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Question:
What is the difference between knowing the truth and realizing the
truth for yourself? No amount of knowing the truth equals level of being. You can know a thousand esoteric truths yet all of that knowledge, in and of itself, will not set anyone free. Simply put, even the finest Work knowledge taken in, in only one center (the intellectual center) will never lead to an increase in one’s own Level of Being. Our own emotional Nature (Center), also has to see, as well as digest and willingly align its purposes along side the good of the truth which is usually only held within the mind. One Real Objective Purpose of the truth is to create a signpost to direct the initiate. As the initiate becomes able to accurately access the Real Objective Value of the truth he or she is observing, the truth allows the student to see what they have to work upon next. If you are awake, one truth leads to another and another. Truth becomes a path you follow. However, if you are asleep, truth becomes just another fact about yourself or the outside world. As a result, it is not at all uncommon for students to be able to quote The Work chapter and verse but still remain sound asleep within themselves. It is as if students are able to take The Work Knowledge in but remain unable to digest, and therefore, use what they already know. Only the Truth that you can digest, and sincerely apply towards yourself, will set you free. What is the difference between knowing that you are dealing with a pathological liar while believing everything the liar says and no longer being able to believe what the liar has to say? In both cases, the fact that you know that the person you are listening to lies is the constant. The variable appears to be whether you "get" what that knowledge about listening to a liar means. It is only when you are no longer able to believe automatically that you become free. What causes the transition from knowledge alone into knowledge aligned along side Level of Being/or how can you get your heart to know and believe in what your mind already knows to be true? It is my experience that my ability to realize what I already knew (for decades) was the result of a free act of Grace. Before I did not get it and now I do. It is only when you are able to digest the truth that the truth sets you free. As to what gets you to realize the truth, I haven’t got a clue. But I am able to describe the profound difference between the two. For instance, imagine what it would be like to see and hear the various aspects of psycho/spiritual asleep at the time that are occurring? It is only when you can see, hear, feel these aspects of sleep, in time, that you are no longer able to proceed forward automatically. Being awake stops you dead in your tracks. Being awake saves you from wasting your time in a series of either lateral and/or descending octaves. Being awake is the result of your center of gravity receding inwardly from personally towards your own essence. Because your center of gravity is, in essence, you both cease to identify with your personally as well as being able to finally hear and see your own Real I. A.R. Orage described the above as ribbon candy. When we begin to Self-Observe, we start the return journey back inwards. Once we are awake, we flow outwards self-observing our self-observations about our mechanical nature. Once you wake up, you realize that there is something deep inside of you that has always been able to observe the mechanicalness. One of the aims of The Work is to enable the Work Student to switch their sense of self (sense of I) from the automaton back onto the conscious Self that resides within. As a result of being awake, I am able, under the right conditions, to act beyond my mechanical nature. Once you are awake, you are able to not do as you have always done. To be awake also means that you live your life from a passive ‘do’. To be awake is to realize you own nothingness. When you are awake, you realize what an idiot you have always been. It is not that you are an idiot because you are essentially stupid but rather to be awake means to see the all within the nothingness. Once you can see the whole of anything, you realize how puny and unintentionally stupid your total knowledge on the subject has been. I could be the most brilliant student of This Work in the entire world but when compared to the orders of truth that the Real I sees, all my alleged glory passes into the total realization that even Gurdjieff was nothing but one, wonderful grain of sand within the endless sands of time. No
matter how long I traveled along this Fourth Way path, all I can
ever hope to achieve is to go from being an unenlightened idiot
into an enlightened one. © Sojourner Pass Press 1998 |
