The (REALLY big) questions

Recently posted onto a Fourthway email list were the following "big questions" (there are certainly more, but these were but a few important to Fourthway students):
> What is the growing end of one's own descending octave?
> Also there is an ascending octave. What is this with in me?
> What is the yearning for consciousness, the hope, love and faith of consciousness?
> What does this really mean for me in my life?
> How do I start the process of finding my way to understanding more fully?

The writer did not attempt to answer these questions, as is usually the case for a variety of reasons they would explain if pressed to provide some.

Here are a few comments about all that.

These are, apparently, the kinds of questions one should be asking (and not limited to those studying Gurdjieff, but anyone properly interested in the "lifelong pursuit"), and not just occasionally, but consistently, even continuously, in the way a gymnast walks their 4-inch wide balance beam, or even a tightrope-walker traverses their 1/2-inch wide wire, always checking all the centers, the entire system-that-we-are, the system-that-one-is, as consciously as possible.

Unfortunately for very many people, perhaps even some here, deviations (falling) can occur at any time, but because they have not yet "hit the ground", they in their continuing imagination still believe they "on their way".

One sign that falling is already occurring, is believing the metaphors they "admire" (and think they are studying), are reality. The metaphors - regarding what man is, where he lives both externally and internally, what his capacities and potentials are, all that - substitute for most people AS acceptable reality. That is, that they know the stories, the metaphors, is an acceptable substitute for being the reality they point to.

This is never easy to accomplish, but oh so easy to believe the stories as fact, even if "not yet verified".

One surprising thing that relative awakening reveals, or results in, is the quickening of the "letting-go" of metaphors, stories about themselves, in favor of, as it were, actually ANSWERING all those questions that have apparently sustained one for so many years.

It is no longer satisfactory to merely ask "the hard questions", but to understand why they were even asked in the first place, why they attracted you to their hoped-for resolutions, and why it's taken so very long to move beyond the beliefs.

In other words - though saying this will raise hackles in some - asking the questions, ruminating over the questions, speculating about the questions, is a poor substitute for moving past their inbred need to do so. That is, reaching levels of certainty (regarding those questions/metaphors) about all things previously considered, "the really big questions".