By the Pricking of my Thumbs

The search for a path through life

Photo: Me and Flaubert, October 2023.

I have an ongoing concern that we’re often too analytical about inner work.

Where did this begin? Perhaps with P. D. Ouspensky, who was a mathematician and a scientist. What would have happened if an artist or a poet, if a musician, were the one who had reported the gist of  Gurdjieff’s ideas in the first place? I don't know. But what seems certain to me is that, while there are important technical aspects to understanding the nature of the soul, they are not perforce of an analytical nature.

Yet we are, on the whole, strangely drawn into analyzing everything we do by over-using the intellectual mind. Self observation thus becomes an analytical process; not the development of a new relationship, but the ongoing explanation of what a relationship is.

How can this be avoided?

If we become too touchy-feely, won't that degrade the quality of our work?