The Gurdjieff Aphorisms

The Gurdjieff Aphorisms

What is an aphorism? Wiki definition

Like what “it” does not like.

The highest that a man can attain is to be able to do.

The worse the conditions of life the more productive the work, always provided you remember the work.

Remember yourself always and everywhere.

Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself—only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity.

Here we can only direct and create conditions, but not help.

Know that this house can be useful only to those who have recognized their nothingness and who believe in the possibility of changing.

If you already know it is bad and do it, you commit a sin difficult to redress.

The chief means of happiness in this life is the ability to consider externally always, internally never.

Do not love art with your feelings.

A true sign of a good man is if he loves his father and mother.

Judge others by yourself and you will rarely be mistaken.

Only help him who is not an idler.

Respect every religion.

I love him who loves work.

We can only strive to be able to be Christians.

Don't judge a man by the tales of others.

Consider what people think of you—not what they say.

Take the understanding of the East and the knowledge of the West—and then seek.

Only he who can take care of what belongs to others may have his own.

Only conscious suffering has any sense.

It is better to be temporarily an egoist than never to be just.

Practice love first on animals, they are more sensitive.

By teaching others you will learn yourself.

Remember that here work is not for work’s sake but is only a means.

Only he can be just who is able to put himself in the position of others.

If you have not by nature a critical mind your staying here is useless.

He who has freed himself of the disease of “tomorrow” has a chance to attain what he came here for.

Blessed is he who has a soul, blessed is he who has none, but woe and grief to him who has it in embryo.

Rest comes not from the quantity but from the quality of sleep.

Sleep little without regret.

The energy spent on active inner work is then and there transformed into a fresh supply, but that spent on passive work is lost for ever.

One of the best means for arousing the wish to work on yourself is to realize that you may die at any moment. But first you must learn how to keep it in mind.

Conscious love evokes the same in response. Emotional love evokes the opposite. Physical love depends on type and polarity.

Conscious faith is freedom. Emotional faith is slavery. Mechanical faith is foolishness.

Hope, when bold, is strength. Hope, with doubt, is cowardice. Hope, with fear, is weakness.

Man is given a definite number of experiences—economizing them, he prolongs his life.

Here there are neither Russians nor English, Jews nor Christians, but only those who pursue one aim ~ to be able to be.

~ G. I. Gurdjieff 1924

BE

Know yourself

***
Remember yourself, Always & Everywhere ~ G.I. Gurdjieff

*
BE

Listening

Sensing body

Breathing In

Listening

Sensing body

Breathing out

Listening

Sensing body

Listening
Letting Go

Sensing body

Listening

Sensing body

Repeat Repeat Repeat

~ L.L. 2012

Change

I am packing and in the process of moving for the second time in a year. This time, completely out of the community I have lived in for almost ten years.

I'll be back online, God Willing, in a month or two and am still checking and responding to emails.

Be Well
Be Good
BE Love,

L.

Valuation of the Work

The first bloom on Helen's Tree after a frosty winter's rest ~ 26 April 2012, LL

"Nearly two years later, in November, 1917, a small party of us consisting of six people, among whom was G., was living on the Black Sea shore twenty-five miles north of Tuapse, in a small country house more than a mile from the nearest habitation. One evening we sat and talked. It was already late and the weather was very bad, a northeast wind was blowing which brought now rain, now snow, in squalls. 

I was thinking just of certain deductions from the 'table of hydrogens,' chiefly about one inconsistency in this diagram as compared with another of which we heard later. My question referred to hydrogens below the normal level. Later on I will explain exactly what it was I asked and what, long afterwards, G. answered This time he did not give me a direct answer. 

"You ought to know that," he said, "it was spoken of in the lectures in St. Petersburg. You could not have listened. Do you remember a lecture that you did not want to hear, saying you knew it already? But what was said then is precisely what you ask about now." After a short silence he said: "Well, if you now heard that somebody was giving the same lecture at Tuapse, would you go there on foot?" 

"I would," I said. 

And indeed, though I felt very strongly how long, difficult, and cold the road could be, at the same time I knew that this would not stop me. 

G. laughed.

"Would you really go?" he asked. "Think—twenty-five miles, darkness, snow, rain, wind." 

"What is there to think about?" I said. "You know I have walked the whole way more than once, when there were no horses or when there was no room for me in the cart, and for no reward, simply because there was nothing else to be done. Of course I would go without a word if somebody were going to give a lecture on these things at Tuapse." 

"Yes," said G., "if only people really reasoned in this way. But in reality they reason in exactly the opposite way. Without any particular necessity they would face any difficulties you like. But on a matter of importance that can really bring them something they will not move a finger. Such is human nature. Man never on any account wants to pay for anything; and above all he does not want to pay for what is most important for him. You now know that everything must be paid for and that it must be paid for in proportion to what is received. But usually a man thinks to the contrary. For trifles, for things that are perfectly useless to him, he will pay anything. But for something important, never. This must come to him of itself. 

"And as to the lecture, what you ask was actually spoken of in St. Petersburg. If you had listened then, you would now understand that there is no contradiction whatever between the diagrams and that there cannot be any."

~from: In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of An Unknown Teaching, P.D. Ouspensky

Maurice Nicoll: 12 Concise SuperWisdoms

#12

"Mr. Ouspensky used to say: "I want examples, not theoretical talk. Give me a good example of self-observation or a moment of work on yourself, a moment of real effort consciously made."