G.I. Gurdjieff - Struggle is Life

clip from    • C.S. Nott - Teachings of Gurdjieff 3/8  

0:00 paying the dept of existence
0:24 if you help your neighbor, you will be helped
0:34 nature must pay the dept, it is a law
0:43 all life is mathematical
1:00 looking back we remember the difficult times
1:25 bad thoughts and feelings keep out life

At dinner one day, Gurdjieff again spoke about paying, about the different ways of paying, about paying the debt incurred by one’s arising—the debt to nature. He said, ‘You pay me to be allowed to work here. But by working here you will know and feel how nine-tenths of the world lives. By working physically in the right way you can gain very much in understanding.

If you help your neighbour, you, in turn, will be helped; perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in a year, perhaps in a hundred years. But you will be helped. Nature must pay the debt; it is a law. If we like what we do when working we are at once rewarded by the satisfaction received. If we do not like it, and make effort, the reward must come, but later.

It is a mathematical law, and all life is mathematical. The present is a result of the past, and the future will be the result of the present. Everything with life has to struggle; in looking back over the past we usually remember the difficult times, times of struggle; but struggle is life.’

Someone asked why we are born, and why we die. He said, ‘You wish to know? Really to know you must suffer. You must learn to suffer not as you do now, but consciously. At present you cannot suffer one franc, and to understand a little you must suffer a million francs.’

To another, who asked about negative emotions, he replied, ‘Every bad thought and feeling reacts on you, on others, and on me, and bad thoughts and feelings keep out life.’

source: C.S. Nott - Teachings of Gurdjieff