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Introduction       In the Gurdjieff Work there is something called a “stop exercise.” In the midst of a busy round of practical work, when people are fully engaged with whatever tasks they are doing, suddenly the team leader calls out, “STOP!” Everyone instantly freezes in place, caught midstream in whatever posture or gesture they happen to have assumed at that moment. It’s an artfully diabolical learning tool, geared toward exposing the habitual repertory of unconscious mannerisms that keep us chained to our usual modes of self-presentation.

was against that backdrop that I invited some of my experienced Wisdom students to work with six of the Gurdjieff Contemplative Exercises, now publicly available for the first time thanks to Joseph Azize’s recently published book, Gurdjieff: Mysticism, Contemplation, and Exercises. Azize is an Australian student of the Work who first learned these exercises at the hands of his teachers George and Helen Adie, first-generation students of Gurdjieff himself.

That missing link is embodied, three-centered awareness. Embodied awareness not simply for the sake of personal wellness or mindfulness, but as a direct link to higher faculties of perception embedded but not yet activated within us—and through these “higher faculties”—to assistance coming toward us from worlds beyond our own.

The bottom line is simple: in the absence of a full, three-centered (thinking, feeling, moving) presence grounded in sensation and directed by conscious attention, we will inevitably default to thinking. And thinking is simply too low an energetic state to sustain the vision and connection we humans so desperately yearn for. We can talk, strategize, think, pray—even meditate—till the cows come home, but it is all on autopilot. The blind leading the blind. Gurdjieff is still, to my mind, the only one who is unequivocally stating this, and then showing us how to do the work.

Students would work on a single exercise for weeks or even months until what it had to offer had been fully assimilated. That is how Azize himself first learned them under the tutelage of George and Helen Adie. There was no established order or pedagogical trajectory. Certainly, no checklist.

Transformed contemplation is contemplation that actually transforms something, both in ourselves and in the world. It is a kind of sacred alchemy that is to be understood within the context of Gurdjieff’s great vision of “reciprocal feeding,” the exchange of physical/energetic substances between the realms that maintains the whole cosmic ecosystem in a state of dynamic equilibrium.

Further to SENSING; for the sake of this exercise, it means using your directed attention to awaken a sense of aliveness (often experienced as an actual subtle tingling) in a specific body part while at the same time allowing that part to be the full container for your attention. As a pilot run, bring your attention to your right hand. Try not to beam your attention down from outside, like a searchlight; rather, invite it gently to fill in from within. It will. Notice how, under the beckoning power of your attention, your arm suddenly seems to “come online.” You are directly connected to it; you feel its vibrancy as a vitalization of your own being. (Isn’t it amazing how you can use this mysterious power always at your disposal, your attention, to fill up your hand with sensation; to increase the direct experience of your own aliveness?)

For more on attention, have a look at “The Force of Attention” the marvelous excerpt by William Segal from his book The Structure of Man. You’ll find bibliographical details at the back of this book.

1. The Importance of Embodiment   Let me begin today’s commentary with a pithy reminder from my dear friend A. H. Almaas as to the fundamental importance of these sensory embodiment exercises:   The body is the doorway to the adventure of Being. So the inquiry has to begin by activating and enlivening the body. The more active and alive the whole body is, the more our inquiry is vital and our unfoldment is alive. Our experience is more robust, energetic, and dynamic. We need to remember that the activation of the lataif [the subtle senses of perception in Sufi tradition, allowing us to peer directly into the invisible realms] requires that the centers of physical location be energized (Almaas, 294).   In the absence of a vibrant, awakened presence in our physical body, we default to thinking without even knowing we are doing it. Then everything becomes a projection of the story inside our heads, including (tragically) our deepest sense of our own aliveness. All meditation traditions recognize that nothing real can happen to us while we are still trapped in the mind. But most try to deal with this by simply “turning off the mind,” or replacing thought with some idealized emotional state (such as peace, bliss, calm). What is distinctive about the Gurdjieffian system is that it goes in the opposite direction, engaging the full aliveness of the body to contain and counterbalance the mind while at the same time raising the frequency of our presence to a vibrational level where direct perception begins to become possible.

“Gently” means that this is not a mechanical repetition of an external prayer—but rather, almost “an echo,” as George Adie describes it. And “gently” also means that you are not imposing a liturgical formula from the outside, laying onto the exercise a devotional patina. Rather, you are gently opening a question (whose essence is in fact a petition): Is it possible to become directly aware of the subtle relational field that in fact surrounds us at all times and is the ground of our own aliveness—the Mercy of God?

AI Summary

Mystical Courage by Cynthia Bourgeault presents key insights from the Gurdjieff tradition. The 10 passages above capture the essential teachings.

Core Themes:

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Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 10 are particularly representative.

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