The Reality of Being
#47. The struggle for being
My wish to struggle is not strong enough. Otherwise, I would watch. When I begin, I want to withdraw just enough to be able to struggle to stay present. But I forget my wish and prefer to withdraw completely. If I understood that my only possibility to be present is in the struggle, I would not seek to situate myself outside it or avoid it by withdrawing and escaping identification. Seeing my identification would be connected to the struggle. It would be part of my struggle. Conscious effort does not mean staying in one place without changing, but continuing the effort. We always dream of reaching a place in order to remain there permanently. Yet permanence can only be found in movement. We are not seeking something static, but the power of a mobile attention, a conscious attention that can follow the entire movement in manifestation, whatever the circumstance.
Transcripts of Gurdjieff’s Meetings 1941-1946
Meeting Fifteen Thursday, 21 October 1943
Gurdjieff: …It is …necessary that you obtain results in yourself. Collect, accumulate the results of struggle. You will need them for continuing. You must accumulate; you have batteries in you in which you must accumulate this substance, like electricity. This substance can only be accumulated by struggle. Therefore create a struggle between your head and your animal. …Continue your struggle, but without waiting for results. Accumulate the results of the process of struggle. When we struggle interiorly with thought, feeling and body, that gives a substance in the place where it belongs. We have no interest today in knowing where that place is. Accumulate. It is this that is lacking in you.
… What is necessary is that you must have in you the process of struggle. What means shall you employ? That isn’t important. Struggle. You know better than I what struggle. For example, whatever your body likes, whatever you have the habit of giving it, don’t give it any more. The important thing is to have a continual process of struggle, because you need the substance that struggle will give you.
Meeting Three Thursday, 18 March 1943
Simone: I see how I am always beaten by my functions. My habits form an automatism which is in me like a block on which I can get no hold. On one side I have my work, and on the other my life, in which nothing changes.
Gurdjieff: We have already often said that if one develops one side, the other will develop also. One must struggle.
Simone: But rightly. I am not able to have a conflict in myself.
Gurdjieff: Because you do not do. …You can continue to live like this ten years, a thousand years. You will never change. Even God, if he wished it, would not be able to help you. He would not have the right . . . Only you yourself can struggle against your laziness. There are two tendencies in you. But you, you sleep. It is necessary for you to get up and fight.
Simone: Is this laziness born in me or acquired?
Gurdjieff: I think that it is a natural tendency. The more your psyche wishes a certain thing, the more the body refuses. Perhaps it has been placed there by nature, so that there should be a struggle. Moreover, it is a good thing. These are conditions of work. If it did not exist, it would be necessary to place something in you, in order to replace it. It is also a factor for remembering. Each time that you feel it, you must think about your work. It is also a good thing that you see your laziness, because many people are lazy, but they do not see it.
Simone: I have known it for fifteen years, but I haven’t made any headway against it.
Gurdjieff: What did you do then? You were sorry about it. But in this way in a hundred years nothing will change. There is no reason for it to change—only if you set yourself to struggle conscientiously.
Inside a Question, Mme. Henriette Lannes
London 1961 – Resistance is according to law
Try to understand that resistance is according to law. If there is no resistance, there can be no struggle, there can be no new energy. Without production of new energy, there can be no possible contact with higher levels in ourselves. Struggle has to be accepted as the only means that we have for producing energy. Each time that we have a little new possibility it is that a spark of another kind of energy has linked us with a different level of ourselves. Every moment of our asleep life we are like a man shut in the basement of a very big house who has no idea there is anything else than that dark, bad smelling basement he is used to. As soon as that spark of energy is used up, he is bound to find himself again in that basement. Struggle is necessary—there is resistance—and then I affirm more.
The Reality of Being
#6. The First Initiation
In order to observe, I have to struggle. My ordinary nature refuses self-observation. I need to prepare, to organize a struggle against the obstacle, to withdraw a little from my identification—speaking, imagining, expressing negative emotions. Conscious struggle requires choice and acceptance. It must not be my state that dictates the choice. I must choose the struggle to be present and accept that suffering will appear. There is no struggle without suffering. Struggle is unacceptable to our lower nature; struggle upsets it. This is why it is so important always to remember what we wish—the meaning of our work and our Presence. In going against a habit, for example, like eating or sitting in a certain way, we are not struggling to change the habit. Or in trying not to express negative emotions, we are not struggling against the emotions themselves or struggling to do away with their expression. It is a struggle with our identification, to allow the energy otherwise wasted to serve the work. We struggle not against something, we struggle for something.