Let's speak about goodness

The search for a path through life

Photo: Our dogs Flaubert and Fleabelle.

Dogs, unlike human beings, know what goodness is. Here, goodness is a yellow ball. Take particular note of it, because goodness often takes this form, and you’ll miss it if you don’t pay attention.

We spend our time "working.”

This is the word we’ve come up with for everything spiritual in the Gurdjieff work. But perhaps it's a dangerous word, because the idea of work, especially in the modern era—perhaps more so than ever before, I can't say — is an intensly transactional affair. That attitude pollutes everything.

And, indeed, people think they will "get something" for working. I even hear people in groups speak about that openly, not even aware of what they are saying, as though the transaction itself was what it was all about. There’s endless repetition, mostly automatic from what I've seen and heard, about "not working for results,” but here’s the rub—work is always intended to produce results.

So, once again, perhaps the word is dangerous.

It’s especially dangerous when we use it over and over again while confessing that none of us understand what it actually means. While we proceed to “work,” most of our work seems to consist of trying to figure out what work is.

The essential questions about what we are up to in this life fall by the wayside as we get our feet stuck in this glue trap.