Without the AV 1611 the Work is but a waltz through hollow dreams with a Cheshire grin waiting to be erased. So take the Holy Bible and read it thrice, get ye oriented, Genesis through to Revelation. And, do the practises of the 1st & 2nd conscious shock. Roll up your sleeves and prepare for work.
With that grounding, you will learn to keep yourself in a Serviceable condition, which is after all, what you are here to do.
Acknowledging that Gurdjieff taught how we might make the teachings authentic in our own being through the strivings of our conscience, I'll hand it over to the Victorian Reformed preacher, Charles Spurgeon (from his Twelve Sermons on the 2nd Coming of Christ) who summed up the Work perfectly:
"You are something more than dumb, driven cattle, that must think of hay and water. You have immortal spirits. Rise to the dignity of your immortality. Begin to think of the kingdom, the kingdom so soon to come, the kingdom which your Father has given you, and which, therefore, you must certainly inherit, the kingdom which Christ has prepared for you, and for which he is making you kings and priests unto God, that you may reign with him for ever and ever. Oh, be not earth bound! Do not cast your anchor here in these troubled waters. Build not your nest on any of these trees; they are all marked for the axe, and are coming down; and your nest will come down, too, if you build it here. Set your affections on things above, up yonder, -
"Up where eternal ages roll,
Where solid pleasures never die,
And fruits eternal feast the soul;"
there project your thoughts and your anxieties, and have a care about the world to come. Be not anxious about the things that pertain to this life. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."
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4 comments:
Great post. A summing up post. It always comes down to what you've written too. And Spurgeon is a treasure house. Another one of those 'non-degreed' types like Bunyan, imagine that. It's a great Spurgeon quote. One always detects a touch of the royal element in on-the-mark Christian writing. Sometimes more lyrical, sometimes more epic, but royal in that real sense.
In this new place I live I've been doing 'self-remembering' walks. About two weeks worth now. There's a little community of townhouses with very luxurious landscaping; some of them look like Hobbit dwellings because of the trails and large trees and little hills of grass and bushes and so on. And the dwelling ar two story yet narrow giving them a sort of Hobbit look. I've been walking in this area.
My stage is this: I've just gotten back into the practice of self-remembering (and remember it always has to be accompanied by non-identifying, that more difficult to know practice, because otherwise you can be all seized up by your surroundings and, well, identified with your surrounding (and mentalscape)...)
Anyway, I've just recently entered the stage where I have to use a 3x5 card, because though I've been actually self-remembering during the course of walk-aims, still, it's now too easy to just 'walk' and 'sort of' be in a disciplined higher state.
I've also gone through the typical backlash burn-off. Not that there won't be more to come, but I think it was more like when you start machinery that's been shut down for a season, it burns off dust and what not when you start it up again.
This is NOT old territory because where it is always potentially new is in the depth and duration of the efforts. Really. There is new territory right there to be trekked into. There is a finite number of minutes in a day, and you can always increase the number of them that you are awake. (Not that it's advantageous to be awake with no break, of course, but we want to move our state up to where our *average state* is the third state and higher.
The second conscious shock occurs in time beyond that, like the grow of crops planted in a different season...
the "...growth of crops..."
These anti-work types just miss it wholesale, it shows, they throw the baby out ... because of the crimes of the cult types. My point is simple: the Work stands strong, firm and Holy when a person places themselves in Service - it is the dignity of being human. All efforts are an act of service and the territory is always renewed, strange & foreign like all good lessons, but never tired & old.
And here's another choice snippet from Spurgeon (from the same work): "Death cannot hide thee, nor the vault conceal thee, nor rottenness and corruption deliver thee. Thou art bound to see in thy body the Lord who will judge both thee and thy fellows."
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