One of my unexpected post-holiday themes has been Gurdjieff, and the main thing I’ve learned about Gurdjieff so far is that he was really into work.1 This is a bit difficult for me, because most of the time I have the opposite feeling. Due to this conflict of interests, maybe, I’ve been having some trouble really settling into my next book; besides the Gurdjieff I’ve already read part of Daughter of Fire, part of Atom From the Sun of Knowledge, and part of Metaphor and Imaginal Psychology (more on that one next time, I hope).
I’ve also had some trouble settling into my next creative project. Last time I finished a book I wrote that I might be making a labyrinth out of sugar cubes, but once I did this sketch and some math I realized that it would take over 8000 cubes to complete in 3D and also that there’s a serious limit to how much money I’m willing to spend on sugar.
So, in order to keep procrastinating, I took an online course on the Alexander Technique, which was actually really great. To roughly summarize, the Alexander technique seems to be about maintaining 360° awareness of the space around your body, subtly adjusting your neck posture (due to all the books I need as much help with this as possible), and especially the importance of not making any effort ever. If that sounds like a bizarre combination to you, I agree in theory – but so far the results have been pretty interesting, and not making an effort sounded especially good after my 2023 tarot forecast and all that Gurdjieff.
Joking aside, between all these ideas I am definitely thinking a lot about work. Like, what is it for? Obviously it takes a certain amount of effort to stay alive, including the work involved in helping others – but I get the sense that Gurdjieff (and a lot of other spiritual teachers) are even more interested in the idea of work for its own sake. Specifically, he likes the idea of intentional suffering, which isn’t pain but is just the experience of bringing conflicting parts of ourselves (like the part that wants you to do a spiritual exercise and the part that’s putting it off) into conscious contact so that what Jung called the transcendent function could magically take place.
Of course, Jung also said that we would subconsciously bring ourselves into these impossible, uncomfortable states – these states approaching the Socratic concept of aporia – in order to experience this transcendence, so in a way Gurdjieff is just pointing out that we could go ahead and stop prolonging the inevitable. This is a point that I think F.M. Alexander might actually agree with, since the idea there is not to do nothing, but not to try, specifically. Alexander explained that “trying is only emphasizing the thing we already know," which is maybe another clue to what’s so great about Aporia. Whether we deliberately give up on trying or back ourselves into a corner where all possible trying is exhausted, one way or another trying eventually ends, making room for unexpected grace and/or the spontaneous action of the authentic self.
Anyway, while I was throwing all that around, I had another vision of an image that I thought could turn into some kind of project: a poison dart frog with a pattern of flames. That sounds cool, right? I’d been wanting to do some more printing, so I thought this might be a suitably simple subject, and I liked the sketch I came up with well enough. Alexander Technique notwithstanding, I really did try. A big part of me wanted to throw in the towel after my first sketch, but I figured that wasn’t the deal – the image I saw had definitely been a print, so I carved the little block and got the ink out and…I don’t know, this one really just didn’t come together.
Maybe I should have drawn something more detailed and made a laser-cut stamp. Maybe I should have made it bigger. Maybe I should make a fabric print, with lots of little frogs everywhere.2 Like the sugar, I’m not sure anything about this is engaging enough to make any of it actually happen, and if I start a new project every time I finish a book, they’re not all going to reach their theoretical potential. For now, I’m just trying to have a good attitude about putting in the effort.
Work is the theme I wanted to focus on at the moment, but realistically there are lots of other things. There’s actually quite a bit about integration – making your inside match your outside – which is extremely relevant to my overall project here, and if I ever make it through the Gurdjieff book I’ll definitely have more to say about that.
That’s kind of intriguing, now that I think about it, but I’m still trying to figure out the ground rules here and what actually constitutes a project. Maybe?
"Whether we deliberately give up on trying or back ourselves into a corner where all possible trying is exhausted, one way or another trying eventually ends, making room for unexpected grace and/or the spontaneous action of the authentic self." - best thing I've read in a while. Thanks.
The Gurdjieff work and the Alexlander technique are both designed to make the unconscious conscious and follow the axiom “if you cease from doing the wrong thing, the right thing will do itself”.