Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
The Psychological Account-Book
Maurice Nicoll talks of a “form of identifying called making accounts. A man begins to feel that people owe him, that he deserves better treatment, more rewards, more recognition, and he writes all this down in a psychological account-book, the pages of which he is continually turning over in his mind. And such a man begins to pity himself so much that it may be almost impossible to talk to him about anything without making him at once refer to all his sufferings. All accounts of this kind, all feelings that you are owed by other people and that you owe nothing yourself, are of very great psychological consequence to the inner development of a man.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p253
“What is it we crave most, mechanically speaking? We crave most attention, and this belongs to the satisfaction of the vanity. To live by impressions of this kind is to live the life of this most powerful thing in us called False Personality. To live the life of pure internal considering and of making accounts gives a very unsatisfactory basis to our existences as it depends entirely on how people behave towards us, and this means we have no centre of gravity in ourselves, so that strictly speaking we do not exist except as functions of the praise or blame of other people.” Commentaries, p653-54
The Root: Identification with Self
“What is it that is at the bottom of it all? The answer is that what is at the bottom of it all is where you identify with yourself. All forms of internal considering, of which making accounts against another person is one form, belong to identifying. The Work says that we must study identifying down to its very roots. A man is only offended where he is identified with himself. And the Work also says that the study of identifying must begin with a study of where you are identified with yourself. It is here that you can be upset, hurt, offended, insulted. The being identified with oneself comes first, being upset and offended comes second, making inner accounts comes third.” Commentaries, p264
The Prison of Unforgiveness
“A man in the Work can only grow through the forgiveness of others. That is, unless you cancel your debts, nothing in you can grow. It is said in the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Feeling you are owed, feeling debts, stops everything. You hold back yourself and you hold back the other person. This is the inner meaning of Christ’s remark that one should make peace with one’s enemy’:
Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art with him in the way; lest haply the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily, I say unto thee, thou shalt not come out until thou hast paid the last farthing.” (Matt. V 25, 26)
“If you are going to exact psychologically every pound of flesh or every ‘farthing’ from a man who owes you—that is, if you are going to make everyone apologize and make amends and eat the dust, then you will be under the exacting law that Christ warns you to escape from. You will put yourself in prison—that is, under unnecessary laws—and you will not get out until you have paid on your side for all your own faults.” Commentariesp254
The Blockage to Growth
“As long as we feel that others owe us—i.e. as long as we persistently make inner accounts—we cannot start any change of being or reach any new understanding. The teaching of the Work will fall on our ears year after year and nothing will happen. In the first place, if you invariably make and cherish inner accounts, if you always feel you have a credit balance and others have a debit balance in regard to yourself, you are a very bad merchant, esoterically speaking. You will get nowhere. All these inner accounts must be cancelled. The Lord’s Prayer says literally: ‘Cancel our debts in proportion as we cancel other people’s debts.’ Now if you cannot cancel what you believe are other people’s debts you will not have debts cancelled for you through the action of the Work on you. This means that your whole relation to the Work will be wrong.” Commentaries, p571
The Source of Negative Emotions
“Continually making accounts against others stores up big material for the manufacture of negative emotions which if they cannot attack others attack oneself. The only remedy is not to consent to negative impressions—that is, to be sufficiently awake to prevent these impressions from automatically going right home to the negative part of Emotional Centre.” Commentaries, p1042
Maurice says that forgiving these perceived grievances requires conscious work. “It really belongs to the purification of the Emotional Center.” Commentaries, p262
The Call for Something Higher
Much of the Gurdjieff teachings are about energy. Leaking and lost energy, conserving energy, higher and lower, coarser and finer energies. The quotes here are about the form of identification that Maurice Nicoll calls “making accounts” or also called “internal considering.” In the Lord’s Prayer we ask, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” This familiar statement might be rephrased as, “as I am unable to let go of my petty grievances, please teach me a better way.” Annie Lou Staveley says it this way, “Before something higher can find space in me, something else which has up to now taken precedence must go.” p244 She also says, “My energy really can be under my own control.” Annie Lou Staveley, The Plan Is Good, p242
Higher Justice
“Remember there is no justice under higher laws such as we understand justice. Higher justice, heavenly justice, is to work on yourself so that when you die you have no accounts.” Commentaries, p1088
Logion 95
Yeshua says…
If you have money, do not lend it at interest.
Give it instead
to someone from whom you cannot take it back.
Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll refer to Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Eureka Editions:2020) unless stated otherwise.
Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)
Page numbers for Annie Lou Staveley refer to The Plan is Good, (Two Rivers Press: 2023)
Read the Impression introducing the GosRpel of Thomas.
0 Comments