book: Gurdjieff, A Beginner’s Guide: How Changing the Way We React to Misplacing Our Keys Can Transform Our Lives.
I found ways to change my being. Ways I was trying to achieve in organized religion, I found elsewhere. Initially, I was focused on becoming a zion person, and yet not sure how to do that or what that really was — other than being obedient to higher-ups — authorities — following rules that did not have a clear line back to God. After all, the LDS religion teaches that you can become like God, but if you think about it, becoming like Him is a lot more than following the prophet. Something was missing. I followed through to the baptism of fire and believe that to be a truth. But I also believe that other cultures have paths to God. Here is just a little excerpt from one of the books I have been reading:
This work is about changing our level of being. It is true alchemy, not changing lead into gold, but transforming ourselves into higher beings.
If we were asked where we live, we would give a city, and if asked more specifically we could give an address within the city and could describe the physical aspects of our home, apartment, house, how large, how many rooms and so on. That is where we live physically.
The crucial question in terms of the Work is where we live psychologically. The space within our head is much larger than any particular physical home. It has many rooms and whole neighborhoods. Where do we hang out in our psychological world? Are we in a good psychological space or a bad one? There are some neighborhoods within our psychological world that are just plain dangerous, such as neighborhoods in the physical world where we wouldn’t want to take a walk at night by ourselves. We are in a terrible mood in these places and we can get into all sorts of trouble if we stay there long enough or sometimes even for a brief period. We have all met people who are constantly angry.
What kind of place are they in their interior world? This interior place reflects the level of our being. When we ask someone what they have done today or the last few days, the response is a chronological list of what they have done in linear time, never where they have been in their interior. And in a sense people do not want to know where we have been internally. All we can really say is, “I feel good,” or “I feel bad,” but no one really wants a litany of reasons why we feel bad. People ask, How are things going? as a polite way of making conversation. They don’t want to listen to a whole list of physical ailments and problems. So, in a sense, time swamps our being.
We have a past, a brief present and a future, and they all consist of a chronology of things we have done, are doing, or plan to do. They can be seen as a horizontal line where the left part is our past and the right side is our plan for the future. While the chronological list of what we are doing over time stands in the foreground, our being remains in the background. This hides the importance of our being and what level of being we are on. We could think of our being as a vertical line that intersects the horizontal line, like a cross.
This system, without going into much detail is a form of Christian esotericism. The Gospels, and particularly Christ’s words and parables, are studied for their hidden meanings that deal with the psychological transformation of man. Our place on this vertical line, which represents being, rises up or down according to the level of being one is on, reflecting how we view what happens to us on the every day horizontal line.
These levels, which might be thought of as parallel wires that do not touch, represent different levels of being. The higher the level of being, the closer we come to the Higher Powers or God. On a very practical level, the importance of our level of being is that our level of being attracts our life and everything in it.
Friedman, Gil (2011-07-10T23:58:59.000). Gurdjieff A Beginner’s Guide: How Changing the Way We React to Misplacing Our Keys Can Transform Our Lives . Yara Press. Kindle Edition.
I would say that the first takeaway from my reading about the fourth way or “the work” is the principle of “observing yourself without analysis or judgment.” It works like this: I observe myself thinking, “I just can’t do this anymore; it’s too hard” (could be a number of things). Then I would observe myself thinking this, and instead of reflecting or judging — “I’m always giving up, or I’m always discouraged, and really, other people have much worse things to deal with.” — I would just say to myself, “This is called feeling discouraged, or this is called wanting to give up.” In this way, I’m not taking ownership of my feelings; I’m not becoming that feeling. Instead, I label it, and in this way, I can disassociate with it. This is the first step in becoming a higher being.
So, for now, just observe yourself. That’s the first step to changing your level of being.
