Learning to “See”

by awareness ~ July 29, 2008

Nancy Langmuir, the leader of my Gurdjieff Work group taught me how to “See”. I know that now. She would constantly challenge me to face the Unknowable, the parts of myself hidden in shadow. Although I at first found this alien and terrifying, later I learned that it was the first step in developing a strong and healthy persona.

Sometimes the knowledge you get is beyond concepts, to such a degree that it’s mind blowing. There is so much information at times that it’s overwhelming. That’s when the seer goes to pieces. Since the seer has to process all of this “food”, it can give one a spiritual digestion problem.

After a lot of practice however, it’s not such a big deal. That assumes that you ordered your life based on the information received in the earlier phase.
The important thing is to develop compassion for other beings. Seeing is self knowledge, right? By knowing myself, I also learn to empathize with other people.
The phrase “walk a mile in another man’s moccassins” takes on many new levels of meaning.
If you are really seeing, compassion might spontaneously generate. If not, one needs to help it along.

Why? If you are just doing it for yourself, that is not enough to sustain your practice. A tiny boat is also a very lonely one.
Many beings in the world need our help, but we are so blocked and self important, we can’t really help them. We do more harm than good most of the time.

But then if a person learns how to ’see’ sometimes the skillful right action becomes apparent. Acting from compassion, our motives are pure. If our motives are untainted by self-importance, our actions will be skillful, natural and wise.