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Essays & Commentary by Dennis Lewis

The essays in this section explore some of the big questions of what is sometimes called "the spiritual life," with the help of ideas, perspectives, and practices coming from Gurdjieff, Taoism, Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, Christianity, qigong, yoga, breathwork, and other spiritual and somatic traditions and disciplines. The emphasis will be not just on these approaches per se, but also, and especially, on what is necessary to awaken to the miracle of our everyday lives.

You can read other articles on these subjects on our Articles Page.

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Contents

Thoughts to Ponder

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A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.

Albert Einstein, quoted in H Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu (Boston 1977).

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To be alive, in the truest sense of the word, means to be filled with life, to be able to receive whatever life brings—until it brings us nothing more. To live fully and freely means to welcome, without expectation, all sides of life:  joy and suffering, peace and war, pleasure and pain, insight and ignorance, hope and disappointment, success and failure, clarity and confusion. Whatever noble aims we may have or necessary efforts we may make, this is the only real freedom—the freedom to say "yes" to what is, and to remember now and here the mystery and miracle of our aliveness, of the pure awareness that we are.

Dennis Lewis

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Where reality is concerned, there is no "what should be." There is only what is, just the way it is, right now. The truth is prior to every story. And every story, prior to investigation, hides the truth from view.

Byron Katie, Loving What Is

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An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Gandhi

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I honor those who try to rid themselves of any lying, who empty the self and have only clear being there.

Rumi

Books for the Spirit

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, by Eckhart Tolle. This is an profound, inspiring, and beautiful book. Using simple, unpretentious language, Tolle helps us return with full presence to the only place and time where awakening is possible: right here, right now. The Power of Now is destined to be one of the great spiritual classics. (Click here to go to Amazon.com to learn more about or purchase this book.)

Loving What Is: Four questions that can change your life, by Byron Katie with Stephen Mitchell. This is a wonderful book for anyone who wishes to get to the root of their suffering and begin to live in harmony with what is. As Katie makes clear, it is not our problems that cause suffering, but rather the way we think about them. We can never win an argument with reality. Our constant judgments of ourselves and others--along with the stories we tell ourselves to justify these judgments--keep us imprisoned in pain and suffering. Through inquiring into our many thoughts and judgments using the questioning process that Katie describes so beautifully in this book, we discover that it is the truth that will set us free. (Click here to go to Amazon.com to learn more about or purchase this book.)

The American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders, by Jacob Needleman. This wise, much-needed book by one of America's distinguished philosophers should be required reading for every American. It goes deeply not only into the great ideals that lie at the heart of the original American vision, but also into its crimes throughout its history. "The crimes of America are as much a part of its meaning as its ideals," Needleman writes, "and to embrace one without the other will lead us nowhere."  Needleman shows how it is only through awakening to the real meaning of such ideals as liberty, individuality, self-determination, and conscience that we can "become genuine men and women of the soul." (Click here to go to Amazon.com to learn more about or purchase this book.)

Current Essays & Commentary

Go to more articles on our Articles Page

Understanding & Wholeness

Because of the way in which we constantly identify with one or another aspect of ourselves, we find that our ideas, our knowledge, our feelings, and our sensory perceptions pull us in many different directions, without a real sense, a real understanding, of our wholeness. Nevertheless, the great teachings tell us that this understanding, the global perception of the nature and significance of our own being, is always available to us. All that is required is a kind of self-remembering, the instantaneous experience of the immediacy and openness of our own existence.

In principal, this remembering, this return to what we already are, requires no mental or emotional effort. In practice, however, this return can only take place if we reach a certain level of earnestness, which, in turn, is only possible if we truly see the limits of our ordinary, one-sided approach to understanding, 

Understanding thus starts with what, for want of a better expression, can be called self-interrogation. In this process, we question everything we think we know about ourselves. But this is not simply a mental interrogation, but rather an "organic" one. Instead of questioning merely though words and concepts, we attempt to include our own sensations, feelings, intuitions, and so on in the questioning process. By allowing these different functions to touch each other simultaneously in the expansive space of our awareness, we better comprehend their qualities, limits and potentials.

We learn, for example, that the awareness of our sensation, especially the overall sensation of our body, helps bring us into the present moment, and provides a kind of perceptual backdrop that enables us to observe our thoughts and emotions as they take place. We see that feeling is what gives value and meaning to the present moment. And we see that thought is what enables us to look into the past or future to evaluate our experiences and understanding and take the necessary steps to achieve our aims. By allowing all the parts of ourselves to contribute their own particular intelligence, their own way of knowing the world, we suddenly experience a new understanding beginning to emerge—an understanding born of wholeness.

Most of us, most of the time, try to understand using only one part of ourselves, either our thinking, our feeling, or our sensation. As a result, our understanding is almost always one dimensional. By attempting to include other parts of ourselves in our understanding of the moment, we not only enrich our experience of the moment, but we also free ourselves from our perceptual slavery.

So next time you think you understand the situation, simply ask yourself "who" understands? If you look at this question honestly you will see that you frequently approach your life from only one part of yourself, and that you have almost no comprehension of what it would mean to approach a situation from your wholeness. And as you try to welcome other parts of yourself into your understanding, you will see that all you really need to do is come back to your own immediacy, your own openness, to the awareness that is always there, waiting for your recognition.

The Lost Art of Listening

It can be said in general that most people no longer know how to listen—either to one another or to themselves. Though most of us have ears that can hear very well, we do not actually know how to use these ears to listen. Listening has indeed become a lost art.

To be sure, there are many who teach listening skills for education and business. In a classic and informative article (“Listening to People”) written in the 1950s and published by the Harvard Business Review in 1988 in a collection entitled People: Managing Your Most Important Asset, the authors (Ralph G. Nichols and Leonard A. Stevens) remind us that whereas the average speech rate of the majority of Americans is around 125 words a minutes (and, of course, comparable numbers would hold true for other languages as well), the human brain processes words at a much faster rate. When we listen to someone speaking, therefore, we are asking our brain to slow down dramatically in relation to its ordinary speed. This means that we are left with a lot of spare time for thinking, “and the use or misuse of this spare thinking time holds the answer to how well a person can concentrate on the spoken words. … A major task in helping people to listen better is teaching them to use their spare thinking time efficiently.”

Deep Listening

The relationship of thinking to listening is an important subject, and one that the authors go into in great depth in relation to developing better listening skills.  In this essay, however, we will keep this relationship in mind but our emphasis will be slightly different. Our emphasis will be on listening as a way of self-knowledge and self-transformation. Our emphasis will be on what Thich Nhat Hanh calls “deep listening.”

Deep listening has to do with the very essence of our relationship to ourselves and others. Deep listening requires love and understanding. From the perspective of self-knowledge and self-transformation, to listen deeply means to make ourselves fully available to what is actually taking place at the moment both in and around us. This is only possible, however, when we are inwardly quiet, alert, and sensitive, when we are in a state of receptivity. Deep listening requires a balance between activity and passivity. It requires us to empty our minds without losing them. It requires us to find a "middle ground," a space in ourselves, where the vibrations of life can enter and be reflected in our consciousness without discrimination, where the forces coming from both outside and inside can be experienced without attachment, fear, interpretation, or judgment.

Deep listening actually begins at the very instant we realize that we are not listening, when we see clearly how our “identification” with our thoughts, feelings, or sensations interferes with what is being heard. At that moment, if we continue to be sincere with ourselves and do not react with inner criticism, we realize that there is something in us—a deeper level of silence, a deeper "self," a witness—that can include our own thoughts, feelings, and sensations in the process of listening. We also realize that this deeper silence comes into play only when we can confront the truth about ourselves without any judgment. It is this inner silence that will not only allow us to hear the subtle nuances of what is being said but will also bring us to a central, more-balanced place in ourselves. For if our attention goes too far outside ourselves we begin to react to the events around us too aggressively, whereas if it goes too far into ourselves we fall asleep or dream. In both instances we lose touch with the subtle dance, the moving interaction, of inner and outer impressions that sustains our lives.

Opportunities to Experiment

Our day provides us with many opportunities to experiment with listening. From the moment we wake up in the morning and our thoughts and emotions begin to propel us into various activities, to the numerous discussions we have at work, to the intimate conversations we undertake with friends and loved ones, to our own thoughts about the many aspects of our lives—we can study listening in many different ways.

One exercise, which is always useful, is to sit quietly when you can with closed eyes and simply turn your auditory attention inward. Try to listen not only to sounds reaching you from the outside world, but also to the various sounds of your own body and psyche. Include the various sensations and tensions that are speaking to you. Listen to your thoughts. See if you can actually "hear" them emerging out of silence. It is important, however, not to categorize what your hear. Simply listen to everything without discrimination.

Another exercise is to try to listen to yourself as you speak to others. The aim here is to listen to yourself as though you were a stranger whom you wanted to learn more about. For you are a stranger. We are all strangers to ourselves. And when we are confronted with strangers in whom we are interested, what do we do? We listen not only to their words, but also to their intonations. Consciously or unconsciously, we notice where their voice is coming from: is it coming from up high in themselves, their throat or even the top of their head, or lower down from their solar plexus or belly?  We also watch their movements and gestures. We try to "feel" their atmosphere. In this experiment we try to perceive all of these things—but in ourselves. As you listen to yourself in this way, of course, you will see just how much your attachment to your habitual thoughts and feelings interfere with the process of listening.

Letting Go of Expectations & Interpretations

Real listening requires inner relaxation. To listen to ourselves and others means to let go of our own psychological expectations and interpretations and to allow our attention to move in new, spontaneous ways in ourselves, to move toward the unknown. It means to let go of the habits of mind and feeling that block this "free" movement of attention and channel it toward the known. Such habits include, for example,  thinking that we know how someone is going to finish their sentence. (We may well know the words they are going to use, but while we’re thinking about these words we probably won’t hear the subtle meaning they give them.) Real listening means first of all to observe and then to find a way to free ourselves from the mental and emotional noise that arises automatically during the “spare time” we have for thinking, no matter what value we may give to the noise of these thoughts and emotions. Real listening demands that we open ourselves to the deep, underlying silence in ourselves, the ground of our own being, and realize that it is only this silence that can truly listen.

Stress & Education--A Call to Action

It is well documented that unnecessary stress, frustration, fear, and anxiety can have a debilitating influence on our immune system, and thus on our overall health and spiritual well-being. Anyone who has observed herself or himself in any depth also knows that overly stressful situations have a negative influence on the brain—both on short-term memory and on the ability to concentrate effectively. Though many of us interpret this influence as a purely “psychological” one, one that we can somehow control if we just try harder, recent evidence seems to show that the hormones associated with even minor stress actually inhibit the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is apparently involved in concentration and memory. In lab rats, researchers have found that severe long-term stress can result in irreversible brain damage.

The influence of stress on memory and concentration is an important consideration in our greatly overstressed society. While stress is a natural and necessary part of living, indeed even a motivating factor for many people, more and more of us are experiencing increasing levels of chronic, often unidentified stress and tension in our lives, and this in turn is reducing our ability to concentrate and learn.

Knowing what we do about the ill effects of excessive stress, it is certainly important to begin exploring ways to reduce stress not only in our own personal lives, but also in our fundamental approach to education. Learning, even learning from mistakes, can be an enjoyable process that opens us in wonder to the world in and around us. When it is enjoyable, we seem to learn things more quickly and more deeply. For many students, however, especially in elementary and high school, learning, even learning through sports, has ceased to be enjoyable and has instead become one more reason to get “stressed out.”

Happiness & Suffering

Though most of us will admit that what we want most from our lives is happiness, few of us have thought deeply about all that this involves. In most dictionaries, happiness is defined as having to do with luck and good fortune, pleasure and satisfaction. And most of us, most of the time, define our happiness using these sorts of terms in relation to our images of health, family, money, friends, security, jobs, possessions, and so on.

There are moments, however, when we know in our heart of hearts that another, deeper form of happiness exists—the happiness that we feel when we let go of all of our conceptions about who we are and are able to experience the miraculous nature of what we call “ordinary life.”  That we exist at all, that we have the opportunity to participate in the extraordinary mystery of life, is the greatest "good fortune" imaginable. Yet, for most of us, the miracle that lies at the heart of our own existence is the one fact that always seems to elude us, the one fact that we always seem to forget.

It does not take much observation of our daily lives to see why we so easily forget. Almost everything in our media-driven culture is designed to suggest something to us or to influence us in one way or another—to entice us to purchase something, to believe something, to be something, or to do something. And we identify with these suggestions and influences, as well as with our reactions to them, imagining that our happiness is somehow bound up with them. But, of course, the real problem is not our identification with what influences us, but rather with the images of ourselves that allow these influences to shape and define us. It is these images that fuel our constant suggestibility, the way in which we constantly believe that this object, that person, this job, that success, this experience, that pursuit will somehow bring us happiness.

And so, inevitably, we suffer. We suffer first because our images and expectations are so often illusory and unrealizable, and second, because even when they are realizable they are most often do not reflect who and what we really are. They do not reflect the miracle of being alive on this earth, and of our great opportunity to engage consciously from moment to moment in this miracle. Paradoxically, it is this second form of suffering that, if intentionally accepted, can show us the way to real happiness.

To be alive, in the truest sense of the word, means to be filled with life, to be able to receive whatever life brings—until it brings us nothing more. To live fully and freely means to welcome, without expectation, all sides of life:  joy and suffering, peace and war, pleasure and pain, insight and ignorance, hope and disappointment, success and failure, clarity and confusion. Whatever noble aims we may have or necessary efforts we may make, this is the only real freedom—the freedom to say "yes" to what is, and to remember now and here the mystery and miracle of our aliveness, of the pure awareness that we are.

The Search for Wisdom

You may have heard the story of the wandering seeker who traveled many miles in search of wisdom. The knapsack he carried on his back contained all of his worldly possessions. After having traveled for several months through mountains, forests, and tiny towns, and having found, in his estimation, nothing of any value, he began to become more and more depressed. As his depression deepened, for he had expected to find enlightenment, he became lost in self-pity. Finally, he just couldn’t go on, so he dropped his knapsack to the ground and lay down on the side of the path to sleep.

Now someone had been watching him for sometime, a renown teacher he had met but had not recognized because of the teacher’s apparent ordinariness. The teacher knew she needed to give the man a shock in order to wake him up. So she snuck over to where he was sleeping and stole his knapsack. Then she walked up the path about a mile or so and set the knapsack down in the middle of the path.

When the man woke up, he unconsciously reached over to where he left his knapsack. But there was nothing there. He looked around, first in disbelief, and then in horror. When it finally sunk in that his knapsack was gone, he continued walking up the path, far more depressed than he had been before, telling himself that a thief must have stolen his knapsack, and wondering why this had to happen to him. He began crying loudly and bewailing his fate. As he continued slower and slower up the path, each step a terrible burden, he began to think about the last town he had been in and a  “suspicious looking” man he had seen there. “This must be the man who stole his knapsack,” he thought darkly to himself. He began to castigate himself for his own foolishness, for not having taken precautions.

Sometime later, as he walked dejectedly around a bend in the path, he noticed in the distance an object on the ground. When he got closer and saw that it was his knapsack, he felt suddenly energized and ran to it with joy, realizing that some kind of miracle had just occurred. What a marvelous world, he thought to himself, as he straightened up, put the knapsack on his back and continued happily on his journey. Now with his spine erect and a smile on his face he could feel the ground beneath his feet, the sun on his head, and the air as it coursed through his lungs. What a marvelous world!

Many miles later, he ran into the teacher again. But this time, he was almost able to see through her “ordinariness.” Or rather, he was almost able to see that her “ordinariness” was exactly the miracle for which he had been searching for so many years. Of course, he didn’t yet fully understand the meaning of this. He didn’t yet understand that the teacher’s real name was “Life,” and that all he had to do was be wherever he was and listen carefully, and that all the secrets of the universe would be revealed to him.

Living in Relationship

At the most functional level, we take in air, water, and food from the earth and its atmosphere, process these substances in our organism, and return various "waste" products to our environment. The waste products are only such from our standpoint, not from the environment's, since they are part of a vast chain of exchanges necessary for life on earth to continue. The quality of our relationship at this level, which helps define the degree of our health, has to do with whether the exchange is an appropriate one. If we do not eat or breathe properly, or if we take in the wrong substances, the exchange can quickly become harmful.

On a larger scale, the same process takes place with regard to humanity's use of the earth's resources. We take material from the earth, process this material, and return various substances, often poisonous, to the earth and atmosphere. It is only now becoming clear that this "exchange" is getting out of balance, and that future survival of the human race may well depend on our soon finding a new relationship to the earth.

From the perspective of consciousness, relationship takes on a new meaning. As we begin to become more "globally aware" of our interactions with ourselves and others, we begin to realize that these interactions are not ends in themselves, but represent the "material" of our own understanding, our own being. And these interactions, in so far as we are conscious of them at the instant they occur, are windows into our own psyche and psychology, revealing the particular "person" we are at the moment. As the master psychologists and searchers have told us, "our being attracts our life."  What we are determines in large part what we see, experience, and do. And if we honestly observe ourselves in the actual moment without judgment, comparison, interpretation, and so on, our lives come alive in an entirely new way. We experience a new, profound relationship with ourselves. We suddenly begin to sense that all of these relationships, all of these movements in our being, all of these perceptions of ourselves and others that we've taken for granted—including our own concept of ourselves as a person—are not what they seem to be. They are not "objective" phenomena, but are, in a way that we can just vaguely comprehend, manifestations of our own consciousness.

It is interesting to note in this regard that modern science itself is moving in this direction. The latest discoveries of quantum physics, for example, make clear that it is the observer of the experiment who in some unknown way determines its outcome. What's more, the very notion of a separate object in space and time is being questioned, since the latest developments may indicate that the so-called subatomic particles that underlie what we call the physical world can somehow communicate with one another faster than the speed of light (which contradicts Einstein's relativity theory). Or they may indicate that reality is somehow "nonlocal," which means that space does not exist as an objective phenomenon, but is simply a way of viewing this nonlocal reality.

Regardless of how we interpret these latest developments in physics, it is clear that the so-called objects that make up our world depend as much upon consciousness as they do on some kind of independent reality. A good analogy, though imperfect, is the process of dreaming. In our dreams we create people and objects of all sorts in sometimes spectacular environments where we have never been or at least do not exist at the moment. Yet we take these creations as objective phenomena, not realizing that the very space in which they take place is nonexistent, but is simply the result of a particular state of consciousness called dreaming. It is only when we awaken from this state that we realize that this "reality" had no substance, no independent existence, but was simply a projection of our own mind.

So no mater how we look at the question we see that our relationships really depend on us—in particular, on the way we look and listen to what is in and around us. We create the world in our own image, but because we do not realize we are doing so we lose touch with our perceptual creativity. Reality is not only out "there" waiting to be discovered; it is also in the silent inwardness of all experience. There is nowhere special to go and nothing special to do. All that is truly required is an instantaneous opening to the miracle of being itself. This is the relationship we all crave—a relationship in which our experience becomes whole and unified because our perceptive powers, the very manifestations of being, are no longer bounded by the limits of conditioning and memory, but are free to embrace the totality of what we call life.

The Illusion of Self

It is no secret that we live our lives under the sway of many illusions—both about ourselves and others. There is one illusion, however, which enslaves us more than any other: the illusion of self, or "I."

The great philosophers have all had to grapple with this question of "self."  Some have equated self with God, others with the soul; still others have maintained that self is an illusion, that we are simply complex "organic" machines set into motion by internal and external stimuli. In a sense, all these views are correct. As human beings each of us has a self, or at least the possibility of a self. But our consciousness is so narrow and so easily attracted to every fleeting impression that we never really experience this "self" as a whole.

To be sure, we are entitled to refer to our entire organism and its various manifestations as “myself."  In reality, however, our actual experience of ourselves seldom takes in our whole being. We say "I" to one feeling, conveniently forgetting others that may contradict it. We say "I" to one thought, forgetting that five minutes ago we believed its exact opposite. The problem is not that we have different and contradictory thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, but rather that we take certain of these as sacrosanct, as "I," identifying our whole being with them and losing sight of the rest of ourselves. This not only causes great difficulties in our lives—one part of ourselves may in a moment say or do something for which other parts have to pay or take responsibility for years afterward—but it also cuts us off from our own possible growth.

For those trying to live more consciously, this constant "identification" with, or attachment to, whatever thoughts, feelings, and sensations that we are experiencing must not only be seen but also stopped. For if conscious growth means anything, it means movement from part to whole, from potentiality to actuality, from the many small "I's" of our constant identification with everything in and around us to the big "I" that begins to become visible when we struggle with this identification.

As human beings, we yearn to be whole. We yearn to experience the intensity and breadth of our own being. But this yearning is easily overlooked in our daily lives, where almost everything conspires to support our illusions. For no one else really cares about our own inner development the way we do. Most everyone—our business associates, our mates, our family, our friends—sees us more or less from a particular angle and wants us to fulfill their own expectations. They see our growth in terms of an increase in what they like about us and a decrease of what they don't like. Unfortunately, we often approach ourselves the same way. We tend to identify ourselves, our "I," with what we or others like most about us. The things that we don't like we tend to relegate to "not I," to the periphery of our being, as a problem that "we need to work on or change."

This approach to ourselves, while seemingly reasonable, entrenches us ever more deeply in our illusion of who and what we are. Instead of looking honestly and impartially at ourselves, we look to see only what supports the assumptions we already hold. Instead of recognizing that our being contains possibilities for growth that we can barely even imagine, we hold tight to mental and emotional definitions and structures that keep us imprisoned in our beliefs, opinions, and other habits. And fueling all these assumptions and definitions is an underlying attitude toward ourselves and others of "self-importance." We believe that our particular sense or definition of ourselves is so important that it should be respected and shared by others at all times.

Obviously, every human being is and should be important—especially to himself or herself. But the self-importance, the egotism, that underlies most of our exchanges with the world is mostly illusory, an emotional state that narrows our awareness and makes it nearly impossible to experience anything real or new about ourselves. "I" believe this. "I" did that. "I" feel this (and so should you). And all said with an emotion that clearly shows what is at stake—our own sense of self. And when people don't respond to this sense of self the way we think they should, we react inwardly, and sometimes outwardly, feeling, saying, and doing things that will directly or indirectly support our self-importance.

To study the illusion of self we need to challenge our self-importance. We need to allow ourselves to be in conditions where our self-importance is called into question. For it is this habitual overriding sense of self-importance that hides our confusion and fragmentation from the light of consciousness and keeps us from feeling the need for real transformation.

To understand this better, next time someone catches you in a contradiction, instead of retreating to a defense based on self-importance (well, I changed my mind, or you didn't hear me properly the first time, etc.), simply observe yourself inwardly and use the contradiction as an opportunity to expand your sense of yourself. Whatever you do, try not to identify with either one side of the contradiction or the other. Try to keep both sides in sight and to use this duality as a doorway into your yourself.

Another useful experiment is to decide in advance to listen to yourself when you know you will be speaking with someone. Listen to how you use the word “I.” See if it’s possible to say that word without any identification. If you do hear yourself saying "I" with that particular emotional coloring that bespeaks identification or attachment, use this impression as a reminder to try to perceive what is going on in your thoughts and feelings at that moment. If you are quick and impartial enough, you will observe that some kind of movement is taking place inside you—a movement of your energy and attention. And you will also see that it is the experience of this movement that can open you to a more global perception of yourself.

The Terrorist Attack of September 11, 2001

We send our most profound prayers and wishes to those who have lost friends, colleagues, and loved ones in the horrible terrorist attack that took place on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. This horrible act is not only a great tragedy in its own right, but is also a terrible reminder of the reality and long history of violence that individuals, tribes, groups, religions, communities, states, and countries have inflicted on one another over the centuries.

There will certainly be no solution to this violence, and the suffering that comes with it, without understanding its deep roots in almost every aspect of our lives: psychological, social, political, economic, religious, and so on. All of us everywhere in the world need to open our eyes, hearts, and minds and see how our specific conditioning, prejudices, assumptions, and actions create and maintain a worldwide reality of mistrust, misunderstanding, hatred, and violence.

Whatever else we may do, we must now begin to ask ourselves and others the hard questions necessary to shed light on the hatred and violence that face us both from within and without. We must look beyond our own personal and cultural notions of praise and blame, right and wrong, and good and evil to see and understand the conditions that fuel hatred and violence in human beings and that undermine the love that is the essence of our humanity. By themselves, our automatic reactions based on anger, vengeance, and retaliation--as human, understandable, and even necessary as they may be--will only exacerbate this already tragic situation and create more suffering around the world.

With a great wish for both personal and worldwide peace and understanding,

Dennis Lewis & The Authentic Breathing Newsletter Team

Living in Inwardness

All of the great traditions speak in one way or another about the significance of "inwardness."  These traditions have made it clear that only through living in inwardness can we experience our own real being. Unfortunately, western psychology for the most part has confused inwardness with introversion or introspection, and has, as a result, led us in the wrong direction in understanding this crucial subject.

All Experience is Inside Consciousness

From the esoteric metaphysical or spiritual standpoint, whether we are looking "inside" at our own thoughts or feelings or "outside" at a beautiful sunset or a friend's problems, the actual experience takes place in the field of our own consciousness. Every experience is, in reality, inside consciousness. Or, put another way, consciousness is the psycho-spiritual space in which all functioning and perceptual activity take place.

Unfortunately, because of our tendency to live from memory and images, and to existentially define ourselves in relation to the contents of these memories and images, we seldom experience this global space of consciousness, and the concomitant sense of "inwardness" that results. And yet it is just this global perception that can transform our narrow conditioning and identification and free our energy and creativity to be more sensitive and responsive to the challenges of living.

The Conscious Sensation of the Body

As we have seen, to live in inwardness means to experience the so-called inner and outer both as being "inside" consciousness. But this "inside" cannot be taken literally, since, from this perspective, the very concept of inside and outside loses all meaning.

The experience starts with the conscious sensation of the body. We simply allow ourselves to feel the life of the body in the space of consciousness. This space, which can actually be felt, gives the sensation room to expand, to "unfold."  As we welcome this unfolding, we begin to perceive finer levels of inner vibration, a kind of deep somatic awareness. Paradoxically, the more inward our experience, the more our kinesthetic and organic senses—and with them the various other senses—begin  to relax. And as this relaxation deepens, our perceptions become more global, more all encompassing, as does the world that they reveal. We begin to get a powerful taste of the ancient idea that we are a microcosm of the universe, that the entire universe is in some sense within us.

The Self-Illuminating Space

Living inwardly, then, has nothing to do with introspection, or even self-observation. It is rather the natural result of allowing consciousness to be what it already is: the self-illuminating backdrop or space of all of our perceptions. Paradoxically, living inwardly puts us in touch with a vast panorama of both "inner" and "outer" impressions. Our senses become charged with a new significance, since they are suddenly “re-cognized” as extensions of consciousness. Seeing, hearing, sensing, tasting feeling, and even thinking no longer function separately but rather become part of one large perception of interconnectedness and globality. And the impressions that emerge become doorways into consciousness itself.    

Meeting of Our Inner and Outer Worlds

From another perspective, living inwardly means to live at the place where the so-called inner and outer worlds meet. This place, which is not really a place at all, is the foundation, the substance, of all experience. This substance, the ubiquitous field of consciousness, is being itself, the all-embracing silence that lies at the heart of existence.

The "isness" of our life is this spacious silence, the infinite potentiality that allows differentiated experiences to take place. But these experiences, and the sense of self-identify that shapes them, are not who we are. Like ripples on a pond or waves in an ocean, they are simply shifting configurations of something larger and more inclusive, of something unknown. It is our constant identification with these configurations that keeps us from experiencing this intrinsic wholeness of which they are just a part or manifestation.

A Glimpse of Wholeness

The best way to get a taste of this wholeness is through the sensation of our own bodies. Sitting quietly with eyes shut, simply allow your sensation to be an intimate object of your awareness—to live inside your awareness. As you begin to experience this inwardness and allow it to deepen of its own accord, you'll notice that your sensation starts to expand, and you will actually feel a kind of opening into an unknown world: the world of consciousness—your own real self.

It is important to understand that living in inwardness, exploring the usually hidden dimensions of  our inner self or being,  has nothing to do with “self-ishness.” Quite the contrary, the inwardness that we can experience connects us with the inwardness of very human being. It releases us from our constant identification with and attachment to everything in and around us—especially from identification with our self-image. It opens us to a mostly unknown world of impressions, energies, and potentialities.

Bringing Inwardness into Our Outer Lives

Though at the beginning of the work with inwardness we can best come to experience it  while sitting quietly, eventually we need to be able to work with inwardness in the midst of our outer lives. We see around us many people who meditate regularly yet are unable or unwilling to bring the work of inwardness into their everyday lives. And if we look closely, we see that this is the result of a basic misunderstanding—the belief that inwardness requires outer silence and a minimum of distractions. Certainly, at the beginning of this work such conditions are necessary. But later, one needs to bring this work into the stress, noise, and disharmony of the outer world. For we ourselves are part of and contribute to this stress, noise, and disharmony. We are in fact not separate from it. It is not others who create our outer lives; it is we, ourselves, who do so. By bringing the work of inwardness into every corner and aspect of our lives, we not only see the many ways we contribute to the negativity in and around us, but we also begin to discover how it can be transformed.

The World of Sensation

The world of sensation is a world of great power and mystery, a world filled with the potential for rich, informative perceptions and impressions of many different kinds. Most of us, however, make little use of this potential. To be sure, we take in many impressions through our “external senses,” through  seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching. But there is another aspect of the world of sensation that many of us have little conscious experience with. This is the world of kinesthetic and organic sensations, the sensations that put us in touch with the inner dimensions of our own bodies.

Because we are often more attracted to impressions coming from the outside, and to the thoughts and feelings that arise in relation to them, we generally take these internal bodily sensations for granted. We pay attention to them only when we have an intense physical experience of some kind—pleasure, pain, discomfort, and so on. This is unfortunate, because these internal sensations are constantly speaking to us, constantly telling us about our relationship to ourselves, others, and our environment.

When we reflect on the meaning of this kind of sensation, most of us think about it in one-dimensional terms. “Sensation is sensation,” we say to ourselves. “It feels good, it feels bad, or it feels neutral.” But for those who have started on the journey of self-discovery, the picture changes dramatically. As we begin to sense ourselves more intimately, we discover that our internal sensations of ourselves have many different densities and levels. We learn that these densities and levels often correspond to the underlying densities and levels of matter itself. We can discern, for example, solid, earth-like sensations; liquid, water-like sensations; and gaseous, air-like sensations. We can experience the dense, contracted sensation of pain, the fluid sensation of pleasure, and the spacious sensation of joy and love. We can even experience the “empty,” open sensation of inner freedom, freedom from our self-image. In this state in we experience ourselves as pure receptivity.

The world of sensation is also the world of energy.  For it is through the sensations of our body that we can experience the various energy exchanges and transmutations that are needed not just for ordinary life, but also for spiritual growth. The great spiritual pathfinder G. I. Gurdjieff was perhaps the first teacher in the West to teach in depth about the relationship of inner sensation to the transformation of energy. Some teachers within the world’s great traditions—including Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam—have gone deeply into the alchemical relationship of sensation and energy. Until recent years, however, these more “esoteric” teachings were only revealed at crucial moments in the teacher/student relationship or in special groups working together for spiritual development. Certain Taoist teachings, for instance, speak of transforming our heavy densities of sensation and energy into higher frequencies of vibration. We may be asked to locate any sense of contraction in ourselves and to experience this as “ice.” We may then be instructed to use our awareness to dissolve the “ice” into “water” and the water into “gas.”

Whatever words we use to describe this transformative process, what we are talking about here is, at least at one level, the process of deep relaxation, of loosening the energetic knots that keep us bound to our present perceptions. It is through deep, organic relaxation that we learn to untie these knots and to let go of what is superfluous in our lives, the unnecessary structures of thought, emotion, and sensation that we have constructed to support or defend our self-image. These structures not only consume our energy, but they also keep anything new from entering. Learning how to see and let go of these unnecessary structures not only has a beneficial influence on our health and well-being, but it also helps conserve and produce the energy we need for a work of inner transformation.

The Work of Self-Sensing

The practical work of discovering the inner dimensions of sensation begins with learning how to sense our body more accurately, both in stillness and in motion. As we sit with ourselves or undertake a physical activity such as yoga or qigong, we learn to quiet our minds and to actively engage our attention, directing it inward toward the body. As we work in this way, we can discern many levels of sensation in our immediate experience. These levels, which may take weeks, months, or even years to observe fully, include the dense sensation of superficial aches and pains; the contracted sensation of unnecessary tension in our muscles, tendons, and ligaments; the compact sensation of the weight and form of the body; the more subtle sensation of temperature, movement, and touch; the tingling sensation of the totality of the skin; the living, breathing sensation of the inner structure and pulsations of the fascia, the organs, the fluids, and the bones; and the integrative, vibratory sensation of the body’s energy centers and pathways.

There is one more level of sensation, however, that we are given as our birthright-- the all-encompassing sensation of expansiveness, of openness, that is always available to us in the present moment. As our awareness of ourselves begins to deepen, as we sense a broader frequency of vibration in our inner experience, a vibration that includes instead of excluding, we come into touch with the sensation of the energy of life itself—before it is conditioned by the rigid mental, emotional, and physical forms of our self-image. As we learn more and more about how to allow this direct sensation of life into our experience of ourselves, we will feel a growing spaciousness, a sense of wonder in which the restrictions of our self-image can dissolve. It is the organic experience of this essential spaciousness that embraces the various polarities and contradictions of our lives and allows them to exist side by side in our being without conflict. This inner, organic embrace, this sensory acceptance of everything that we are, frees not only our body, but also our mind and feelings, bringing us a new sense of vitality and wholeness. 

Reading & Silence

“Today words no longer arise out of silence, through a creative act of the spirit which gives meaning to language and to the silence, but from other words, from the noise of other words. Neither do they return to the silence but into the noise of other words, to become immersed therein.”1

Those of us who still read in pursuit of meaning are faced with a paradox. On the one hand, most contemporary writers of so-called wisdom literature today have little understanding of the relationship of language to silence, and so are little able to awaken the silence in us. On the other hand, most of us as readers have little direct experience of the “substance of silence” in ourselves, and so the words we read fall only on other words and simply increase our own internal noise.

If reading is to be more than a diversion or exercise for the mind, we must find a new way of reading, a way which helps us experience the origins of language and thought both in the writer and in ourselves. For as Picard makes clear (page 6): “In every moment of time, man through silence can be with the origin of all things.” Allied with silence, man participates “not only in the original substance of silence but in the original substance of all things.”

At its best, reading helps us to participate in a primal process of creation and discovery. In reading the great wisdom literature, the words or works of Lao Tzu, Buddha, Jesus, Milarepa, Socrates, Plato, and so on, one can  hear, if one knows how to listen, an underlying call to return to this original substance of silence where deep contemplation and participation can arise. But most of us most of the time are unable to hear this call. We have little practice in listening within as we read. And so we read only words, and the words bounce off of one another and our memories and associations and seldom reveal their inherent power to awaken us to new levels of ourselves.

One might wish to undertake an experiment here, an exercise, to help us listen, and, of course, there are many useful exercises one can try. But the problem with such exercises is that we most often read and hear them in much the same way we read our books—mechanically, with little real presence.

What is presence? What would it mean to be present to ourselves not only as we read but as we do everything else that we do? There is a mystery here, another paradox. To be present, to consciously participate in the creative flow of life, I must return to the original substance of myself and all things; I must return to the unknown, to the “uncarved block,” to the vast underlying silence of myself.

How will I undertake this return? Where will I turn? Am I really interested?  Perhaps these questions will take on new significance as I learn to read with presence in my pursuit of meaning.

________________________

1 Max Picard, The World of Silence (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952), p. 168.

The Desire for Perfection

Inside each of us there is a kind of experiential measuring stick, a sense of the disparity between how we actually live and the “ideals” we hold so dear. Some of these ideals are part and parcel of our own biology and essence. Some are drummed into us from the outside by our family, friends, educators, society, and culture. And some may even come from something higher in ourselves. Whatever their source, however, these ideals are all mixed together with my actual experiences and perceptions in this rather messy being that I call myself.

For most of us, even a momentary glimpse of the disparity between our ideals and how we actually live arouses the desire for perfection, the desire to somehow alter and perfect those aspects of ourselves and our lives that we believe would make us better, more desirable, more creative, or more enlightened people. Whether it is a desire for success, a desire for happiness, a desire for spiritual development, or some mixture of all of these, our desire for perfection gives us a potent sense of meaning and purpose in our lives. It sheds a kind of magical light on everything that we think, feel, and do. It becomes the springboard for many of our actions and re-actions, a springboard for becoming what we think we should be. As one begins to look at one’s inner and outer worlds from the perspective of “the desire for perfection,” one begins to see just how much of our lives, and the life of society itself, is bound up in this quest. How many relationships, how many businesses, how many wars, how many religions, how many cults, have been founded on this desire? 

If one thinks carefully about the desire for perfection, one sees that with this desire comes a particular relationship to time, a relationship in which “tomorrow” and what I believe I am lacking assumes greater importance than today and what I already have. If only I had more time, more money, a better job, a better relationship, more peace, more and higher spiritual experiences, and so on and so forth. There is obviously nothing wrong with wanting these things as long as I am able to remember that the miracle of life is my very existence right now, and that this nowness is forever complete. There is nothing else that is needed—except?

In this regard, one might be tempted, as many serious teachers have been, to pit the desire for being against the desire for becoming, for becoming more perfect. One might be tempted to say that being, especially being in the moment, is all that really matters. That all the rest is somehow a distraction or even an illusion. Often these teachers are unaware that they have simply created a new goal, a new state of perfection, to which we should all aspire. “Be here, now,” the pundits tell us. So what could be a natural, normal experience, now becomes an imperative, a goal, a new state of perfection. Now we measure each other by our presence, or lack of it.

No, what is needed are not new definitions of perfection. What is needed is simply the honest observation of what we actually are at any moment, of our emotional and mental distractions, our contradictions, our psychological messiness, our Gods and demons—in short, our humanness. What is needed is a global perception, a perception of our real motives and impulses. There is no perfection in this, and no imperfection. There is only love. The love that accepts whatever it sees and hears and goes on loving and seeing and listening because loving and seeing and listening are what human beings are all about. It is this non-egoistic love of ourselves as we are, as we respond or don’t respond to the demands of the moment, that quite naturally takes us to the next moment with its new demands and new responses and new perceptions. And who knows? Perhaps if we were to live this way, willing to experience the living truth of the moment, the perfection that we all seek in our heart of hearts, the real ground of our own being, might suddenly appear.

Personal Problems & Spiritual Growth

Many of us entertain a strong belief that our personal problems stand in the way of our spiritual growth. Some of us even believe that the work of spiritual development or self-transformation has to do with getting rid of what we perceive as our problems, of what we most fear or despise in ourselves.

This viewpoint rests on several major, but interrelated, assumptions. We assume, for example, that personal problems are undesirable, and that the fewer problems we have in our lives the better off we are.  We also assume that our problems are, for the most part, unnecessary, and that we should be able to control our lives sufficiently to eradicate or at least minimize them.

Our Belief in Progress

Though we may not be aware of it, these assumptions arise from a mostly unconscious, underlying belief in “progress,” a belief that in fact fuels the various industrial, technological, and social engines of modern society and culture. We look around at the many industrial and technological marvels in our lives, comparing what we see with what we know of earlier generations, and we assume that these marvels represent positive change. We assume that they have solved important problems, and that we are all somehow better off as a result.

When we look deeper, however, we see something quite different. We see that along with these changes has come a whole new set of problems at every level of our lives. Every change has brought with it consequences of which we had no comprehension, and which have frequently further complicated our lives. From smog, to chemical toxins, to depleted soil, to hormones and antibiotics in our food, to the influence of electromagnetic fields on our body, to the appearance of new diseases, to the threat of nuclear destruction, to the increasing gap between rich and poor, to the growing violence on TV and in the streets, and so on, it has become quite clear that our so-called progress may inadvertently be leading us down a destructive path of no return.

Everything Is Interrelated

The problem, of course, is not change in itself. The problem is rather that everything in modern life is interrelated, however subtly, with everything else. Without an understanding of these relationships, without an effort to understand the whole of life, we cannot expect to change a part without unintended, often disastrous, results.

The same is true of our personal problems. To be sure, we all have real problems, and some of them, especially those residing at the deepest levels of our nervous system and psyche, can in fact undermine our physical, psychological, and spiritual health. Birth and childhood traumas, powerful negative conditioning, and so on may have thrown our nervous system so much out of balance that we unconsciously spend most of our energy just trying to stay afloat psychologically. Clearly, deep problems such as these can provide formidable obstacles to spiritual growth.

For most of us, however, these deeper organic problems are invisible. We are often unaware of the energy imbalances and distorted perceptions of ourselves and others that they bring. The so-called problems that we do perceive in our lives, mostly on the surface of ourselves, are generally either the inevitable outcome of living on this earth or are merely distant manifestations of these deeper relationships and disharmonies that we don’t see. In either case, the energy that we spend attempting to rid ourselves of these problems without understanding their inevitability or their underlying causes can easily lead us down the wrong path. We may think that all that is needed is some change of manifestation or habit, when in fact what is necessary is a deeper consciousness of ourselves—a consciousness that can perceive the problem in the larger context of our being and our life on this earth.

The great spiritual teachers and traditions warn us about trying to get rid of our problems without having a broader understanding of our total situation. G. I. Gurdjieff, for instance, tells us that any effort to change something in ourselves without an understanding of our entire "machine" will most often bring unintended, undesirable results. Other traditions, such as Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity, tell us that our personal problems  can only be fully understood in a spiritual context.

A New System of Values

In an interview that I conducted several years ago in Moscow with Father Alexander Mumrikov, a Deacon of the Russian Orthodox Church, I asked Father Alexander about the relationship of personal problems to spiritual growth. Father Alexander replied: “In contrast to the Protestant dictum—‘no problem’—we believe that Orthodoxy must have problems. The more a person is able to become conscious of problems arising in his life, the better it is; this is an indication of inner development. It is not a question of ridding oneself of one’s problems in some way, for example by going to a psychiatrist, but rather of seeing that one’s personal problems are related to one’s spiritual problems. The Holy Fathers have made it clear that though the psychology of the soul and the psychology of the spirit are at different levels, they must be connected. If the level of the spirit is not connected to the level of the soul, it is not connected to man. He receives this as a sacrament from God.” Father Alexander went on to say that those who want to work on their souls must, while working, simultaneously wait “for the Spirit to come down from God.” And that this simultaneous working and waiting “creates a new system of values.”

It is clear that working seriously on oneself, on one’s “soul,” for real understanding and transformation, while simultaneously waiting for the higher to appear in oneself, does in fact bring a new, more genuine system of values, a new level of personal maturity. It is this maturity, the intelligence and  willingness to see and welcome the truth in ourselves, that can help us understand Advaita Vedanta master Jean Klein when he says that “our problems don’t have to be problematic,” or Lao Tzu when he tells us that our troubles are really the result of our narrow sense of self. When we try sincerely to perceive our problems in a more global, spiritual context and resist the impulse to lose ourselves in our psychological reactions to them, they can in fact help provide the impetus, reminders, shocks, and energy necessary to motivate our spiritual search at a deeper, more-honest level. 

Economy in Living (January 20, 2001)

Much of what we consider important in our lives pales in the light of the search for meaning, and of the certainty of our own death. Almost all the great spiritual traditions speak of finding an economy in living, a willingness to let go of what is unnecessary in our lives. It is clear that the time, energy, and money that we spend on what is unnecessary not only distracts us from more-noble pursuits, but it also contributes to the decay of real values. One need only consider society’s emphasis on economic growth and  consumerism—the constant promotion of “fashionable” clothing, bigger TV screens, faster computers, the latest electronic gadgets, sports utility vehicles, bigger houses, and numerous other things that few of us actually need—to see that this is true.

In his book Walden, Thoreau points out that “While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them.” Our so-called progress has done little to transform us. Perhaps it is time to learn to say “no” to what is unnecessary, to economize both inside and outside us in order to help us remember that we are but sojourners on this earth. It is through this remembering that we might begin to live lives of real value and meaning.

Busyness & Leisure (December 31, 2000)

Everywhere we look we find ourselves and others in a rush, consumed with busyness, oblivious to the miracle of being alive. Here, of course, we are not talking about the time and effort required for "right livelihood,” the honorable work we must do for the survival and genuine satisfaction of ourselves, our families, and our communities. No, we are talking about the self-manufactured busyness that buffers us from ourselves and enables us to live without either consciousness or conscience.

Perhaps we assume that being constantly busy is not only necessary, but is also a sign to others of our importance. Or perhaps we assume that the devil does indeed find mischief for idle hands. Whatever our assumptions, however, it is often our very busyness, even the busyness of “creating a soul,” that keeps us turning on the wheel of unnecessary action.

Who among us, for instance, can eat breakfast or lunch without trying to solve some problem or hurrying to get on with the busyness of our life? Who among us is not caught up in an effort to escape from boredom or hurry into the future? Who among us can be content with the actual demands and perceptions of the moment or the unbidden leisure, a kind of inner and outer "stop," that appears when, for whatever reason, we are able to let go of something that is unnecessary?

To experience such leisure in our lives is to discover, both internally and externally, an empty, unoccupied space where we can live and unfold without hurry. It is in this unoccupied space that we can perhaps reflect for the eternity of a moment on what is truly important in our lives.

The Need to Pay Attention (October 15, 2000)

One of the most unfortunate things about the Internet is the lack of attentiveness that many of us demonstrate when "surfing." Many of us are in such a hurry to get some information or accomplish some goal that we lose ourselves entirely in stress and anxiety and are unable to see, taste, smell, hear, or touch what is right in front of us.

Each month or so, for example, we send notifications to our newsletter subscribers that gives them the exact address, user name and password they need to access the new issue of the newsletter. Some of the people we send this short notification to reply to it (including in their reply the original notification we sent) with messages such as the following: "Help, I've forgotten my user name and password and don't know how to get the newsletter. What should I do?"

Inattention is rampant not only on the Internet but in almost every area of everyday life. Many of us move through our lives so quickly (which is reflected in our fast upper chest breathing), that any real connection with ourselves, our friends, our families, and our environments is next to impossible. Inattention in one person causes problems and wasted time not only for that person but also often for others. For anyone who wishes to live a more intelligent, conscious, or spiritual life, the study of attention is crucial. Our attention is what connects us with the world in and around us. Without it, we are simply sleep walkers, experiencing little more than tiny fragments of ourselves, and out of touch with the energies and rhythms of wholeness and relationship.

If you feel called to do so, you can begin the study of attention right now, right here. Allow yourself to slow down enough while reading this so that you can be attentive to your posture and how you are breathing. Without any judgment or analysis, take a kind of inner snapshot of yourself and how you feel at this moment. Be sincere in your observations. Notice any unnecessary tension or nervousness in your body/mind. Are you tense, relaxed, angry, anxious, worried, in a hurry? Is your breathing narrow and constricted, or is it free and open? As you become more attentive to what is going on inside you, you may begin to hear a voice from your heart, or from some other more-central place in yourself, giving you a new, more-complete perspective on your situation. The voice may tell you to take your time reading and simply experience what is being said. Or it may even tell you to stop reading, get off the Internet, take a walk, and just breathe. Or it may tell you to sit quietly for a few minutes and ask yourself what is really important in your life. Whatever the voice has to say, the key is to listen, to pay attention.

As you try this work as often as possible over a period of days, weeks, and months, you will begin to understand what the great spiritual masters mean when they tell us that we live mostly in dreams, with little direct contact with reality. You will also begin to understand what they mean when they tell us that self-knowledge and self-transformation begin at the very moment that we sense and feel our inattentiveness in relation to the things we are doing. It is this experience, if we allow its significance to touch the various sides of our being, that can begin to awaken us and bring us into a more honest relationship with ourselves and others.

The Quest for Self-Knowledge (September 1, 2000)

In many traditions, especially the esoteric ones, spiritual transformation begins with the work of self-knowledge. Whatever views we may have about ultimate reality and meaning, about the real identity of self, these traditions tell us that the spiritual life can only be discovered now and here in relation to direct knowledge of both our inner being and our outer behavior.

But how are we to approach the quest for self-knowledge? What efforts will we make? What tools will we use? And how can we be certain that our inner and outer efforts toward self-knowledge are not simply the survival-oriented manipulations of a self-image intent on keeping us in a barely lit but comfortable cave of shadows, lies, and illusions.

"We need to know ourselves and we make the mistake of thinking this is quite simple. But if I ponder what it means to know myself ... I become very quiet and I see that to 'know' is a word. It has to be enlarged. It means to know in every part, in the whole of myself..."--John Pentland, Exchanges Within: Questions from Everyday Life Selected from Gurdjieff Group Meetings with John Pentland in California 1955-1984 (p. 176)

To know myself, to understand myself, requires that I be intimately aware of--and "in"--the whole of myself, including (and especially) those parts of myself that have absolutely no desire for self-knowledge or spiritual transformation. For as the great spiritual pathfinder G. I. Gurdjieff (see my article on Gurdjieff & Self-Observation) has made clear, we are not one but many--we are neither unified nor whole. And until we become convinced of our disunity and contradictions through direct knowledge and awareness we will not do what is necessary to fulfill our deepest spiritual potential.

In fact, the work of self-knowledge calls us to ever-deeper levels of inner sincerity and consciousness. Efforts and tools such as meditation, self-observation, self-remembering, breathing exercises, chant, tai chi, qigong, yoga, sacred dances, group exchanges, somatic therapies, and so on can only help us in our quest for self-knowledge if we are open to experiencing the truth of who we are and how we live from moment to moment.

Am I open to receiving this truth? How do I know? What helps to bring this openness?

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