Gurdjieff, A Beginner's Guide: How Changing The Way We React To Misplacing Our Keys Can Transform Our Lives - Softcover

Friedman, Gil

Softcover

ISBN 10: 091303827X ISBN 13: 9780913038277

Publisher: Gil Friedman, 2003

Synopsis

2011 Update

Are you ready for self-transformation?Many spiritual teachers promise transformation, but Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff delivers. Gurdjieff (1872-1949) was born in Alexandropol on the border of Russia and Turkey. Gurdjieff's teachings contain many concepts that, taken together are referred to as the Work. The idea behind the Work is that our first birth is our physical body, which is all we need to get through life. But we are capable of developing into something higher, just as an acorn can stay an acorn and die or develop into an Oak Tree, we can develop into something higher. Gurdjieff offers a radically original version of man and his potential for self-development. "Gurdjieff, A Beginner's Guide: How Changing the Way We React To Misplacing Our Keys Can Transform Our Lives" is a beginning guide to the teachings of Gurdjieff. Practical and eminently readable, it leads the reader through some of the main concepts necessary for self-transformation.

About this title

About the Author

Friedman was born in a log cabin in the South, the South Bronx, He has always kept his New York accent. He attended P.S. 95, a public grammar school, and DeWitt Clinton High School, an all boys public high school. He started the University of Michigan at 17 but was unprepared socially. This has been his modus operandi throughout life. He then spent six months in active duty and five and half years in the reserve. After active service, he attended UCLA studying for a PhD in Clinical Psychology, but after two and a half years, he flunked out. He worked as a research psychologist in the defense industry for eighteen months, and then not knowing what to do, he applied to law school since there were no requirements other than having a B.A. On a lark, he applied to Harvard Law School, and much to his amazement, was accepted. At Harvard, he was one of the students there who made the top half of the class possible. After graduation, he settled in San Francisco where he obtained a job in a small firm in San Carlos, about 25 miles south of the city. While there he created, The Goldwater Calendar: Time for a Change??? about Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate in the 1964 presidential election. After six months at the San Carlos firm, he was fired, one of the happiest days of his life. He next worked as a lawyer in a mixed neighborhood in San Francisco which he enjoyed, but had the thought he wanted to be a university teacher. While teaching Business Law at the University of Connecticut, he wrote his unpublished book about auto insurance entitled Are You Being Taken For a Ride? A chapter of the book entitled 'Why Auto Insurance Rates Keep Going Up' was published in the September 1969 issue of The Atlantic. After one year at Uconn, he came back to San Francisco to the hippie revolution. As a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Alameda County, he reached the pinnacle of his writing career having five articles published in The New Republic in the space of seven months. After eighteen months at Legal Aid, he was asked to leave because he wasn't filing any big issue cases. He had a few thousand in the bank and wondered if he could go a few months without a job. The legal aid job was the last job Friedman ever had with the exception of teaching Family Law at Warwick University in Coventry, England for eighteen months, which was more of a vacation than a job, but the vacation abruptly ended when he received an advance to write a book on English divorce laws

Review

The clearest and most useful book on the basics: This book presents an excellent and comprehensive overview of Gurdjieff's "the work" with wonderfully clear examples and explanations of its practical applications.

Best book about The Work: Until I found your book, the literature (Commentaries, etc.) about the Work was quite immense and confusing. Now I am able to do the practices and find my life and my self changing at long, long last.

Friedman’s book has translated Gurdjieff into ordinary understandable English. I would highly recommend this book as a place to start.

I have more than 50 books on Gurdjieff’s and Ouspensky’s Work on my shelves, but this is no doubt the most practical one for beginners.

I want to express my appreciation for for your Beginner's Guide to Guerdjieff's philosophy. Before reading your book, I have read several books on Guerdjieff, and at times, got lost in the complexity of what I was reading, and left wondering. It is not until I read your book, that Gurdjieff's philosophy emerged to the light, and resonated deeply within me.

Edition details

• Publisher: Gil Friedman
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 091303827X
• ISBN 13: 9780913038277
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 196