Re: An idea that floored Ouspensky while listening to Gurdjieff speak was that of 'the non-expression of negative emotions'.

Yes, this may be important to those of us who desire to work on ourselves, yet it is also one of the most misunderstood of Gurdjieff's ideas. I'm not saying that you are misunderstanding this, Charles, as I have read many of your posts and you clearly have a solid grasp of the system; I'm just writing this for the sake of others who may read this thread.

There is a difference between "the non-expression of negative emotions" and what is known as "bottling up" one's emotions (which is very, very unhealthy). There is a time and place for expressing anger, boredom, and all the rest. Way too much to write in a single post, just wanted to put that out there for any of those new to the Gurdjieff's monumental ideas. I always suggest that, before expressing a negative emotion, one observe it for a time. By giving these feelings attention, by treating them as one would a child (and it's never a good idea to deny or pretend that a child's emotions don't exist), by looking at what our organism is trying to tell us, we can grow to be human beings without quotation marks. But there is a GREAT danger in simply ignoring these negative emotions or they will wreak havoc on our lives.

Good post, Charles!

Frank Lloyd Wright never took the same road twice. He also struggled throughout life to control his world... and was forced to reinvent himself several times. He also had a family Motto: Follow Nature (the Welsh definition of genius is "one who follows Nature"
He also believed one must approach a building's entrance in a Zen method, where his logo described this method: a right, a right etcc... spriralling in, and eventually transforming in the center, and releasing this entrance...
He also had a guru (Sullivan) who developed a wonder organic method of discovering a kind of typology of nature's patterns and had a motto: "Remember the Seed Germ"
I wonder, did these architects have Gurdjieffian influence? I think it likely, via the influences of people like LeDuc, and other organic thinkers....

Charles

I appreciate your corrective reply to my post.

Though my knowledge of Gurdjieffian terminology is next to nil, I can see how 'out of patterns' more accurately addresses my devices for inconveniencing myself than "Intentional suffering". I can also relate to your phrase, "the act of not expressing a negative emotion provides a certain heat"...which I see play out in my daily habits and attentions. My current interest lies with exposing daily habits that drain the energetic body, specifically, the emotional body of 'the heart' in the head/heart/gut trinity. And I find that the expression of negative emotion plays a big part in a certain kind of power loss that I can no longer afford.

taking on pain and suffering may be misconstrued as an excercise in Christian forebearance by the unannointed in one's milieu... thus benefitting noone, least of all one's self - a tricky excercise to be undertaken by the expert dialectician only.

pg 198 "the Way of the Sufi" By Indries Shah,
Mohammed Shah took a group of his Halka (Circle) to see a certain sights......a minaret "this was built by people who persevere"
Brahmin pigrims walking to the holy Jumna River "these are people who persevere", caravans of Chinese, Tibetan pilgrams stretching their bodies out along the ground per step, magistrates who work to monitor justice, 'Men Everywhere persevere, The yield of this perseverance is what is of account. This they can harvest and use.... If on the other hand, they become beguiled by the thing for which they persevere they cannot make use of the training of the struggle of perseverance. All that happens to them is that they become trained in persevering after some things."