The Current of Consciousness Currency

The Current of Consciousness Currency

A foundational cornerstone of a student’s progress in the Fourth Way – or for that matter, progress toward any serious endeavor – is related to one’s attitude toward payment. Typically, when people hear about payment as a principle, they are likely to think of money as the primary form of payment. By that logic, if money were the main currency, you might expect the demographics of a Fourth Way School to be skewed toward wealthy individuals who have the means to make monetary efforts. But the necessary and more difficult payments directly correspond to valuation for inner development and higher states which cannot be bought or be reached and sustained without an internal corresponding, intentional effort. Payment in the Fourth Way is the intentional expenditure of energy in the service of waking up.

I can make these intentional efforts – psychological payments – by relinquishing my imaginary picture and false personality, by working with the non-expression of negative emotions, by struggling against identification and imagination, and resisting the many ‘I’s that regret the past and worry about the future. These ‘I’s come from the lower self and pull me relentlessly like a rip current away from the shores of presence.

If you delay payment, what is present now will disappear. — Rumi

Giving up unnecessary suffering, accepting the inevitable necessary suffering that is unavoidable as a part of our human experience, and approaching voluntary suffering with the aim of keeping me more awake are forms of payment. When my habits and mechanicality are observed and approached with self-remembering, these experiences can be transformed into consciousness as the price for presence. If my valuation for presence and higher states is insufficient, then I will not be able to swim against the strong undertow of sleep.

After observing myself for many years, you might be surprised to learn that I can see myself in moments where the machine enjoys negativity, identification, imagination, and many other obstacles that keep me asleep. I justify expressing negativity by being “right.” I wallow in my identifications like a victim and look for someone else to blame. The lower self goes into self-pity when experiencing loss rather than using it as a reminder of the temporary nature of existence and trying to live with presence as fully as I can.

We are not here to avoid payment; we are here to use payment for presence. — The Teacher

Payment is seeing my nothingness in relationship to my place in the universe. It is being willing to be a beginner over and over again in each new moment and is infinitely rewarding. These payments are courageous efforts to remain present and observe myself without judgment. The promise and payment of seeing oneself, removing what is false and being left with a feeling of nothingness accounts for why the Fourth Way System will never be popular.

Transforming this nothingness by serving others and serving the School ensures the continuation of the Work for those who come after me. It is swimming against the current of the lower self and offering a life preserver to another friend and fellow inner traveler as we do here with our posts.

The process of transformation has brought the realization that payment is a privilege. — The Teacher

Join the discussion

Undertow, Winslow Homer (1886), The Clark Museum