first and third Wednesday of every month - May 2 and 16
One Hundred Years of Gurdjieff’s Work
October 5th - 7th, 2012
A frog had lived its whole life in a well. It was born and brought up in the well. It was a small little frog. One day another frog fell into that well. It had lived for a long time in the sea. The well-frog asked the sea-frog where it came from. The sea-frog replied: ‘I come from the sea’. The well-frog asked how large the sea was. The sea-frog said it was very big. The well-frog stretched its legs and asked: ‘is the sea so big?’ The sea-frog said: ‘much bigger!’ So the well-frog took a leap from one side of the well to the other and said: ‘then it must be so big as my well?’ ‘My friend’, said the sea-frog ‘how can you compare the vastness of the sea with your well?’ The well-frog agreed and replied: ‘No, you are right, there can never be anything bigger than my well’. Indeed nothing can be larger than this! This fellow is a liar and he must be turned out.’
Believing in the reality of one’s own limitations is like sitting in a grave and being convinced that the whole world is no bigger than that grave.
Once we believe that our own limitations constitute the reality of the world we live in, we are only building our own prison-house. It is because we want it that way. In fact, our personality is our prison house however attractive it may appear. We are much attached to our own limitations. This way we suffer from a slow death and we become increasingly unhappy without knowing how to escape. Strangely, fostering our likes and ambitions and feeding our dislikes we are only tightening our limitations and therefore the prison we live in. Everything becomes personal and we regard this as ‘freedom’ when, in fact, were are bound. This is not natural. Only when we find some form of enthusiasm and foster it carefully, the world we live in will become larger and larger. It happens by itself and naturally. We transcend the limitations of our likes and dislikes. The Dutch Olympic long distance skater Sven Kramer was timed as the fastest of the race but was disqualified and missed the gold medal. He transcended his limitations and went to the top only to accept defeat and showed himself as a man. The natural way is broad and liberal and far from narrow and confined. Ignoring the laws of mother Nature and misusing whatever she gave to us confines us to ever smaller ways and means, to ever fewer possibilities. Such a way will never lead to happiness. On the one hand we draw one limitation after the other and on the other hand we miss the opportunity of right action and timing. Our attachment to our private world only increases the unhappy feeling of living in a jail.
The natural state of our inner being is like the vastness of the ocean, even when storms abound on the surface. In the natural state everything is reflected without us being carried away. Sadness is reflected as sadness, joy as joy, pain as pain. When we forget our natural measure everything gets out of balance. We forget ourselves and the natural condition of our inner being. Soon we become convinced that consciousness is confined to our physical body rather than our body resting in consciousness. We are caught in a one-dimensional world where Sir One-eye is king. What happens to Sir Two-eye? Mother Nature has given us two eyes so that we may see depth and distance. In-depth vision and keeping a distance enable us to distinguish between what is relevant and what is not relevant. They lead to the appreciation of right measure. Let us use this inner power of discovering what is real and what is unreal. After all, the sea-frog is right.
Paul G. van Oyen
