" Giles: I have little knowledge of myself, especially of my essence. I never know how to be certain of myself. What means of investigation can I use to know if a thing comes from me or not?
Gurdjieff: Now you are philosophising. Necessary begin from something real. Now this is empty for me because you are empty. You did not start on the way of a real man. This is education. Seven factors are absent from your upbringing. I can tell you the first. You are not taught that for you your father is your God. For each man up to a certain age his father must be his God. God loves him who esteems his father. When the father dies, then there is a place where God can enter in. You have not this relationship with your father and your question springs from that. Now take as a task to put down all these factors in yourself which hinder you; establish a real relationship with your father.
Mme Dubeau: But if the father is unworthy - low?
Gurdjieff: Even if he is the worst criminal, if he is merde, the lowest among men, you must recognize your obligation. You don't know why he has become like that. Here is a law. He created you. You owe your existence to him. And he is answerable for your life in another world. If he is lowest of men in the eyes of everyone, let it be so - but inwardly you must feel your obligation. You have to pay him for your existence.
Gilles: But in order to establish a right relationship with someone, one has to be sure of what one is oneself.
Gurdjieff: You divide yourself in two parts. Inwardly you must not identify, outwardly you must play a role. Take all things as your guide. Your task now is to acquire inner freedom. This is the starting point for going further. And for that you have to do what I have told you. What does it mean to play a role? Try to understand it in a broader sense. Do everything that gives him pleasure. If he likes you to sit on his right, sit on his right. If at another moment he prefers the opposite, do it. Subjective role. With each person a different role. You accustom yourself to fulfill obligations. It is one of the aspects of a future free man. Not necessary to philosophise. After, yes. First prepare the ground. The ground has seven aspects. After that you can go as you like. In future, with each man you must play a role; for your egoism. [.....]"
Until the day Lord Pentland suggested the same task to me, I despised my father and my mother. I blamed them for everything that had gone wrong in my life. My father had already passed away and my mother was ill and bedridden. I began visiting my mother once a week after movements class. The class was held early in the morning in Manhattan at the Foundation. I would drive in from Sparkill at 7am, attend class, have breakfast at a diner across the street from Burger Heaven with some classmates and sometimes with Andre, our movements teacher, and then drive out to the Bronx where Mom was living with my older brother.
Mom and I'd had a terrible relationship almost from the time I began to talk. We were like oil and water. This one suggestion from Lord P. was the moving force behind a miraculous reconciliation between my parents and I. What I had not been able to do all my life came so easy through employing the ideas - using the tools given by the system. Mom and I soon became good friends. We were able to talk about those things that had come between us all those years and came to a place of forgiveness and love for each other. We reconciled the past before her death several years later. For this I am eternally grateful.
I also began thinking of my father in a different way. Every time I thought of him, I offered up little conversational prayers to him, and after all this time, I do still think of him almost every day. I thank him for being my dad and for being there for me as much as he could. I apologize for being such a difficult child. I focus on the good times we had - and feel compassion when I remember what he suffered here on earth. He had a very hard life. Both my parents did.
What is offered up to both of them now is a surge of love and gratitude straight from my heart. There is a nice clean light space in my heart now where there was once only darkness and poisonous hatred and resentment. This clean place is where Dad and Mom and others who have passed on live and where we visit from time to time. I write them long letters on the New Year and their birthdays and when I miss them more than usual. It is interesting that I do not remember so much the 'bad' things. It is the good things, the fun times that I remember now.
Be at Peace, Do no harm, Be Still, Be Happy, BE
thank you for posting that
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