Darkness can be understood to represent emptiness, the complete overcoming of ignorance: the false perception of reality, the illusion of dualism, of anything existing separately. Emptiness, the womb of enlightenment, can be understood symbolically as darkness ... Emptiness is not nothing. Emptiness refers to the radical insight that there is no individually existing, independently arising, separate self. All that is, is in constant flux, rising and falling in relationship to and with something else. Emptiness is the black of starless midnight, imminence, that comes before the pre-dawn of enlightenment, the "clear light", a state of translucence or transparency that is beyond dark and light. This is a radiant black. This is wisdom.
It is a necessary part of this Work that everyone must eventually pass, to see in ourselves by sincere observation, how we cling to our negative emotions with one hand and try to free ourselves with the other. The Work inevitably leads everyone to the same places and the same experiences. We must reach the point of discerning our own helplessness, of realizing our own mechanicalness. And this, if it is not a negative experience, will bring us into a state of self-remembering. Through seeing our helplessness we attract help. For realizing our own helplessness puts us into the Third State of Consciousness where help can reach us.
~ Maurice Nicoll in PSYCHOLOGICAL COMMENTARIES ON THE TEACHING OF GURDJIEFF AND OUSPENSKY, VOL. 1
Faith is a continual inner effort, a continual altering of the mind, of the habitual ways of thought, of the habitual ways of taking everything, of habitual reactions.
