SPC Quote and Comment Column #102

"Work is earned pearl"  George Gurdjieff*

Jesus Christ once described an attribute of magnetic center when he described the parable of the pearl.

"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls:
Who when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it."
                                                                                     Matthew 13:45-46

The Fourth Way student must be fortunate enough to meet with an objectively valid form of actual spiritual development. It has been my own observation that some students were brought into the Work through some aspect of fate and nearly always in the nick of time.

More often than not, a student meets the Work just before the psycho-spiritual ground they were standing upon gives way beneath their feet. No only must the Fourth Way student be fortunate enough to meet the Work, he or she must also have the capacity of spiritual discernment to even recognize the pearl of great price in the first place.

Jesus also describes the price of the pearl. The price which must be paid, in advance, is to go out and sell all that you have in order to buy the pearl for oneself. Any sincere, incoming student soon realizes what aspects of themselves must be sacrificed:

• all illusions/delusions as to their own innate sense of self-worth.
• any illusions that they either know or can do anything of any real objective merit.
• any illusions that they know other people and are right in all that they do.
• any illusions about their own innate goodness and omnipresent good will towards others.
• any sense that they are an "authority" on any given topic at all.
• any sense that they know right from wrong, good from evil, even up from down.

Another aspect of the esoteric interpretation of Gurdjieff's aphorism relates to the similarity of being in the Work, with how a pearl is formed in the first place. In the Work, as in nature, an irritant is required. Oysters create pearls to compensate for the irritation produced by a grain of sand. Because of the fact that even one tiny bit of sand has the ability to create such an annoying sensation in the oyster, the oyster will secrete a healing substance around the grain of sand. You would be surprised how little irritant is actually needed to produce such profound spiritual effects. Because of our innate ability to rationalize, justify and explain our every thought and deed, we have become supremely self-indulgent.

Similarly, in the Work, once the fledgling Fourth Way student begins to go against themselves, they create an ongoing, chronic irritant within their everyday self-indulgent ego. But the Work does not stop there. In addition to doing everything in It's power to annoy and irritate It's students, the Work adds the following admonishment: "If you become negative, you are wrong."

Between finding endless ways of annoying and irritating It's students to near distraction while adding the Fourth Way principle, "If you are negative, you are wrong:, the Work succeeds in creating the sacred conditions wherein the pearl of great price is earned.

Everything in the Work must be earned. Nothing can be given away. The student earns their own pearl by going against their mechanical nature while sacrificing their own negativity at the same time.

SOME PRELIMINARY WORK AIMS TOWARDS ACQUIRING THE WORK AS AN EARNED PEARL:

1. Don't do as you've always done.
2. Do the thing you least want to do.
3. Don't rationalize, justify or explain yourself.
4. Create and take the Sly Man's Pill:
        Create difficulties for yourself at the right time, for the right reason.
5. Find what you despise and condemn in others within yourself.
6. Don't express negative emotions.
7. Sacrifice the obsession to look good towards others as well as the yourself.
8. Sacrifice the obsession to be right.
9. Internally consider never, eternally consider always.
10. Go against lying in all forms and in all centers.
11. Go against mechanical talking.
12. Seek out the third force in all things and in all ways.

New Knowledge
Food for Thought
Quote and Comment #101
Quote and Comment #102
Questions & Answers

* Disclaimer