Like many of you, my search for a teacher began shortly after becoming acquainted with P.D. Ouspensky’s book In Search of the Miraculous. I found a teacher of the Gurdjieff Method in Portland, Oregon, through a remarkable series of "coincidences" and close calls. Mrs. A.L. Staveley gave me permission to join the new group forming in September of 1973 when my boyfriend and I had hitchhiked to her doorstep with all our worldy belongings in our backpacks, without a clue as to where we would live or how we would earn our keep. I brought my youthful rebellion against my suffocating education and against all discipline that would constrain my raw, untamed potential. I immediately rebelled against "traditional" aspects of Gurdjieff’s Teachings, which at first triggered my touchy "feminist" side. Mrs. Staveley remained patient throughout, even managing to keep her sense of humor through most of my transgressions, and persisted in confronting me with the Teachings.
Slowly I began to apply the Teachings to my life, thereby gradually transforming it. These experiences enabled me to sort out the mess I was in from my social conditioning and to restore a degree of balance and self-respect. I devoted myself to the study of Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, the cosmic laws, and the mysteries of the psyche of Man, whom Gurdjieff characterized as "psychopaths squared" and sometimes "cubed". I began to grasp what he meant by "Reason of Knowing" versus "Reason of Understanding" and to ferret out the enneagramatic structure of these two distinct forms of mentation. I spent more time engaged in the activities and pursuits of the community than I did with my own family. I was in training as a group facilitator, a Movements demonstrator, and was being primed for a part in the community leadership.
During my entire time in the community I privately maintained that Gurdjieff was my true Teacher and ultimate authority, rather than Mrs. Staveley, because Gurdjieff taught that we should be "indifferent to the saints". I say "privately" because nearly everyone else appeared to worship the ground Mrs. Staveley walked upon, allowing her to dictate to them how to live their lives down to the minutest detail. Instead, my instinct guided me to reserve the right to make my own "miss-takes" and learn thereby, just as I’d had to do with my mother, sharing with Mrs. Staveley the results of my efforts to apply the Teachings and principles she suggested. I came into this world with a questioning mind and I subjected everything to critical review, taking to heart Gurdjieff’s warning to VERIFY EVERYTHING FOR MYSELF. Whenever I questioned something Mrs. Staveley said or did, I consulted the writings of Gurdjieff and came to my own working hypotheses of how to apply the teachings. Most of the time I’d finally come around to what Mrs. Staveley had been trying to show me all along – but not always. In this way I used Gurdjieff’s writings as my COMPASS for all and everything, not literally as my "ALL AND EVERYTHING". I did not dare to express this view aloud!
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