The Gurdjieff Society of Florida
To offer a place of contact for those seeking authentic Group Work
The Society
The Gurdjieff Society of Florida has had a fifty year direct connection with the original pupils of Gurdjieff, thus keeping alive a lineage to his direct teaching. This teaching, known to the followers of Gurdjieff as "The Work" and to the world as the "Fourth Way", is now established in most of the major cities of the world.
The lineage of our Society goes back to G.I. Gurdjieff through Madame's de Saltzmann and de Hartmann
and directly to us from the late Jerry Brewster, the founder of these groups here in South Florida since 1994. We are also affiliated with the Gurdjieff Foundation in New York and other centers worldwide that were founded by the pupils of G. I. Gurdjieff.
" I am not here today to entertain you. I am here to share with you my experiences with what I believe is the most profound and meaningful teaching in the World today, the teaching of G. I. Gurdjieff ..."
Jerry Brewster, Morikami Museum, FL. 1994
From Jerry Brewster's notes about our work together...
Today reminds me of one of the work periods we had in New York. There was a pretty young woman who shared, and at the first lunch she said, “The food is so good! I'm so happy I came - this is like a cruise!” I told her, this is not a cruise ship it's really an ark, and that she was in for a big surprise, and as the week went on she might have to do some rowing!
This is a sacred weekend - it comes from another level of vibration. We were meant to be here together. We share something so valuable, and yet we take it for granted at times. We share this ‘call’ that each of us heard - that Gurdjieff’s Work awoke in us. We all have problems - the world will always throw things in the way of our being together. There's a necessary element of resistance, the involutionary octave. What is the theme of this weekend? Why are we here? We're here because we all contain within us a certain vibration that's holy, that's not of this world. And this has been an active search for me - a fighting search, to search inside again and again - asking myself, “Are there higher vibrations in me, is there a deposit of astral matter that could be further transformed or crystallized into something even higher - something that could survive the death of my physical body?”
In a way, any growth of our inner life depends upon this group, on us, because we are a group. Our work together can produce a moment in which I'm more joyous because I'm more essential, more free of the ‘script’ that pulls me through my life. So I'm just sharing with you - not philosophizing. I'm sharing with you some of the impressions that I've come to about the importance of working together. I have begun hearing the clock of mortality tick ever louder. You need to know it's serious - that we're here to learn how to work on ourselves, to obtain something that ordinary life will not give us. Only the struggle with my attention, gives me the possibility to touch a vibration that not only energizes me but allows the accumulation of that ‘something.’
Michel de Salzman, from "On Retreat with Michel de Salzmann", by Fran Shaw
You have a wish in you, but you are not aware of it. You have an energy in you, and when you are in relation with it, this axis of attention can stay longer, stay by itself even, because it is fed by every impression.
When this centeredness is there, you can receive the whole world. There is a calm, a quietness. A Look upon me, not from my ordinary self, but from that which sees objectively as it is.
We are never fooled; something always knows what we do.