The Cosmic Web

Vincenzo recently asked me how to help grow the Italian community. Although this type of question has come up throughout all communities from the beginning of this school, for whatever reason, it struck me differently this time.

There is a cosmic web that invisibly links us to our fellow practitioners. We perceive it only when awake and remain ignorant of it whilst asleep. Their presence is not incidental to ours; our efforts — or lack of efforts — mutually reinforce each other. Although it works mysteriously, it is also quite grounded: if I witness someone else making extra effort, or sacrificing something I know to be dear to them, those efforts put more pressure on me to work seriously. And on the other hand, if I witness someone making excuses and giving justifications, I am tempted to do the same.

Ouspensky described this web in the following way:“A man can rise to the next step of the staircase only by putting another man in his place… this is a general principle… Putting people in one’s place is school-work, that is, the joint efforts of all the people belonging to the school. All school-work is organized with this purpose in view… to put new people in the place occupied by the people who are there at present and in this way to help them rise to other steps.”

In a comment during our Enneagram and Three Poisons sessions, Eva spoke of experiencing a special state in which “there was no sense of ‘I’ to judge things as good or bad…” It is exactly this illusory sense of ‘I’ that values one’s own development so much more than the development of others. Imagine not having a particular interest in ‘my own development’ over the development of anyone else; of being as interested in the progress of others as in one’s own.

Certainly, such selflessness is the best foundation for external consideration, and the more we are able to experience it, the more our communities will grow — both through our being more helpful to others, and through the thick cosmic web we form.