#Fourth Way

[thatwhichdoesnotsuffer]

"Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself—only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity."  —G. I. Gurdjieff

[terivarhol]

“The Fourth Way” (Other versions of Sphinx. 1. Cairo Museum, 2. Karnak Temple, 3. Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, 4. Karnak Temple (sphinx with ram head)

[noise-vs-signal]

The Work

The Work is an esoteric system also known as the “Fourth Way”. It offers practical techniques for gaining self-knowledge.

Key practices include:

Try to feel at times that you are not just your body, but that you are looking through it and seeing things and people in this world by means of it.

Learn to distinguish between your instinctual, emotional and intellectual centres, so that you can start to balance and combine them.

Practice taking in impressions consciously.

Move into a position "between the opposites".

Learn not to identify, and understand that at a very deep level, "the observed is not the observer".

See also:

"In Search of Being".

"Life above Time".

[fourth-way-sydney]

“People don’t value what is easily come by.”

“I love him who loves work.”

- Gurdjieff.

[trashnmagico]

G. I. Gurdjieff - His Fourth Way and the Enneagram

G. I. Gurdjieff G. I. Gurdjieff George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, widely known as G. I. Gurdjieff, was born around 1866 in Alexandropol, Armenia (now Gyumri, Armenia). Gurdjieff’s early life remains mysterious, but he grew up in a diverse cultural landscape exposed to various religious and mystical traditions. Gurdjieff’s travels led him to encounter various esoteric brotherhoods and secret…

[sspacegodd]

Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff -- a mystic, philosopher, spiritual teacher, and composer born in Alexandrapol, Armenia -- was also a seasoned and successful professional wrestler in the WWF!!

He taught that most humans do not possess a unified consciousness and thus live their lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep", but that it's possible to awaken to a higher state of consciousness and achieve full human potential.

Gurdjieff described a method attempting to do so, calling the discipline "The Work" (work on oneself) or "the System". According to his principles and instructions, Gurdjieff's method for awakening one's consciousness unites the methods of the fakir, monk, and yogi -- and thus he referred to it as the "Fourth Way."

He also claimed to be the only true "chi" master who claims to be the only true "chi" master. He has put on many demonstrations of his skill at knocking student black belts unconscious without even touching them!

[happyk44]

Yes yes I agree that if Percy should've remembered anyone it should've been Sally, but please, please, please understand that a) Hera was actively fucking with his memories, it's not that Annabeth was who he remembered, it was that Annabeth was who Hera wanted him to remember and b) the reason was because Annabeth has ties to California!! And Hera needed Percy to go there. If Percy remembered anyone else, he would've been headed straight for NYC and her whole "switch the boys" thing wouldn't have worked.

Yeah, part of the Wolf House training is making the journey from the Wolf House to Camp Jupiter but Percy isn't headed there because that's the plan, he's headed there because his memories tell him that Annabeth is connected to it. If his memories said "your mom is in New York", he would've said fuck the plan and walked in the opposite direction of where he was supposed to go.

[temporalcomet]

202310 - Fourth Way

the first in a collection of astronauts’ cover songs

I am so excited about this that I am releasing a blog post to tell you about my current project!

Most of the information is on the Astronauts page on this website - check it out here.

It’s a new project of songs that I am releasing, beginning in October 2023 and continuing into 2024.

The first track is a version of ‘Fourth Way’.

Click the picture above to be redirected to a pre-release page. That means that you can ask the Spotify app to notify you when the song is released, yay.

Listen to the original version of the song here.

The Astronauts are very much front and centre in my life right now, as I rehearse with Temporal Comet for our upcoming show. More on that if you keep reading on…

LIVE CONCERT - October 2023

Celebrating Mark Astronaut, as we did in 2022, Club 85 in Hitchin, Hertfordshire will be playing host once again to the ‘You’re All Weird’ fest.

Playing alongside The Astronauts (songbook), Zounds, Hagar the Womb, and Billy Lunn from WGC rockers the Subways, I’ll be on stage around 3pm. Please come down and expand your musical mind - the songs Mark wrote as ‘The Astronauts’ and ‘The Otters’ are powerful, acid-punk powerhouses which deserve a listen. A link to some of his back catalogue appears in the previous blog...

TICKET link here

As always, I’d love to hear from you! Send me a message/ comment/ intergalactic fax (although those are a bit slow if you’re messaging from further away than Venus.)

[smokbeast]

When you are your worst enemy

[thatwhichdoesnotsuffer]

"What can be free is that which can occupy a position between like and dislike, so that instead of there being two states of like and dislike, there are three states: Like, dislike and freedom. These form a triangle or a triad. When you really understand what it is that I am now talking about, you understand a great deal that could be achieved with this work. This is why it is not a question of suppressing like and dislike, because if this twofold action–pleasure- pain, or enjoyment and suffering–is strong enough, the third one–the one which is able to be free–can also be strong. In general, people who make progress in this work, and have a possibility of going forward, have strong feelings, strong likes and dislikes, strong urges, strong enjoyment and acute suffering. They know the difference between really making demands on their bodies and indulging their bodies. When they have these kinds of strong forces working on them, the third force, the force of their own “I” where they can be free, also can be strong. It is very far from being a question of suppressing these things. They have to play in us. They have to produce this tension in us. We have to do this particular trick which is described in the chapter on the organization of man’s existence by Ashiata Shiemash, that you have to consciously strengthen the forces of non desires. This is the way to become free. Otherwise one is entirely a slave to one’s desires. It never says that desires must be eliminated or suppressed, but that the strength of non desires must be increased, so that non desires can be stronger than desires. Then there can be freedom. Gurdjieff said the Buddha taught that the best way of freeing oneself from one’s own egoism, from the consequences of the properties of the organ Kundabuffer, is to set oneself to bear the manifestations of others displeasing to oneself. The other side of the same thing is not always give oneself to situations that are pleasing to us. There is a certain science of this. It is not a question of forcing oneself all the time to do things one dislikes, or depriving oneself of the things one likes. That sets up wrong kind of force in us, not the way to freedom. With experience and practice after a certain time, you can come to recognize a situation where it is right to act in a certain way in order to be free. You see that you’re going to be caught in some situation and you realize that here is an opportunity for acting as a free person." —John G. Bennett

[just-null]

wrestling to be the first to greet you (they broke into your house)

[noise-vs-signal]

The Structure

“The diagram of the Cross as given represents a single moment in a person’s life. In this single moment the vertical line is cut across by the horizontal line of Time.

In this vertical line there is no past or future. What takes the place of Time, of past, present and future? What takes the place of Time is state or level or quality. The vertical line represents position, not in Time, as, say, the year 1942, or age, such as being aged 20 or 50, but position in the scale of states of being, in the level of understanding and the quality of knowledge.

Everything in the Universe, visible and invisible, known and unknown, is at some point in this vertical line. Everything is inevitably at some point in this vertical scale, for everything finds its own level in it, according, as it were, to its density, like objects floating in the sea. All evolution, in a real sense, is to pass from one point to a higher point in this scale. Scale means ladder.

Your level of being attracts your life. This means your life will be according to your level of being. Levels of being can be represented as points in the vertical line and form life by the horizontal line. If your level of being changes, the horizontal line will pass through another point in the vertical line.

The vertical line is what gives meaning to all things. It represents the eternal scale of meaning. In a limited way, we all know of the existence of this vertical line, for we all know better and worse states of ourselves. The vertical line is not in Time, rather Time moves through it.

We live and move in Time but we have our Being in this vertical line which descends from the highest to the lowest. But ordinarily we think that our origin lies in the horizontal line in Time – namely, the past – and we do not understand that our origin is also vertical to this line.

A person is born as a self-evolving organism. They can rise from one level to another in this vertical scale. And that is why there is such a thing as esoteric teaching. All the knowledge belonging to these systems is about the possibility of a person undergoing an inner transformation and rising in the scale of being.

The “Kingdom of Heaven” is above an individual, not in the future of Time, but now. It is a state, reached internally, and so is said to be “within you”.

From “Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky: Vol. 1” by Maurice Nicoll (1943).

See also:

“The Feeling of Eternity”.

“The Ladder”.

[fourth-way-sydney]

Schools of the Fourth Way demand understanding before anything else. Results are always subordinate to understanding.

- ISOTM (Ouspensky)

[sorrowlikefalling]

r.i.p. 2005 pete wentz you wouldve loved casual by chappell roan

[seochangbingifs]

RANDOM CHANGBIN GIFS 44/∞: I-Days Milano, BST Hyde Park, Lollapalooza Chicago Ep.2 | [Stray Kids : Docuseries]

[weirdglassthing]

LOA Shiptober Day 4: How They Met

October content month was ambitious..

This one took me. Shockingly long. Whoops! I’ll probably end up jumping around the prompt list and it might extend into November 😋

I’ll try to do day 31 on the actual date of Halloween though 🫡