Gurdjieff Spiritual Tradition

05 Jun Gurdjieff Spiritual Tradition

Watching the Gurdjieff movement videos, I found them fascinating and strange, and strangely disembodied. The staccato of the movements was a little off-putting. The body is being used to represent expanded consciousness or cosmic laws, so is symbolizing anything other than interoception. The body is being used to act out spiritual metaphors such as the Assyrian mourners, the Great Prayer, and Tibetan masks. As Bennet wrote, “If you treat the movements as sacred, they are sacred,” and there is a sense of the sacred for me, but certainly not of the joy of being embodied. I would imagine, however that participating in these movements with a group would be a great learning experience.

Bourgeault wrote of Gurdjieff’s two vehicles: conscious labor and intended suffering. Gurdjieff’s teaching of working on oneself has entered popular culture, at least a certain segment of it. Clients who come to me are familiar with this vehicle and are usually already actively engaged. Intended suffering is perhaps a little different than I understood it – I had thought it meant accepting that suffering is part of life and being open and willing to learn from it. Instead, I was struck by the author’s example of “bearing another human being’s unpleasant manifestation.” This is something I have struggled with, and often form a complaint out of it, sometimes to share with others as they do with me. We call this conversation. From this phrase I decided to practice “bearing it” as part of my internal work.

Of course, since my research topic is transpersonal sex, I was particularly taken with the concept of the “abler soul,” in which the bridge between the realms is specifically located in a single body shared by two beloveds. This abler soul bond works directly with the sexual energy to accomplish the work of fusion. This bonding then creates a vehicle for transmission between the realms for the continued grown of each of them, even if they are in different realms. You don’t get much more transpersonal than that.

© 2024 Catherine Auman

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