I think there is something that I’ve missed, and I discovered that several years ago when I was engaged with a text from the East and found that the monks were advised to work more. And little by little I believe I understand something about what is this “more.” More comes from the same root as magus or magic. So more is magic. Gurdjieff himself pointed out that every traditional teaching that’s been brought to this planet gets distorted in the very first generation after the death of the founder. And he says in Beelzebub that this is because of the impatience of the teacher’s followers who want at once to collect together everything that the teacher left behind without separating out what is essential and important from what is details. And the fact that Gurdjieff, or Beelzebub, pointed this out, I think does not mean that his teaching is any exception. Although he does say that this did not happen with the teaching of Ashiata Shiemash.

So the way I look at it, the first step in responsibility is separation. That means separation of the essential from the details; of my energies from the forms they take; of the essence from the personality. And then to be able to let the forms go, to let the details go, forget them, let them pass out of mind. And for this process to go on without my getting stuck in the forms, in the details, identified, a certain quality is needed which I call non-directive skill. It is only by developing this quality, which is the accumulated experience in the body and in the feelings of sincere searching for oneself, that we shall advance towards real individuality, and not go round and round in a vicious circle, imagining all the time that we are making progress towards the goal. A non-directive skill means that here, as in every other work, there are exercises and techniques and rules which have to be learned from others with more experience, as well as from Gurdjieff’s books, and of course from our own mistakes. But all of these are to be regarded as examples, and as no more than a scaffolding for understanding of myself in similar conditions and situations to those for which they were given. None of the techniques and exercises and rules are fixed or final. Their use depends on non-directive skill, that is, on an almost intuitive understanding of my present state and of what seems to me to be a direction of the movement towards awakening.

John Pentland from a talk titled Cave Junction.
Here is an audio of the talk.

Thank you James.