Essence is the more real part of ourselves. It is who we were at birth and is the receptive, absorptive state of an infant. It has a natural interest in its surroundings …  

We live in an age fascinated by knowledge. In my free time, every few minutes, I feel obligated to look up some trivial fact in the Internet, as if it were somehow more urgent than simply being present to an ordinary moment. …

Our being is the index of our ability to ‘be’. To be means to be present – aware of oneself and of one’s surroundings simultaneously. Our degree of presence changes every moment, so our being is constantly fluctuating. My average level of being is that of a man number four, although …

Not expressing negative emotions means just that, to stop the external expression of negativity. It implies that we understand that the emotion is not ‘I’, that our identity is separate from it. A part of us, known as false personality, thrives on negative emotions …

Ouspensky writes in the Psychology, “The term ‘negative emotions’ means all emotions of violence or depression: self-pity, anger, suspicion, fear, annoyance, boredom, mistrust, jealousy and so on. Ordinarily, one accepts this expression of negative emotions as quite natural and even necessary.”

“The chief means of happiness in this life is the ability to consider externally always, internally never.” – George Gurdjieff External considering is the antidote for internal considering. Internal considering is a mechanical relationship to other people, external considering a conscious one.

Inner Considering is ‘thinking’ about how other people act towards us – how they ignore us, how they treat us poorly, or perhaps even better than we think we are. We unconsciously repeat in our mind what they did to us, or what they forgot to do for us. We think we are are superior […]

The ‘Ray of Creation’ presents the idea that there are different worlds, each containing all lower worlds. World 1 or the Absolute contains all other worlds. In the same way, World 3 contains all lower worlds, and so on. World 6 is all galaxies; World 12, all suns …

Divided attention is likened to a two-headed arrow. One end points to the object of observation, the other points to ourselves. …

Ouspensky writes in the Psychology, “’Identifying’ or ‘identification’ is a curious state in which man passes more than half of his life. He ‘identifies’ with everything: with what he says, what he feels, what he believes, what he does not believe, …

Imagination refers to the automatic and involuntary movement of our thoughts and includes daydreaming. A large part of awakening is struggling with imagination. …

The first state of consciousness is sleep in bed, at night. The second state, also known as waking sleep, is our state of every day. The third state is self-consciousness.

Gurdjieff says in In Search of the Miraculous, “Observation must begin with the division of functions. All the activity of the human machine is divided into four sharply defined groups, each of which is controlled by its own special mind or ‘center.’ …

Ouspensky writes in the Psychology, “Every thought, every feeling, every sensation, every desire, every like and every dislike is an ‘I’. These ‘I’s are not connected and are not coordinated …

Self-remembering is a special kind of awareness of oneself. Ouspensky remarks, “The whole idea is to be aware of yourself in this place, at this moment. ...

Self-observation is a special kind of directed attention, where we pay attention to our internal world and try to view it objectively, as a stranger would....

Hello, my name is David Tuttle. I have been studying the ideas of the Fourth Way for over forty years, in the context of a school with a teacher. In this series, I will cover various basic topics …