Chapter Eight

In this world you have become clothed and rich,

but when you come out of this world, how will you be?

Learn a trade that will earn you forgiveness.

In the world beyond there's also traffic and trade.

Beside those earnings, this world is just play.

As children embrace in fantasy intercourse,

or set up a candy shop, this world is a game.

Night falls, and the child

comes home hungry, without his friends.

                                                                Rumi, Mathnawi II: 2593--99

The religious conditioning of my youth had created in me an image of a universe divided between Heaven and Hell, between redemption and damnation. Heaven was the destination of the virtuous, who were mostly those who had been saved by belief in the doctrines of the Church. Once I had certain experiences that showed me deeper levels of reality and the mind, this conditioning lost its power over me. I simply could not take it seriously, because it did not correspond with the levels of reality I had experienced. I experienced a cosmic love and meaningfulness, but the clouds of Heaven or gates of Hell were nowhere in sight. There was a self--created Hell, the illusions constructed by our habitual desires and patterns of false thinking; and there was a fundamental, underlying reality which felt whole and beneficent. I began to search for an explanation that made sense.

The rather naïve image that developed in my mind was one of the enlightened being, free of illusion and desire. The means of becoming such a being was meditation, the practice of emptying the mind of every desire and thought until Reality shone through in all its brilliance and one was enlightened. This would best be done away from the world, preferably under circumstances that were arranged to support this emptying process--an ashram, a zendo, or a cave. I thought that the highest spiritual attainment, the ultimate fulfillment of our human possibilities was this liberation from the suffering that thoroughly occupied the whole of humanity.

Meanwhile I was occupied with meeting my own material and emotional needs through jobs, relationships, and entertainments. When I first encountered the teachings of the Fourth Way, through a group that lived the teachings rather than just reading about them, I realized that I had found a bridge between that very high ideal of liberation and the facts of my everyday life in the world.

The Fourth Way is a term introduced by G. I. Gurdjieff to describe the spiritual path of someone who lives and works within society, in contrast to the way of the ascetic, the monk, and the yogi, who traditionally separate themselves from ordinary life.  Increasingly in the West ordinary lay people are undertaking the spiritual practices that were formerly the province of specialists.  The Fourth Way, however, has been the primary way within the Islamic world for fourteen centuries.

The image that developed was what is termed the conscious man, who though in the world was not of it, who lived his life practically but without identification, and who "remembered" himself always and everywhere. Through work on himself, this conscious man could wake up in the midst of life and so free himself from the "terror of the situation" that was the unconscious mechanicality in which most human beings lived out their lives. If this sounds elitist, it probably is, but it gave me a starting point I could take seriously. I didn't need to give up all desires and thoughts; I needed to free myself from my identification with them, and then I would be in contact with the higher capacities that these identifications obscured.

After some years of giving myself to these teachings, I felt that I had developed my attention and my presence, but I was noticing that self--remembering did not necessarily guarantee that my relationships would be healthy or that the qualities I respected as a human being--loving kindness, generosity, forgiveness, integrity--would develop. On the contrary, I witnessed the development in me of a tendency toward amorality and aloofness.

Sufism was the antidote that I found to cure myself of the preoccupation with myself that had developed in the name of becoming a conscious man. Sufism said, "All is Love and all is God: lose your self in this Love, but tether your camel, serve your guest, cook your meals, work and profit from your work." Sufism seemed to be an integration of freedom from thoughts and desires, on the one hand, with service and practicality, on the other. In some ways it returned to me an appreciation of the realness of virtues and sin. Sin was separation from the One, a state that veiled us from the Real. As virtue created Heaven, sin created Hell, although these states were present in the here and now as well as "hereafter."

Throughout this journey, meditation--the focusing of attention on subtler levels of Being--has been a constant. It is neither the ultimate pastime nor the only tool for spiritual development, but it deserves clear recognition as a principle of spiritual living.

What characterizes the human being is a gift of conscious awareness that offers us the possibility of real will and creativity, as well as the opportunity to know the source of this conscious awareness, the Spirit from which it emanates. Usually, however, this conscious awareness is absorbed in experience and embedded in the structures of perception. This is life as most people know it: the complete identification of one's awareness with all the events and subjective experiences that life on earth offers. This consciousness is also identified with a self--construct, an ego that is ruled by contradictory desires and conditionings.

Although many people in our society have experienced this freedom from identification, many fewer value this conscious awareness enough to make the efforts necessary to achieve it. To value going beyond this identification of consciousness with experience represents a major breakthrough, although a significant number of people have had this breakthrough in recent decades. It causes one to evaluate one's life in a new way--to observe one's thoughts, feelings, and actions and see their results with a new objectivity. One realizes the degree of unconscious suffering that ordinary life represents and begins to acquire a new attitude of remembrance or mindfulness. The expectations one has about life change: fulfillment comes less from material or ego satisfactions and more from the transformation of perception through awareness. The quality of life begins to change, and lifestyle and behavior change to support and accommodate this new focus on awareness. Certain forms of unconscious behavior cost us too much in terms of our ability to make efforts of awareness, and so they are left behind.

Although the best way to approach meditation is with a qualified teacher, a mature meditator with whom one can resonate, some basic knowledge can be profitably offered in a book like this.  Even advanced meditators often benefit by being reminded of the very simplicity of meditation itself.

The simplest form of meditation requires two things: a body that is still and relaxed, and an object to focus attention on. Many traditional postures for meditation exist. I have found the greatest ease and stability sitting in a chair, with the spine erect and the palms of the hands resting on the knees. The focus of attention that I have found most useful for beginners is the awareness of breathing combined with a mental focus: "I" as a feeling in the heart with each inhalation and "am" as a sensation of the whole physical presence on the exhalation. As attention is held on this process, the breathing becomes calmer and the internal dialog begins to settle down. From this position of quiet alertness it becomes possible to view the stream of consciousness. The awareness that in normal living is focused outward gets accustomed to an inward focus. This focus, however, is less on the content than on the process of the mind's activity. Awareness has begun to separate from its identification with the content of both outward and inward experience.

In much of our ordinary life we are busy interpreting experience and constructing meanings. Our perceptions are also biased by expectation, opinion, desire, and many other factors. During meditation we use more energy to sustain the process of seeing and very little for interpretation and constructing meanings. The net effect of this kind of meditation practice is that we reduce our reactivity and increase our ability to sustain pure awareness.

At a higher stage of meditation the focus of awareness becomes more subtle. Instead of focusing on a breath, a sound, or an idea, consciousness attends to Being itself. Instead of change, consciousness focuses on that which is changeless, the underlying "Isness." This substratum of consciousness becomes more and more familiar. Instead of the contents of the mirror, we are aware of the mirror itself.

Everyday life is seen more and more as a reflection on the mirror--as both real and unreal against the backdrop of this underlying changeless reality. Meditation at this level is experienced as much by a letting go as by a firm concentration. As the object of consciousness becomes more subtle, so does the effort of consciousness.

Consciousness attends to whatever arises. Meditation is more and more carried into the gross psychological events of ordinary life. At this stage some of our compulsions have been recognized and can fall away. The compulsive habits of thought--many of them based on fear, desire, neediness, and self--centeredness--begin to lose their power. The identity that was rooted in these compulsions begins to melt and a new quality of "I" emerges, one based in simple nonreactive awareness. A different, less egotistical self begins to be felt.

Freed of our habitual thoughts, expectations, opinions, constructions, and fears, consciousness is freed to receive deeper impressions. New meanings begin to flow into consciousness from the unconscious. Extrasensory experience may be heightened. Whether we are aware of it or not, we become more sensitive to others' thoughts and emotions. We may be able to respond to others more sensitively and wisely, because we are less dominated by our old habitual patterns of thought and feeling. At this stage we are flooded with rich meanings, and life can take on a new depth.

There really is no end to the refinement that is possible. One more and more begins to perceive qualitatively. The ultimate reality, which we are preparing to apprehend and which is all that is, has certain qualities such as peace, compassion, creativity, vitality, generosity, glory, subtlety, wisdom, beauty, and unity.

Through this deeper refinement of attention and an ever more subtle focusing, the false identity collapses. The supports on which it once depended have been removed, and the self begins to feel like a unique point of view of the Whole, a reflector of cosmic awareness.