first and third Wednesday of every month - May 2 and 16
One Hundred Years of Gurdjieff’s Work
October 5th - 7th, 2012
We had come onto a beach from below the lighthouse.
A bit up from the shoreline sat a seagull, as we approached the bird did not move. It was a young bird, large, still with its speckled brown down feathers. At short intervals the bird would open its beak with a silent call. He seemed not visibly physically hurt and full of life, yet distressed in some unknown way.
We took out an apple and put small pieces into his beak, some he would swallow, others he would shake his head and toss out. For awhile Kathy and I sat feeding the bird, watching him. Suddenly he stood up. Kathy exclaimed, he's getting stronger already, expecting him to walk away from us. Instead he sat back down. I continued to watch the bird and feed him; once he bit me.
This went on for awhile, Kathy got up and joined the others. I put the apple on the sand in front of the bird to see if he would go after it himself. His beak went down onto the apple and then into the sand. Once again it went down into the sand his head going along with it. Then with a tremendous force the bird struggled to his feet, spread his wings out behind him and made a strong motion as if to lift himself into the sky. The next moment is almost indescribable in its force and quality. Something was there, a crystal clearness, and then gone, that perhaps took part of me with it. The bird dropped its head upon the sand, his body following, his life force gone, his eyes still open. I experienced a tearing in my gut and an emotion of grief, a settling back into my body, realizing he was dead. Seems now perhaps for an instant the bird and I had become one, immersed in a vast dimension of spacelessness, timelessness—eternity.
We buried the light, still warm body of the bird in the sand and covered his grave with rocks. As we left the beach I looked back and two seagulls swooped down circling and crying, and I felt life continuing somehow realizing I was seeing with different eyes, all is one.
From "Material for Thought" №10 Fall 1983
