Class 6: Self Remembering

Introduction

In the fifth expansion you made the massive step of opening your heart to be touched and influenced and empowered and moved by God, by Allah, by the creative force of the Universe, by Infinite Consciousness, by Great Father ... whatever name you use, there's surely only one ultimate source of life and creation.

Having made this ultimate step of surrendering your personal will to the will of God, of letting Spirit inflow, of letting Allah permeate your personal being - how could there be yet another expansion of consciousness?

• What possibly could lie beyond letting God's love fill your heart and Allah's wisdom direct your life?

What indeed ...

We need to take our time in approaching this sixth class, because I've found that many people while reading my Seven Masters One Path book find this expansion the most challenging. And indeed, it is challenging!

We've reached the very edge of the known. Psychology can take us a certain distance here - but in the end, we're going to simply have to leap ... and look for ourselves. But hey - that's what meditation's all about!

As we'll explore in more detail in the Discussion section of this class, you spend almost all of your conscious time looking outward at the world. You are a perceiver, reflexively experiencing your sensory environment.

But as Gurdjieff so dramatically pointed out, your personal awareness is just an extension of the true 'knower'. And in meditation you have the chance and the power to turn your mind's attention 180 degrees around, and look directly toward the ultimate source of your awareness.

• That's what it really means to 'look within' and to 'know that I am God.' Shirt your attention so that you're looking directly in the direction of the source of your personal awareness.

Many mystics in all cultures have talked about human beings as being the eyes and the ears of God. For me, in meditation, this is absolute truth. God is experiencing his/her physical creation through our mortal senses.

• Once we open our hearts and minds to experience the inflow of God's love and wisdom and guidance (as in step five) as Gurdjieff taught it's uttterly logical to turn - and look to see the source of that love and wisdom and guidance.

This is the moment of revelation.

I am encouraging you to move regularly toward this moment of revelation, numerous times each day, through this short-form meditation. Everything in the first five expansions is moving you inexorably in this direction.

Right after you say "My heart is open to receive God's healing touch," and experience that connection in your heart, it's time to say two linked focus phrases that masterfully provoke the sixth expansion:

• "I feel connected with my source."

• "I know who I am."

Pause now, say the first focus phrase, breathe into the experience of feeling connected with your source of being ... turn your mind's attention directly toward that source ... and say to yourself "I know who I am." Each time you move through this, you'll know at a deeper level, who you are!

Good! Now let's move on to meet Gurdjieff, because it was from his life and teachings that I encountered this sixth expansion of meditative consciousness. I had the remarkable good fortune to know a woman who had been a disciple of Gurdjieff in France when he had his spiritual center there - and I was able to learn from her this sixth expansion...

Here's a bit of what I learned about Gurdjieff, and about this special process called self-remembering.