The Work
If you wanted to change your entire life, where would you start? The work offers you a life that is more awake, more alive. Will you embrace it?
In my last article I talked about surrender and how a simple change in mindset can change your entire life. After we’ve surrendered to what the universe would have for us instead of what we would have for us, we can start to do the work that will help us to align with our true destinies.
Surrender can be easy; it is not bound to time, it can happen in an instant. But work takes time. It is not always enjoyable or fulfilling in the moment, but it will give you opportunities to get to know yourself in new ways.
I’m a big fan of an old mystic from the turn of the 20th century named G.I. Gurdjieff. He had a unique concept called the work. He insisted that it was a process to become more aware, more alive. Gurdjieff suggested that most people are sort of floating through life. Doing the same things day in and day out. Going where they’re supposed to go. Doing what they’ve always done. He saw this as being asleep and felt that the majority of people in this world were essentially sleepwalking their way through their lives.
Do you feel like your life is too repetitive? Do you often find yourself bored and aimlessly scrolling on your phone or watching TV? Do you feel like too much of your time is simply commuting from one responsibility to the next?
The work will wake you up. It is a direct aface to the monotony of everyday life. It is putting extra time and effort into things that may not offer you immediate rewards. The work is regaining agency over your body, mind, and soul.
Gurdjieff was a bit of a cult leader. He would make his students carry heavy bags of dirt from one end of his property to the other. Then he would make his students carry the same heavy bags back to the same place from which they originated – ostensibly showing them that all the labor they did was meaningless. But it wasn’t meaningless, they were doing the work, symbolically. Sometimes we need to do things that seem ridiculous just to do it. To experience. To suffer. To grow.
I don’t want to be a cult leader… but if you were a student of mine, you would be expected to carry heavy bags 30 minutes up a mountain trail. The logic behind carrying heavy bags of supplies to my home with me is a little different than pointlessly carrying heavy bags around a field, but it’s all still a little silly – you could easily spend your time around someone who has a more accessible life. But then, what is the fun in that?
Gurdjieff’s concept of the work can maybe be distilled down to two principals: Constant Edification and Intentional Suffering.
Constant Edification
This is the drive to be learning, growing, pushing further all the time. It’s not enough to just do as we’re expected to do. There is always a new skill or topic to learn about. There is always time to spend in yoga or meditation or dance. Life is about using your energy in a way that is effective and empowering.
There will always be times to rest, both physically and mentally. Structuring your life in a way that either enables or forces you to push yourself to the limits, while allowing ample time to relax and heal, is useful. When I say force you I literally mean that: put yourself in a position where you more or less have to follow through with something that you know you should learn or experience, even if it’s not always enjoyable.
Make a commitment to learning a new trade, whether that be programming a computer or learning how to fix cars, or anything else you can think up. If you have some money, take a course. Or, better yet, find someone that has already mastered the skill you’re looking to gain and see if you can volunteer to help them in order to learn the trade. These are just a few ways to put yourself in a position to be in a state of constant edification.
Your energy in life, like all things, waxes and wanes; it is a spectrum. It’s fine to make commitments to better oneself and follow through. Especially if those commitments are particularly difficult. But the more you put yourself out there and the harder your efforts physically and mentally, the more you have to ensure you have time to rest. To be alone in a quiet place.
When relaxing at home, often our time is not spent in becoming stronger, smarter, more emotionally available. In our modern era there is so much to consume and so much of it drains our energy or distracts us from our true purpose. It is always a good idea to replace mediocre inputs with uplifting ones.
If you find yourself scrolling on social media, try watching something educational instead. Maybe watch a documentary or listen to a podcast on history or science. If you haven’t done enough exercise or movement in the day, I would recommend watching a yoga or fitness video. You can start with a 20 or 30 minute one if you don’t feel motivated. Play around at home and develop new habits around consumption and movement that are both enjoyable and help you grow.
Intentional Suffering
There will never be zero suffering in this world. Suffering is a counterpoint to contentment. Like with all things, there must be an opposite, and energetically there will never be a resting state in one extreme, but life will always be breathing these qualities.
As such – in order to reduce unnecessary suffering around the globe – it is our responsibility to embrace suffering. We find the paths that are difficult. We take risks that are terrifying. We push through discomfort in order to alleviate the unnecessary suffering of others. Maybe it’s a cross to bear, but it is part of the work of becoming alive and aware. One cannot operate as a free agent if they are asleep.
Suffering will wake you right up. Go ahead and stub your toe – see if your attention is solely focused on your toe or the things that were bobbing around in your mind right before hand. That’s not intentional suffering, but it still may have been necessary suffering. Sometimes we need to be more aware when in movement; aware of our bodies, other bodies, and general obstacles. This is just an example, but we will always receive the reminders we need, sometimes through suffering.
Intentional suffering can be as simple. A good example is going to the gym and putting in a solid effort, or maybe going on a long run. Unless you already do these things daily, you probably wouldn’t enjoy them much to begin. But the suffering you will endure will literally make you stronger. The gains are not immediate, but after a couple weeks you won’t hate it quite so much and you’ll start to notice a difference in your attitude, overall fitness, and energy level.
So it’s not that hard to picture the concept. But it is hard to expand it into our mundane lives. Taking a risk, going on a trip, quitting your job in order to pursue your passion; these are going to be choices that might be outside your comfort zone. These are choices that might cause you to suffer at times. The suffering is worth it, it lessens over time, and you benefit greatly from your new choices.
The work ahead will be hard, but already you can imagine the benefits or taking this approach in your life. You don’t have to sign up forever; try it out for a month or two to see how you like it.
In essence the philosophy is one of personal responsibility in a forward direction. It may not be so easy to simply switch into this mode of thinking. For many of us, we have a whole past that leads right up to our present, littered with habits and fears that don’t serve us well.
An honest and searching inventory and cleanup of these aspects of our lives is a great way to start. Take some time to write a few lists:
Name of people you would like to have better relationships with.
Your habits that you don’t think are serving you
Ways you would like to improve physically, intellectually, and emotionally.
These lists can be a very good guide about how to proceed. Whenever you find yourself doing something from the second list, swap it out for one from the third. If there are people in your life that you want to see an improved relationship with, reach out to them; get a conversation started.
With this work we can start to change the entire fabric of our lives. We build courage, confidence, and self-love. We get in the habit of doing things that don’t offer immediate returns. We make commitments and stick to them. We push ourselves, sometimes to the limit, and then step back and recover, reflect, and love ourselves fully.
If you start doing this work yourself you will feel more awake, more alive, and more inspired. There are endless possibilities out there for us. We cannot allow ourselves to be distracted or carried through life. We must work for something bigger, even if we can’t possibly imagine it.