So, what is happening in your life? Are you satisfied with the way it is going, the way the planet is deteriorating, and your own satisfaction with what you do in life? For me, I noticed that I might decide to do one thing and find that it's very important for me to do it, and yet I put it off. Why do I put it off? That is an important question. The human psyche is very strange in that I can decide to do something and yet put it off for a year or two years or more. Or I can decide to do something in my day and yet never get around to doing it. There is something off in my psychic equilibrium that does not let me accomplish things that I really want to do, and yet I keep doing many things that I don't necessarily want to do. Why is this the case? Have I ever been interested in that question of what is this consciousness that I have and is my consciousness normal or at times really useful to me?
Have you ever become interested in your own psychological makeup? Interested in the sense that you are not just going to a therapist to work out a problem, but you are getting to know yourself at a truly deep level? We look at the world and all the problems around it and what exists, and it is very easy to point to economic, social, racial, and historical reasons for the difficulties we have. Perhaps the latter are forces that come from our history and us. But perhaps the problems that we have are much closer to home, closer to who we are as human beings and the fact that no one has taught us, or even suggested to us, that we might get interested in our own lived experience as a means of addressing the problems of this planet.
The Gurdjieff work, or as it is called the Work, is a map that has a definite purpose and a definite direction. The direction is to help an ordinary person to understand themselves at a deep level. After all is said and done, that is, after I’ve gotten all the gadgets that I want and desire, and perhaps have traveled a bit and enjoyed different things in my life that are satisfying, what then? The then is connected to what is the purpose of this life that I have lived so far, and have I gotten interested in this life, my real place and purpose in it, and how to search for answers to such questions?
What is my psyche really about? How much control do I have over it and how often during my day, am I really awake and experiencing fully what i am living through? If I'm honest with myself, I will find that for a great deal of the time during the day, I am really not present. A simple example is I often drive my car to go buy groceries and yet how often do I remember using the turn signal? I don't remember using the turn signal because most of the things that I have learned with my body are now done automatically and I don't give them very much thought. I'm not very present to them, and they occur without any intentional effort or consciousness on my part. If this is perhaps true of different physical things that I’ve learned, such as driving a car, is it not possibly the same for my feelings and my thoughts? Is it possible that most of my thoughts, feelings, and movements have become automatic and mechanical and that, for me, I really don't take part in them anymore, nor do I intentionally do them? If this is the case, then in many ways, my consciousness is a sleeping-waking consciousness where I may be there for moments at a time, but a great deal of the time, my organism continues automatically.
This is the problem that Gurdjieff brought to humanity, the problem he pointed out. Our consciousness is organized in such a way that as we learn things and do them two or three times, they become automatic. Automatic in the sense that there's no intentional action that I am involved in, but it is just my body, my thoughts, or my feelings playing out or running the same tape. There is no question that there is some volition involved if I decide to go to the movies because I'm going to the movies and not going to a football game. So, therefore, I can say that I’ve made a choice. But, I challenge you: is this really true, and is it not possible that I just have automatically decided one thing over another? How much real thought do I give to my choice?
The Work is a way to study oneself so that you can wake up out of this automatic sleeping-waking state of consciousness and engage your life more fully. In this process, you can also find out the real reason for your existence and an objective purpose that your existence may have.