Have you ever wondered what the price of salvation must be? There is always a price.
You have to pay for everything you receive
spiritually, and most especially, you have to pay a very high price to "get out", In the Work sense.
The first price is time. The individual must have enough time left over from living their everyday life to
be able to study and do the various Work exercises. In order to have the time left over from life, the Individual will already have to have achieved some form of objective success.
The price is the loss of one's
sense of innocence and Ignorance as to our true inner nature, versus how we prefer to see ourselves. The price of objective consciousness is the loss of being right, being negative, being able to say and do whatever you want. The
price is having to turn your other cheek when people despitefully use you. The price is never being able to look good to yourself again. In fact, the price Involves your entire sense of self dissolving into the void and being
reborn in a newer and higher Work consciousness.
The price is that you are going to be crucified. It's the Job scenario. One way or another, the Work Itself will find a way to test you to your bones. If you pass,
you live, if you fail, you go back to life.
The price is a lifetime of private, sincere, personal acts. Gurdjieff advised to live one's life as if God were watching. In my experience, this is true.
For me, It wasn't God, but something inside of me recording my every thought and deed. At age thirty, when I had been brought to my knees, I asked the Work to help me. My entire lifetime flashed before me in an Instant. Every
instance In my life, where even a modicum of effort on my part would have saved me in some situation, I had refused to apply it.
One of the lessons of having some aspect of your life being read to you, is that you
learn to shut up. You learn to listen as only the dying can. You never get points for following the crowd. It's what you do In private that matters. The price Is having to unite the lion and the lamb within. God's little joke is
that no one gets out without the express consent of the shadow.
In a way, you have to strike a deal with your own lower nature and convince it that there is a more intelligent way to live ones life. Needless to say,
people who still believe that they don't have shadows already have their reward, states Jesus.
To wake up is to realize, twenty-four hours a day for the rest of your life, that you are nothing. You have never been
anything but a figment of your own imagination. It means realizing your own nothingness, coupled with the direct experience of your own blindness and ignorance.
Truly, there are no words which could adequately
describe our own nothingness. For people who still have to look good to feel good, the Kingdom of Heaven is going to be quite a shock.
People always ask me how much will all of this cost. My answer remains, It will
cost you every illusion, delusion and imaginary sense of your own eternal, innate worth. In short, it will cost you every idea of mechanical behavior you have.
You have to have:
Time to devote to spiritual development.
The financial resources to support yourself as well as pay your dues.
The ability to see the truth about yourself and your way of life. You have to be able to
see and feel your objective effect on people.
To see life as it is without ones endless projections and prejudices.
To be sincere within the privacy of yourself and do the Work to the best of your
ability, day in and day out.
Endure being tested, repeatedly.
Never stop learning, seeing and developing to the best of your ability.
