Gurdjieff Fourth Way Activities

The Leeds Gurdjieff Society was founded following a pilot study of the Gurdjieff Heritage Society [1]. It was clear that Gurdjieff groups in the UK outside of London needed to be connected with an authentic lineage, particularly with Movements work. After completion of the pilot study in Hamburg, the Leeds Gurdjieff Society were granted access to the Gurdjieff Heritage Society Archive which was established by Dushka Howarth, daughter of Jessmin Howarth one Gurdjieff’s principal dancers at the Château du Prieuré in Fontainbleau.

Group members meet regularly to follow Gurdjieff’s teaching, known as the Work, in Leeds, Otley and Harrogate.

The programme includes working together on study, movements and activities. For Gurdjieff groups near me see google.co.uk

Leeds Gurdjieff Society activities

Members are mostly from Leeds, Otley, Manchester, Bradford, Keithley and Huddersfield.

Activities are a very important part of the Gurdjieff Work, and help to keep theory in balance with practice.

In his book ‘The Fourth Way’, P.D. Ouspensky talks about to ‘how’ to approach this subject [2]:

Every kind of activity has its own way of thinking although we are not aware of it. But what happens is that people act in one way and think in another. Sometimes the two coincide but often they are in a wrong relation to one another.

Every action, every manifestation is the result of three forces. One should particularly avoid hurry and invention. We think only of motives, aims and results and not of the actions themselves.

The objective of activities is ‘to work consciously’: to not identify with a task regardless of how displeasing or appealing it is to our own personality.

Activities and Exercises

Activities are supported by exercises for inner work.

A quotation from C.S. Nott’s book ‘Journey Through This World’ [3]:

In doing a physical job, like digging or sawing, one has to be constantly on the watch not to get caught up in the flow of associations. The feelings easily become involved and an argument with someone is started in one’s mind. One begins to work not even like a horse. In doing physical work like gardening or house-work one can, by sensing or counting and remembering oneself, save an enormous amount of energy.”

Exercises and Self Remembering

In Essentuki, Mr. Gurdjieff gave exercises to help with concentration of thought, as described by Olga and Thomas De Hartmann [4]:

One feature that all the exercises have in common is that they require all our attention and so avoid the flow of uncontrolled associations that waste our life energy through very stupid, sometimes very painful, sometimes fantastic, sometimes erotic thoughts, feelings and sensations, which we all more or less experience. Mr. Gurdjieff frequently said that “conscious labour” and “intentional suffering,” by reducing this unconscious flow of associations, could prolong life. For those who work on attention and use it in the struggle with associations, who do not forget to “remember themselves” – for those people attention begins to be not only the centre of life, but also the factor that lengthens it.

Fontainebleau Institute

Gurdjieff Fourth Way Activities

Activities and Exercises

Exercises and Self Remembering

References