• August 6, 2022

    When I invoke presence, I pivot, I turn towards the real world.

    What is the real world? It is easier to describe what it is not. It is not the world of my personality, the world of the things I want, my anxieties or ambitions, my worries and fears, my roles in life. Being present, other things can enter, the possibility of feeling, of open perception, an objective view. My state is a prayer. I stand at the doorway.

    Being present does not last long. The reverberations of the machine…the body and mind…continue and pull me back into habitual living. The life of the world beckons. How to remain in the real world? We are advised to waken the machine. What does this mean? In the waking state, body and mind have no negative emotion…no emotion that drains my energy down and out. (Negative in the electrical sense, as much true of euphoria as anger.) I am translucent. I have energy. I am an energy transformation device converting sensation to consciousness and consciousness to love. I enter the real world.

    You may think you can ‘do’ this…become present, waken the machine, join the work. Perhaps you can release your personality for a moment and call your presence to be. To waken, much more is required. Your attention must be able to hold, note every flutter of habitual sensation, thought and emotion and release them as they arise. With no discharge, you fill with energy and higher functioning is possible. This is exaltation.

    Some teachers of the work state the rules of procedure for waking the machine. You cannot rely on them. The rules come after the experience. They become clear when you have travelled the path. You cannot begin with a view of the end point. You struggle to observe self. You see that all higher states are gifts. You slowly fall in love with the simple, with nature, with smiles and small gestures.

    Trying to awaken is like trying to put hay through the wrong end of the elephant. One day, your experiences will begin to waken you, when you have stopped your pathetic need to react to everything habitually and your ambitions fall away. Then you can work.

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  • July 20, 2018

    By this I do not mean work on self, which is preliminary, to bring me to the point where I am reliable. I mean something else, the Work.

    Can I speak to you about the Work? Describing the Work is not the experience of it. The experience involves a completely different view of what life is for…that it is not about my personal aims and satisfactions, not about changing the world for the better. It is not about anything familiar.

    At this stage, what I say may enter you only as an idea. Ideas have value if they undermine your habitual view of things. What is obscure and confusing, what cannot be grasped now, becomes clear when the haze of self-interest has been lifted.

    The Work is Work for the Absolute. It begins with an understanding that there is something the Absolute needs from us, which in turn suggests that the Absolute is not all-powerful and perfect the way He is described in religion. How could this be? Let us try to think about this.

    Perhaps the Absolute was perfect and all-powerful before time began but He was unknown to Himself. Desiring to know His own Nature, He made the Creation as an expression of Himself. From what did He create? Why, from the only one existing, Himself. The only One entered the Creation by becoming the Creation itself, accepting limitation as the price of self-discovery. He became the possibilities within His own Nature and therefore, at least in part, became less than perfect.

    Having identified with His Creation, He sleeps within it as do we and all who identify with other than their own essence. At the same time, He never ceases to be the Absolute.

    What does He need from us? First, He needs us to be, and to realize in our life, the qualities He has manifested in us as His creation, so that He might know Himself. Each of us is a unique mirror in which He could regard Himself. For this, I must learn not to live for myself. I must learn to let Him into my life, allow Him to participate. As I begin to see His gifts in me, they become available also to Him. I see myself in Him as He sees Himself in me…a mutual regarding or mushahida.

    He sleeps within the Creation. He sleeps within me. If I awaken, the Creation awakens and the Absolute awakens.

    There is something more we can do for Him. Accepting the limitation of Creation imposes immense, unending suffering upon the Absolute. All the suffering in the world is His. His agony is unendurable yet must be endured. Did He know this would be the result?

    Mr. G wrote in his first series that the aim of this Work is “to have the possibility of consciously taking part in diminishing the sorrow of our Common Endless Father.” Can we who are His creatures accept some small measure of His suffering and feel compassion for Him and His Creation? Can we, despite our suffering, love Him, praise Him and glorify Him, which, it is said in our tradition, provides some small measure of temporary relief for Our Common Creator? This does not mean to seek out some new or special suffering…there is more than enough already…but rather to meet the suffering that comes my way with objective compassion for myself and Him.

    You might ask, if this is true, why He prolongs His suffering? Could He not wind up Creation? Reverse it? Or is He so immersed in the love of His Creation, and so caught in the shocking facts of His self-disclosure, that He needs the help of those who Work?

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