Pondering Gurdjieff Gurdjieff seems to have mindfucked multitudes with the notion that there are some that can "do" and some that can't. Nobody can and nobody could, including old George the Georgian -- consider for a moment the possibility that he was having his readers and listeners on, and that the dynamic that nurtures awareness (and therefore the only significant transformation in human consciousness) is the spontaneous absence of intent -- everything else comprises attempts to communicate, at very best to "point," not "work." The work-for-reward paradigm will get you stuff, it will certainly help you survive -- but get you transformed, enlightened, realized? Well, let's just say some serious pondering is in order, folks, because the real work gets done in solitude and silence, and not as the result of human ambition and toil -- we are never, ever, the actual doer. That, I hypothesize (because it sounds ever so much more serious than "guess"), is the great, even downright cosmic jape of one G. I. Gurdjieff, perhaps the archetypical and ultimate sly man. The great cul de sac of the human psyche and spirit is the wholesale export of the work-for-reward paradigm from thought-driven activity into the great enquiry into fundamental truth. It is my thesis (unprovable, of course) that G.I. Gurdjieff understood this quite well, and spent his life patiently waiting for somebody -- anybody -- to notice that the whole edifice of intentional work only "succeeds" if it finally notices the brick wall in front of it and spontaneously ceases, leaving only the aforementioned silence and solitude, which is (or at least can be -- nothing whatsoever is vouchsafed!) an opening into transformation. (assembled from 2 posts to newsgroup - alt.consciousness.4th-way)