Jim Turner and I were discussing the act of learning to walk. As infants we watch the people around us and because we see them walking eventually we begin to try to stand up and walk ourselves. This is an arduous learning process; so much so that I often turn it on its head and state that in learning to fall I had to first learn to stand up. In any case, toddlers walk and fall incessantly–they climb stairs with the same foot until they master the complex movement patterns required to walk up a flight of stairs using both legs. I like to lose. I prefer it as a conscious choice, because losing consciously is better than BEATING the other guy. And what's the FIRST thing they teach in any martial arts class -- how to fall. Learn to fall and one can learn to roll right back up. Now back to our show... There are those who learn to walk because they live among other people who can walk, or...
Then there are the “wild–children”. It is a matter of historical fact that children have been found that may have been abandoned and taken care of by animals and to grow up to be healthy human beings with the exception of the fact that they cannot walk–they often walk on all fours; they cannot speak beyond a certain kind of grunting and animal sounds. One such child found in France and studied over many years was impervious to temperature, and would sleep naked in the snow with no ill effects. But he could not walk without an intense process of learning, and in learning to talk, these "wild" children (in there past 200 years quite a few have been found), very little beyond rudimentary garbled language skills could be taught them.
How does this relate to The Work?
Well, I am speaking to the Group Despisers and Group Deniers and Loners who think that they can learn and practice the Work via books and other materials. You may gather loads of "information", and even think you understand some of the diagrams and lectures given by Gurdjieff, but you don't and you CAN'T be in a teaching that at every turn commends every reader to locate others who ARE IN the Work, and where there are senior people who know how to "WALK".
i am sorry kids, but anyone who continues to argue against the concept that a group is necessary (not forever, but for a long time - it's a school for adults) and that one must find others in the Work IN PERSON are fooling themselves and are warts on this site. They can talk, but when they read any literature regarding the Work and the absolute and invariable law that one must submit one's will to others, and especially a senior member who knows how to walk, they must have felt nausea reading those sections or perhaps they used a magic marker to delete the strict instructions which are given to EVERYONE WITH NO EXCEPTIONS.
I took a magic marker and the Ouspensky Book "Fragments of an Unknown Teaching "ISOM" and I blacked out EVERYTHING BUT THE ACTUAL WORDS OF "G". Turned out that I still had 90% of the book intact. This was when people would quote G and attribute it to O. I researched and verified FOR MYSELF what was said by "G", and the reportage written by "O". My first teacher asked me to bring it in and was floored that I had gone to so much trouble to differentiate what "G" said and what "O" said.
Not a "super-effort" but a determined one to get things delineated properly, and IF YOU HAVE NEVER BEEN OR ARE NOT CONNECTED WITH THE WORK YOU AREN'T IN THE WORK. Sorry, you may be able to talk a blue streak, but you can't walk, skip, leap or run. Every piece of advice that fouls the air around here is from people who are AFRAID. Of what? I don't know and I don't care, but even the "Objective Way" is not what you think it is. The Staircase isn't what you think it is, and the inner WORK ISN'T WHAT YOU THINK IT IS.
Even crawling is stupid if done alone. Find and go to a school, or you are just a worthless new age delinquent.
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