Gurdjieff by Gil Friedman

Author:Gil Friedman [Friedman, Gil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: selfimprovement, gurdjieff, enlightenment, selftransformation
ISBN: 091303827X
Publisher: Gil Friedman
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Laws of Accident and Fate in Relationship to Essence and Personality

Essence is real. It is what really belongs to us. Personality is unreal, and although it is necessary to develop to get on in the world, it is not really our true self. Whether we are under the Law of Accident or Law of Fate depends upon where we place our feeling of ourselves. If our feeling of ourselves comes from life (influences from A), then we will be under the Law of Accident. Influences such as money, fame, prestige, and the numerous other influences come from life. If, for example, we place our sense of self in the amount of money we have and our stocks go down substantially, we would feel very bad—and some in fact have committed suicide over the loss of their money. Others might place their sense of self in their fame or social climbing, belonging to the right set or getting invited to the right party. While everything is going well these people are happy, but once the phone stops ringing and the writer isn't called to write more screenplays or the actor to play more parts, or the party invitations stop coming, these people feel terrible. Others place their sense of self in their children and try to live their lives through their offspring. When things go well they feel good, but when their children disappoint them, they feel terrible.

In all these situations the sense of self is outside the person; we cannot control the rise and fall of the stock market; we cannot control whether the phone will ring offering us some employment or invitation, or if our children in the end will not do everything or anything we want, so we feel bad. Since the sense of self is outside ourselves, anything can happen, and therefore the Work says we are under the Law of Accident.

When we get into the Work and have an intermediary to screen us from having the events of life swamp us, then we start to develop our essence and we are no longer under the Law of Accident, but the Law of Fate. We are following our own destiny and are not bowled over by every rise or fall of the stock market, or whether the phone rings, or what our children do. It is not that we don't care, but our sense of self is no longer completely tied up by the external events because we are developing our own inner direction and developing our essence. We will be acting out our fate. This doesn't necessarily mean that only good things will happen to us. If, for example, our fate is to be an airplane pilot, we might have an accident that kills us. But we were acting in a way that came from our essence.

On the other hand, if we are acting from personality, anything can happen to us. It doesn't matter how hard we work at things; if they are controlled by our personality we are open to more accidents happening to us.

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