A Moderator on one of the Gurdjieff-oriented internet discussion sites asked me to provide a new "hot topic" to enliven discussion on his occasionally lively little site.You may have discerned that I don't orient every post in the "Firefly" blog toward folks in the Gurdjieff tradition. The Work is a center of gravity here, but often not overtly, just imbued in the fibre of ordinary life comings and goings.
Once in a while, something about group Work, an Idea, or an experience can be shared. And then I well know just who such posts are written for, and how they'll be measured for value or lack thereof.
Anyway I replied to Herr Moderator that, similar to what takes place on his discussion board, Work waxes and wanes within me on many occasions, in the context of many sets of circumstances, inner and outer. Very often, it needs to be enlivened, rekindled, stoked up. So I said to him:
Well. . .
We in Mr. Nyland's Gurdjieff groups, and I believe many others as well, have been taught that Wish is a fundamental force in Work. Sensation and attention are often referred to in public discussion and literature, but Wish is not much described there. In the oral tradition of our meetings, however, it's at the heart of things insofar as living, vibrant practice is concerned.
Now for me, the Wish is entirely different from wanting, or likes, preferences, and ordinary desires. Qualitatively, it is sacred, objective, pure, a vivifying power unlike any ordinary feeling. Quantitatively, it is tiny and rarely felt, a pilot light flickering in the windy depths of this common presence.
In the stir and distractions of daily life, I am rarely in touch with my Wish. Certain exercises and efforts can help to bring it to the fore and into connection with the rest of me; sometimes it appears on its own by accident or design. In Work, we gradually learn to recognize the 'taste' of this Wish when it surfaces, however that may come about.
When the Wish is felt, I experience a moment of my life with much greater intensity; I observe so much more, open up to vivid, instructive impressions, and also feelings of gratitude and reverence for life and the gifts all around.
Where in me does the Wish reside? I am reading the chapter on 'Purgatory' again*; the laws of 'World Creation,' 'World maintenance'; the balance of conditions needed for continuity and growth in Work, taking into account all promptings initiated within and arriving from without. In all of this, my Wish plays a pivotal part.
And in 'Purgatory,' Gurdjieff writes about the localizations of our centers or 'being brains' -- one concentrated in the head (mind), another concentrated in the spinal marrow (moving instinctive), and a third (feeling) not concentrated, but scattered and dispersed across 'nerve nodes' in the solar plexus area. Accordingly, my feeling center is fragmented, full of partiality and contradictions. Work over a lifetime is said to bring on a transformation of the feeling energy toward a more concentrated, conscientious state, raising it to the level of my heart.
Wish... is what I wish for most; yet it is *impartial* to my ordinary functions because it is not 'of ' them. Perhaps Wish is a particle of God's voice within me, not spread throughout the nerve nodes of the solar plexus, but at home somewhere deep in the chest. That is where I feel its force once in a while.
Perhaps the Wish energy, as diminutive and rarified as it is, is calling the rest of my feeling energies toward itself, to a place where 'yes and no' no longer hold sway.
Well. . .
Maybe you in the Work or in other traditions see this in some way for yourself. I conjecture that folks in a group could exchange in depth for a good while about such a theme, if they were present and intense enough in their Work. Such things are entirely possible.
*Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, Second Book; by G. Gurdjieff
