The whole matter of waking up from spiritual slumber begins with meditation.
“How many times is this said in the Gospels: ‘Awake, watch, sleep not!’ But people do not understand it or they think it is a metaphor whereas it is literally true. If people awakened from sleep, if they began to remember themselves, the whole of life would change. And nothing can change in life unless people begin to awaken. A man must first come to the realization that he is asleep and that he does not remember himself, before anything else can happen. And he can only gain this realization by means of observing himself uncritically at all times.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p198.
“The whole matter of waking up begins with meditation. And I teach Centering Prayer and I teach it almost as the beginning step in most all of the spiritual work I do everywhere for one very, very simple reason. It’s the fastest and most reliable way known to human beings to shift the center of a person’s being from out on that kind of sleep orbit where bad things happen to you over and over and over to a deeper place within you from which you can begin to orient in a whole different way.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Awakened Mind and Heart 2003, 1:03 Awakened Mind Awakened Heart Disc 1 Track 5.
“This work, if you will listen to it and hear it in your hearts, is the most beautiful thing you could possibly hear. It speaks not of sin, but of being asleep, just as the Gospels do not really speak of sin, but only of missing the mark. Can we hear the work? There is an old book that I have, composed by a man in the work of his time. It depicts a man lying fast asleep flat on the earth, and a ladder stretching to heaven, and angels on it blowing trumpets almost in the man’s ear. Yet he hears nothing. He is asleep in life—perhaps he is a millionaire or some very important person, or simply a harassed clerk, or a worried mother.” Commentaries, p10-11.
“Remember this work is psychological. Our daily life, our profession, our trade, our occupation, etc., are nothing but a dream with which we identify. But this understanding comes slowly—when we understand better what sleep and mechanicalness mean and why mankind is called asleep and life is called mechanical. To work on yourself, begin to work on daily life and then you will understand what is meant by the strange phrase: ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ in the Lord’s Prayer.” Commentaries, p27
“We think of yesterday and the day before in terms of time, not in terms of our inner states on those days. We do not think that the day before yesterday we were in a state of abysmal sleep but that yesterday we had a small moment of awakening. Because we think in terms of time, we have so little memory of states. We seem to worship time. We say time is money and talk of never wasting time. We value it highly, but we do not seem to value states. Everything valuable gets swept away by time. Yet that small amount of awakening you had yesterday should have been put into the room of your inner memory which is outside time and is in shelves, arranged vertically in scale of value. Such moments eventually begin to lift us. They enable us to remember ourselves—out of time and its cares.” Commentaries, p1528.
Logion 103
Yeshua says...
Blessed are those
who are aware of the approach of thieves,
who know when and where they will enter
even before they appear,
for then they may arise and prepare
by gathering their sovereignty about them,
and binding to themselves
that which was from the beginning.
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)
Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.
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