Responsibility, Selfishness, Marriage, Love

George Gurdjieff is one of the most significant spiritual teacher of this age. He is unique in many ways, nobody has said things in the modern world the way Gurdjieff has said them. 

He is apparently absurd but in reality, he gave us great instructions for the liberation of human consciousness.

He often said - "You are in prison". Sometimes he was even more precise, he would say, "You are the prison". That is more true.

If we wish to get out of prison or better to say, if we don't want to be a prison the first thing we must do is realize that we are the prison. This is something to be always remembered as one of the first principles for any path of awakening.

RESPONSIBILITY

The tendency of my mind is to deny those things which are ugly, to hide those things which I don't want others to know to hide them in a way, in such depths of the unconscious that even I myself becomes unaware of them. 

I write this blog to tell you my dear reader, everything that bothers me, let it be heard, to anyone interested and to the universe at large. This way I maintain my superficial personality.

Why am I afraid and sometimes even resent taking responsibility for myself? It is because from my very childhood instead to be taught to be responsible, I have been taught to depend.

I have been taught to be responsible to my father, to my mother, to my family, to my country, to all kinds of nonsense. But I have not been told that I have to be responsible for myself. 

SELFISHNESS

I need to grow not only spiritually but also as a man in this shitty world. Simply put, I need to be selfish. Let me repeat it, because the word "selfishness" has been condemned so much that there is every possibility you will misunderstand me. To be selfish simply means to be myself.

I'll not consider anybody else in this world, just myself; and in that very consideration I will protect people I love, those in relationship with me. In being selfish I will find freedom that I have been seeking, seeking and not finding, because the whole thing so far was upside down.

I have never loved myself. And a person who has not loved himself, how can he love anyone? Sooner or later the deep hidden wounds manifests itself in any relationship; then there is a misery and suffering. 

MARRIAGE

 

Marriage is an institution, just a social construct. Getting attached legally to a woman, is not for everyone. I'm for marriage as being a culmination of love, of desire to be together.

Most people should get divorced. People should meet and love each other, with passion or not at all. There should be no ugly state when a wife has to make love to a man whom she does not love anymore, but she has to fulfill her duty.

The husband is fulfilling his duty while he is making love to his wife he may be thinking of some other woman, she may be thinking of some other man. What kind of marriage is this? If you don't love each other at least be honest and say frankly that it was beautiful to be together, but now it is finished. Say goodbye.

I would like bad marriage to disappear completely from this world, and with it the divorce will disappear. With marriage, almost ninety-nine percent of the work of psychoanalysts, therapists, psychiatrists will disappear. It is a bad marriage that is creating all kinds of psychological perversions, repressions, guilt.

But people are afraid of individuality; couples destroy each other's individuality, and they hope that by destroying each other, their lives will become a contentment, a fulfillment. They simply become more and more miserable.

LOVE

You love a woman and with all your hearth but in the same time comes fear: she may leave you, she has already left somebody and come to you. That's already happened; perhaps she will do the same to you.

There is fear, you feel pain in the stomach. You are too much attached. You cannot get a simple fact: you have come alone in the world; you have been here yesterday also, without this woman, perfectly well, without any pain in the stomach.

And tomorrow if this woman goes... what is the need of the pain? You know how to be without her and you will be able to be without her. 

People fear things that may change their everyday life.... Those fears are so irrational, somebody may die, we may go bankrupt, our job may be taken away. There are a thousand and one things which may change. But we are burdened with fears and fears, and none of them are valid because yesterday also we were full of all these fears, unnecessarily.

And what is the love? It is nothing, a word; We don't know what love is. To know anything, I have to begin with myself, my truth, my freedom, my love, my joy. When I find it in myself I can offer it to my partner.

Love is "love" only when it gives freedom. Love is true only when it does not interfere in the privacy of the other person, when it respects each other's individuality.