08 Feb In life there are no friends, nor enemies, only masters. (Mario Alonso Puig)
It is very usual that when things do not happen as we would have wished them to, we tend to give ourselves away, to get frustrated and, above all, to look for the guilty party or a solution beyond ourselves.
Life is not interested in our personal well-being but rather that we learn its lessons. So, little by little, we can show our true potential and we recognize the essence behind appearances. The phrase, “In life there are no friends, nor enemies, only masters”, invites us to think that, sometimes, those people we like least are the ones that have most to teach us about ourselves. They enable us to recognize, quite often, irritability, impatience and the lack of compassion that still nestles within us.
Here’s a story that can enlighten us about what I’ve just mentioned:
Close to Paris there was a spiritual community that had been founded by Gurdieff. This man had learned a number of rhythms and dances in diverse monasteries in the desert, which together with another kind of teaching helped people to develop their spirituality. In that community lived an old man that nobody could stand. Known to be unsociable and unfriendly, and despite living among them, the man was not accepted as one of them.
One day, this man decided that this place wasn’t his home and he left. When Gurdieff heard about this, he went off to look for him until, finally, he found him and tried to convince him to return, to which the man in question roundly refused. Finally, Gurdieff managed to convince him after promising that he would pay him if he went back to live in the community.
When the people of that place found out that they not only had to pay Gurdieff to live in that community but now also had to pay so that this despicable individual lived there, they rebelled against that decision. On hearing how his followers had reacted, Gurdieff called them all to a hall and said to them: “You haven’t understood anything. Having a man like this in our community is the greatest gift that I could have given you. This is because it is the best way for you to learn to develop a compassionate spirit, something that none of you here present have demonstrated to have. Without this spirit, my instructions are worthless to you and, that’s why you have to pay me and I have to pay him.”
Reinventing Yourself
Mario Alonso Puig
