Just what the blazes is the ‘work’?

Anti-hero Nemo has delivered a response and true to his name he continues to roam the deep dark depths avoiding contact with anything touched by the light. Perhaps, like his fictional counterpart, he too thirsts for vengeance? Who's to say what personal experiences have driven him to these shores? For sure Nemo expresses some certain partiality towards an earthly, sensual - even devilish - wisdom. His confusion is the big give away. That clamshell heart steering a willful, dogmatic adherence to this absurd role as a Debriefing Agent for misguided souls unfortunate enough to have gotten snared in the Gurdjieffian mind fuck. Personal aggrandisement? No such thing. It's straight from the heart, Nemo wants to save you from the false formulations of the big black magician, but ... (oh! damn) his writings read like a string of non-sequiturs. He asks the basic question, what is the Work, but casts that aside in case the answer gets in the way of his edifying topic. And so we are informed that behind all the noise of the Work there is nothing but an undefined abstraction. Glad you checked it out mate.

The Work begins with an act of self-observation, seeing oneself as one is, seeing what you are like as a person. No one can do this for you. Definitely not Nemo nor Gurdjieff, definitely not anyone else. You will have a picture of yourself, the kind of person you imagine you are. You may be aware of that picture but most likely not. So observe yourself, your thoughts, feelings, moods and how they motivate and influence your actions and the things you say and do. You cannot be parted from the illusion of what you are until you are able to see yourself as you are. Exposing this inner disorder is uncomfortable, sometimes difficult and emotionally unpleasant. It has to be by necessity. When you can see the contradiction between the imaginary picture you have of yourself and the picture of yourself as you are, then you begin to lay down a new memory of yourself. You are not what you imagine and as you observe more of yourself amidst the clamour and noise of personality, truth emerges. At this stage you can receive help from above. The difficulty is that until this stage is complete a person still believes they are 'awake' - what the practise of the Work verifies is that you are buried beneath accumulated layers of self-satisfaction and vanity. And that, at least in part, is what we call 'sleep'. As for self-observation, it never really ends, it only grows as the Work deepens.

Nemo's drawn his line in the sand, his position obviously something of a non-aim. He likes what he knows and he knows what he likes: the Work never was for that type so it shouldn't surprise us to find him coughing and spluttering in the cold wind that blows through time. There is no malice, for the course of true love never did run smooth, and Nemo protests a little too much.

2Th 3:5
And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ.