The Golden Thread

Buddha takes the first of seven steps in his awakening.
Being Present © 2009

January 2009

Come, return, return to the root of your Self.

Rumi

Ouspensky called the system ‘fragments of an unknown teaching’, and he understood that the books, meetings and presentations were a preparation for a school, a Fourth Way school that would transcend the words of the system into wordless presence. Gurdjieff and Ouspensky spun a golden thread, Rodney Collin wove it in his time, and their vision enabled a school to convert theory into practice, and to develop practical methods for producing mystical states.

However, while volumes have been written about the system, little has been recorded of the techniques for awakening, of being present. This is because consciousness cannot be measured as a material, according to the physical senses. Nor can the effort of being present be taught generally, as though a subject for a classroom. As soon as one reads or hears of being present and tries it, one learns all that is needed in a single moment. A school brings together people who have already experienced presence and want to experience the state more frequently. And a school is not about techniques. When one is awake, even for a single second, the effort to penetrate the moment recedes and the diver is launched, finding the ocean infinitely deep.

But the main reason why a school does not record the techniques of awakening is because one continually refines and adapts the aim to be present, from day to day. While a school re-affirms the need and the opportunity for consciousness, practical work is the personal endeavour of students and begins with being present, in the moment. And as one develops the taste for presence, Third Eye is evoked, and begins to prompts one’s Work, suggesting ways of introducing consciousness into daily life. One begins to pick up the golden thread of one’s life and follow it. Being present is the thread, leading one to the heart of the human mystery.

Quotations

Take a moment, and use your attention to be aware of both yourself and your surroundings, at the same time.

‘By dividing attention, the student learns to be aware of himself speaking to another, of himself standing in a certain scene, of 'himself' acting, feeling or thinking in relation to the outside world.’

Rodney Collin, The Theory of Celestial Influence

It is the second that one must penetrate—not the moment, the hour, the day, nor the year, but the second. This is where reality resides.