There is a lot of pretend its Gurdjieff fraud out there in internet land, and also misunderstanding. Farther down on this wall is a video of a fine, admirable Asian fellow doing some spiritually inflected dance/acrobatics to music and the poster mistakenly calls it the Gurdjieff movements. However the Movements are a specific thing. Its true that the performer in the video shows splendid mindfulness--and he has that in common with Gurdjieff. But its not the Movements. Worse, there are other people, like a certain outfit in Greece,pretending to teach the Movements. They are not authorized, not qualified, and they are likely largely incorrect in their expensive Movements course. Its clearly cultish and money oriented. Meanwhile the enneagram is being widely misused, and misinterpreted, by Helen Palmer and friends, based on balderdash; and Robert Burtons fellowship of friends a money obsessed cult of superficial quasi-Gurdjieffian activities, continues to take people in and misdirect them. Jacob Needleman offered these simple rules for distinguishing: A cult is easy to get into, hard to get out of; it wants to control your life, and it wants your money. A real esoteric school is hard to find, hard to get into, and you can leave whenever you want, and it doesnt want significant money--usually about the same as church tithings, and it probably offers a sliding scale. Or it may ask for no money at all. It does not tell you who to marry, does not control your personal life. I would add that a real school has solid, unbroken lineage, its not something made up by somebody at some point like ten years ago.
Posted on: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 18:16:23 +0000