Recently an un-schooled spouse found this blog. Searching for reasons why her husband’s mysterious  “tai chi” class required ever-growing time, attention and secrecy,  she contacted me for help. At one point, she confessed to feeling guilty — as though she were “trying to take something he loved away from him.”

This piece of propaganda should sound familiar; for if you ever asked for ongoing “help” with an unschooled spouse one of the pat offers include this: s/he is jealous and trying to take this thing you love away from you. While in “school” I bought into this; back then I would have thought if only this spouse could understand how lucky she is; her husband is “working on himself”, and she will benefit as a recipient of gifts offered by “the invisible world”. He is becoming a man with finer vibrations.

One time when I asked for “help” with my husband a teacher named Carol said something to the effect of, “He has no idea how much love has come his way.” Even then, when awash in “school” programming, it struck me as strange. Now when I remember that comment, I marvel at “school’s” version of “love” — the kind of “love” that dismissed his thoughts, emotions, worries and experiences while still taking his money. Is that love? Silly me, I might call that extortion. We all felt “school’s” “love” and, by default, our spouses got hammered by it, too.

Like the irony presented by “school”-style “love”, the institution presents as though making its “students” into “finer” people, i.e. better husbands and wives (everyone remembers being externally considerate, right?). In reality “school” shapes its minions into school-promoting auto-matrons. As “students” “evolve”, the “school” programming  takes root infecting and spreading. Phrases like, “it’s private”, “just for you”, “makes you happy”, “think of this like therapy”, “no ones’ business” seep in along with the attitude fueling those phrases — i.e. “school” as superior and taking precedence over our inconsequential lives; a rightly-ordered life, “school” preaches, puts “school” and its mysterious AIM before everything else. “Students” soak this in and strive to “rightly order” their lives.

These attitudes of “school” first and everything else as secondary spreads through the home like an emotional virus. I still see the effects in my family —  even after being out roughly 18 months. My husband and I sometimes talk about some of the things I parroted at him while “evolving” “school”-style. When he found OSG and $350 written in my checkbook ledger, and challenged me on it,  apparently I responded by asking him “What were you thinking?” — how could he possibly ask where our money was going. Oh, by the way, I was unemployed at the time.

Interestingly, I have no memory of saying this. But I recognize this turn around as an oft-used “school” strategy — turn the tables and throw the question back at the the questioner; so I don’t doubt that I did, indeed, ask him what he was thinking. I can look back at my “classroom” experience and recall many instances when “teachers” employed this strategy. I now see that the longer “students” are saturated with “school” philosophy, the more likely they are to mechanically spout back the pat answers and deflective strategies.

Of course, unschooled spouses know when their “schooled” husbands and wives are spouting off programmed responses. The woman who contacted me said that a posture, a facial expression, a certain tone in her husband’s voice, or phrases used simply did not ring true to the man. And yet – even though she could feel the “school” machinations behind the presentation – its programming still got under her skin. She felt guilty for asking and wishing that he weren’t attending this mysterious thing.  She felt guilty for seeing the damage caused by it and asking, emphatically, that he look at it more closely. We “students” had a tendency to kill the messenger by responding as though she or he were trespassing.

The message of unschooled spouse as intruder exasperates the guilt; the guilt causes a soul to start questioning his or her perceptions. My husband felt a tremendous amount of guilt. Even he sometimes questioned whether it really was none of his business. Of course, now that I’m no longer a frog in the “school” pot o’ water heating slowly to a boil, I can see how ludicrous this is: an institution that demands secrecy, charges at least $350 a month, increases its demands over time, therefore impacting a family in any number of negative ways, claims to be “none of the family’s business”. In my case, when “school” informed me that my monthly expenditure was none of my husband’s business, well, even in my “school” stupor, on some level, I know it was ridiculous, but he still felt guilty.

The sinister truth is that “school” takes advantage of both the sincere seekers who join and those who love these seekers; those who — in good faith — wish to support him or her. Those people see, feel and hear the damage  without experiencing the magical seduction.  When unschooled spouses express legitimate worry, loneliness, mistrust and anger, “school” waves its evolved hand, shooing them away as though they were annoying flies; it dismisses the spouse, the kids, the family as just life things. It commands, “YOUR AIM IS YOUR GOD”.

Over time “school’s” AIM via “third line of work” — i.e. recruiting newbies and more income for Sharon — becomes a community effort,  and “school” tells its “students” that these efforts are necessary for their evolution. Nothing should get in the way of AIM, i.e. “God”, which translates into “school” as God; after all, our highly evolved efforts of funding Sharon’s retirement should not be overshadowed by our little families.

In an effort to end on a more hopeful note, I want to tell you, dear readers, that “school” alumni  from the Alex Horn/Sharon Gans Theater of All Possibilities have contacted me recently. I’ve been learning quite a bit about the evolved institution’s rotting roots, which will be explored in future posts. One of those kindred spirits sent me a chapter from a book called “Tales for the Unborn Son of My Unborn Child – Berkeley in the Sixties“, written by Thomas Farber. The chapter describes Farber’s Alex Horn encounters and the following two paragraphs describe Farber’s post-cult conclusions, which are relevant and healing for current escapees and our unschooled spouses:

“In this period of transition I heard Alex’s voice over and over again: ‘You will wish you had never heard of this ‘Work’.’ And then I passed out of his reach, I rejoined the rhythms and melodies of the larger flow and hurried to have my share of the vanities, foibles, whims, conceits, caprices, hopes, dreams, illusions and insistent mortality of those who could live no other way.”

“No, nothing was for free. Yes, I would pay. But I would stay with the ground-lings, spared perhaps, perhaps not, from that overriding ambition which made such redoubtable prisoners of those who tried the Work. With a confidence born of ignorance I chose to make my own way. And, for so many reasons, some very good and some quite bad, I faced the old religious question and decided that we all, willy-nilly, have a soul, no matter what we try to do to it, and that there are many paths to the spirit immanent in us. I had begun to feel that it was the process of living that alone redeemed us.”

I love this conclusion and couldn’t agree with it more given my process of being seduced into and then bumbling out of “school”. I have come to believe that those of us who have “rejoined the rhythms and melodies of the larger flow” and chosen to make our own ways, will all, given time, pass out of “school’s” reach. If your relationship survived its “school” days, toast that as a testament to its strength and know that your love is likely to survive any number of challenges. Your souls are alive and kicking, no one can take them away, and the process of your lives weaving together into a “school”-free tapestry can redeem the past.

After 18 “school”-free months, I sometimes notice that the experience no longer outlines my days. I don’t obsessively check this blog. I don’t feel a driving need to write posts. I don’t wonder what is happening in the historic Faulkner Mills Building, in Billerica, on Tuesday and Thursday nights. In those moments, I am truly free. In other moments anger rears up. Nothing infuriates me more than recalling Robert’s claim of “school” as “THE SOURCE”.

When students disappeared he strongly inferred – but did not out right say – that those who disappeared from our ranks deeply regretted leaving “THE SOURCE”. We could imagine these infidels crawling back, begging his forgiveness and re-admittance; with their lives disintegrating into chaos, the traitors had realized (too late) the impossibility of “evolution” once “cut off from the source.” The warning: DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU.

How arrogant. How false.

My experience proves exactly the opposite. Without “school’s” illustrious “help” I find myself in the strange position of a drama-free life: loving marriage, stable home, meaningful work, a sane schedule that includes time for reflection and creativity, regular sleep, and a newly minted self confidence. From this strong foundation, I believe  I can plant the seeds and grow the life I feel exists within me — and once believed that  “school” would help me manifest — because (of course) school was “THE SOURCE”.

Recently, two separate conversations with fellow “disgruntled former students” further disproved “school” as “source” of anything evolved. In all three of our lives, it WAS a source of was desperation, struggle, humiliation, despair, self-doubt, conflict, etc. Both conversations included musings over past “school”-sponsored miseries and toasts to the freedom from “school”-sponsored anything.

One of the “school”-sponsored downward spirals discussed included a divorce that (along with “school’s” monthly “tuition”) sapped this “student” of her finances. “The source” left her so little to support herself and her children, that towards the end of her tenure she was scraping up change for gas money and skipping meals so her kids could eat. I remembered her asking for “help” in class and wondering when “school” would provide her some real compassion and support. Instead, “teachers” eviscerated her  character, and offered trite and superficial trinkets like, “Try dressing up a little and wearing some make-up.” Or, “Maybe you should make a dating aim.”

At those moments, I would briefly awaken from my “school” stupor. My internal rebels would poke and prod at me. “What the fuck was that?” they would ask. I regret that I never allowed those rebels to ask that question out loud. But the dreamy-eyed believers in me wanted desperately to trust that “school” saw great inner strength in her; “school” was forcing her to grow into the “bigger woman”. Instead, she disappeared. Even in my hypnotized state, her absence poked at me and I wondered what happened to her. My rebels knew she was better off without the “help”.

After leaving “school”, I connected with her and we are now becoming good friends. I visited her recently in her home (like a normal person) when her ex-husband arrived with the kids. Struck by how unlikely they seemed as a couple, I asked her about it. She said that when they started dating, she was heeding to school ideas like, “we don’t know ourselves” and “any man will do”. She was working on letting go of judgement and preconceived notions. When they got pregnant, her attitude was with aim and the support of “School”, I can make this work, I can bring the magic of these ideas to his life, too. They married — and as she ultimately reported — it was the marriage she never wanted.  He was a type she never would have been with naturally had she followed her own instincts, and many of her deepest fears became an irreparable part of her life.  Almost as soon as the trouble began did the “support” of “school” fall away and its demands increased.  A recipe for disaster.

My “school”-sponsored job search paralleled her marriage experience – leading me to the job I never wanted: in an effort to trust that I “didn’t know myself” and heed the idea that “as long is one is working, any job will do”, I found myself squandering my time, energy and talent on promoting software products that often didn’t exist. I was turning into a proliferat-or of software falsehood, a vaporware peddler. As I watched my vocation devolve, my spirits also fell and marched me, day-by-day, into an underlying low-grade depression; my daily role in service to a paycheck, left me asking myself, and others, what happened to me? How did my life become this empty exercise in meaningless and exceedingly dull prose ? How indeed. Needless to say, my not-so-stellar job performance left me unemployed and desperate, as outlined in previous posts. And, like my colleague, my “school” experience and the “help” started veering more frequently towards an evisceration of my character – “school” started painting me as the spoiled and entitled, Jewish-American princess, hitting a tender spot, for sure.

The similarity of our separate experiences of “school”-sponsored “help” leading  to lives-never-wanted, led us to this question: could “school” be organized enough that it intentionally steers each follower into a personal worst nightmare life? For me, my dull and meaningless days were a stark contrast to the magical “school” experience making me cling more desperately to the “aim” and “purpose” it provided – even though “school” never shared the content of its “aim” with me. Is my experience simply one example of “school’s” real aim — make “students” miserable in life, so that “school” shines in comparison — ensuring devoted followers who will gladly pay the $350 a month tuition for life?

I posed this question in my second conversation. I’d never shared the “classroom” with this “former student”. With her tenure starting in New York a decade or two before mine, her classroom had been commanded by Lady Sharon and Lord Alex.  After sharing her version of “school”- sponsored misery, she proposed that this experience is – indeed – intentional, but not conscious. It is a result of (for lack of a better expression) cult culture. The “aim” of a cult is to make its participants dependent. Cults are like any other addiction — they cultivate a fear of life without “the source” and the addicts cling desperately to the detriment of everything else.

Despite my desperate clinging, I was always aware, that the longer I was in “school”, the more I lost touch with a fundamental source within me; a muse that since childhood has been sitting on my shoulder and whispering in my ear. I had been steadily losing the ability to even keep a journal – I felt, somehow, that spewing out my thoughts on to a page was wrong, self-indulgent, sinful even. Even more painful, I’d found it harder and harder to write songs, which is the artistic modality that feeds my soul and connects me to real source.

The good news is that my 18 “school”-free months have reconnected me to my songwriting muse – through this experience, I have confirmed the truth in the idiom Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder.  She has been showing up lately, whispering in my ear, outlining my dreams again, as she used to before “school”. In fact, when I began attending “classes” I was in the middle of a creative flurry, which quickly fell off, as the “school” infiltrated the space normally filled by her. I am delighted she’s back. I wasn’t sure she would ever return. Absence also makes the heart more fiercely protective; having experienced life without her, I am not willing to allow anything to silence her again.

I am also delighted to report that several of the “disgruntled ex-students” are now creating the lives that they  had hoped to find through “THE SOURCE”. Unburdened by its ridiculous and ever-growing demands and insistence on keeping everything top secret (or “private” which is “school’s” euphemism for lying), these students now find themselves with the time, energy and clarity to follow their own intentions.  The aforementioned friends are both doing quite well with interesting jobs, nice homes and unobstructed family relationships.

Leaving “THE SOURCE” lifts the curtain on real sources: last night’s crescent moon; a springtime flower’s bloom; trees reaching to the sky; the clouds drifting by; a laugh with my ragtag family; the music in my guitar and fiddle; any sincere and loving conversation; even in an organized closet for God’s sake. Source is everywhere. “School”, Robert, Sharon, this institution couldn’t be farther from a source of inspiration or connection to God. The lies destroy that chance. Even the ideas espoused and claimed there are readily available in bookstores, libraries, 12-Step groups – and, of course, nowadays all over the internet.  If one simply Googles Aim, or The Ray of Creation, or The Food Diagram, or The Work s/he will encounter myriads of WRITTEN source and discover that the work is not exclusively  an “oral teaching” – as “school” claims.

Having had bought into those lies and experiencing the contrast of life with out them, I often find myself truly awakening to source. While in “school”, I was too worried about not making my “aim”, or not confessing to keeping a journal, or not making self-observations, or quitting an $9/hour coffee shop job, when any job was supposed to do, to soak in the moment, to simply be and be awake to the beauty surrounding me.

Now unchained from those lies and the guilt and the self doubt that they elicited, I suddenly find moments in my day when I know — beyond a shadow of a doubt — that every breathe is a gift. I can eat slowly, taste my food and marvel at the planet that grows apples. I can hear my stepson laugh and see him smile and know that, in that moment, I have experienced God. And now that I hear the muse without “school” interference, my little life has the possibility to unfold into a lovely concert of dreams manifesting within and around. If you are “breaking school’s rules” to read this blog,  your life holds the same potential as long as you set yourself free from “THE SOURCE”.

Today, I came across this definition of a cult on www.meadowhaven.org. Meadowhaven is treatment center for former cult members. Each of these 8 points describe my “school” experience to a t:

Robert J. Lifton, in his seminal work on thought-reform, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, proposed the following eight characteristics of a high-control group.

1. Milieu Control – Control of communication from without and within the group environment, resulting in a significant degree of isolation from the surrounding society. Includes other techniques to restrict members’ contact with outside world and to be able to make critical, rational judgments about information: overwork, busyness, multiple lengthy meetings, etc.
2. Mystical Manipulation – The claim of divine authority or spiritual advancement that allows the leader to reinterpret events as he or she wishes, or make prophecies or pronouncements at will, all for the purpose of controlling group members.
3. Demand for Purity – The world is viewed as black and white and group members are constantly exhorted to strive for perfection. Consequently, guilt and shame are common and powerful control devices.
4. The Cult of Confession – Serious (and often not so serious) sins, as defined by the group, are to be confessed, either privately to a personal monitor or publicly to the group at large.
5. The “Sacred Science” – The doctrine of the group is considered to be the ultimate TRUTH, beyond all questioning or disputing. The leader of the group is likewise above criticism as the spokesperson for God on earth.
6. Loading the Language – The group develops a jargon in many ways unique to itself, often not understandable to outsiders. This jargon consists of numerous words and phrases which the members understand (or thinks they do), but which really act to dull one’s ability to engage in critical thinking.
7. Doctrine over Person – The personal experiences of the group members are subordinated to the “Truth” held by the group – apparently contrary experiences must be denied or re-interpreted to fit the doctrine of the group. The doctrine is always more important than the individual.
8. Dispensing of Existence – The group arrogates to itself the prerogative to decide who has the right to exist and who does not. Usually held non-literally, this means that those outside the group are unspiritual, worldly, satanic, “unconscious,” or whatever, and that they must be converted to the ideas of the group or they will be lost. If they refuse to join the group, then they must be rejected by the group members, even if they are family members. In rare cases this concept gives the group the right to terminate the outsider’s life.

For more info visit: http://www.meadowhaven.org/problem.html

This four-part series outlines how my work and money struggles made me vulnerable to “school”. It illustrates how “school” played my vulnerabilities and celebrates the irony of how leaving school rectified this struggle – I have more work than I can take on right now. 

I invite you to share your post-school successes, either via comments, or by writing your own post-school-success story. Someone once told me that, “The best revenge is to live well.”  It’s true — school-less life is good!

Part 1: How I came to believe – the set up

The Set Up

Recently I realized that my most life-altering and informative moments have come from mistakes; which begs the question — were they mistakes, or simply life experiences that I needed to have? Were they simply part of the path I was destined to walk? Had I posed this question to my father during his last two years of life, he would have responded, “People do things when they are ready.” This had become his mantra as he approached his departure. After dedicating decades to intellect and academia his incurable cancer had fostered this philosophy which connected head to heart.

During his fading years, I had my own brand of academia, “school”, and I was steeped in the “school” propaganda that one must do everything NOW. In trying to live this creed, my long buried, but constant feelings of inadequacy, and paralyzing anxiety bubbled up to the forefront of my psyche. On top of that, witnessing the death of a thousand cuts drove home the reality of human impermanence. Each day, the disease stole another piece of my dad’s physical ability — his intellect, however, stayed sharp, only bowing to morphine at the end (which drove this consummate academic crazy). After his death, I said to a hospice grief counselor, “We don’t get to finish things.” To which she responded, “No, we don’t.”

I started seeing my life as a bumbling and bouncing from job to job and relationship to relationship. “How”, I asked myself and God, “had I gotten so lost and wasted so many years?” The George Bernard Shaw quote, “Youth is wasted on the young” pummeled my  psyche. I wondered, “When will I be ‘ready’? Why do some people get to be ‘ready’ early in life and some people bumble and bounce along as though living in a pinball machine? Why have I been delegated to bumbler-hood?” Even as my father bestowed this philosophy as a final gift, I believed that this allusive state of “ready” did not apply to me.

When I bumbled into “school” in 2006, I had just graduated from a publishing and communications program  — an attempt to change my career path.  I was confused about what to do next. Vocational counseling would have been a logical next step; instead I found “school” (or it found me).  It felt like a God send. Three years later, I had a job that paid decently, a fiancee,  “school” guidance and a very ill father — so I was grateful for “school”. Overall, my life had improved considerably. However, my relationship to work and money continued to be a glaring area of weakness and vulnerability. I found the boredom and tedium of the job — copy writer for a software company — nearly intolerable.

“School’s” work and money prescription reads as this: any job will do. This doctrine mirrors its marriage doctrine of any man, or woman, will do. It also mirrored my long held, but unconscious, beliefs that labeled my longing to have, or create, meaningful work as selfish, precious and immature. My inner judges said that meaningful work was for other people; if necessary, I should work in a coal mine and school reinforced those voices.

In looking back, I often feel that God reached into my psyche, scooped out this dysfunctional belief, and placed it center stage manifesting it as a play called “School”, nodding to Shakespeare, the world a stage. Of course my new millennium theater was more sit-com than Shakespearean; even so it called on my ears to listen and my eyes to recognize that something wanted me to wake up. As with so many “school” ironies — despite its claims to be all about awakening — the institution did everything it could to keep me and my colleagues hypnotized. But my ever-present ache fought this, collaborating with God, needling me from the inside, interfering with my ability to falsely present myself as a woman I was not. My tolerance for “any job” diminished with every commute and cubicle-imprisoned day.

Had I some faith in myself, I would have heeded my discontent and made changes accordingly. Instead the dark judges in my psyche condemned the inner dreamers and seekers; they mercilessly dismissed and disregarded those urges. In desperation, I turned to “school” for “help”. “School” doctrine corroborated the judges; according to it, I didn’t know who I was anyway; the human condition is thus and all humans need “help”from “higher beings”. I bought it spending roughly $20,000 over five years, at $350 a month, to have “higher beings” point me away from my inner compass. However, the inner rebels kept whispering “Given the 40-plus years I’ve tripped around the planet, in this body, living this life, I do know something about myself.”

At certain moments their whispers broke through my “school” stupor – like when Robert shamed students in class. At these moments, the inner rebels furrowed their brows and looked at him in puzzlement – why the public shaming, they pressed. What was his intention? Most times, though,  I lost their voices in the cacophony of “school” doctrine and judgement.

School targets those who doubt themselves as such. Generally speaking, “school” affirms the hopes and dreams of its newest ( i.e. “younger”) students. The affirmation phase lasts roughly two years, during which “school” positions itself to simultaneously tease out insecurities. At certain opportune moments, “school” seizes on those insecurities and assigns specific roles to students, dismissing anything that falls beyond the purview of these assigned roles. It feeds on insecurities, growing a childlike dependency in its students, crafting lost souls into “school” cogs that keep the wheel spinning.

Its cog-crafting technique includes consistent reminders that any success we experience is due “school”, mostly achieved via “school”-sponsored “aim”. Those of us who buy into this give “school” license to increasingly hold us to its governing principles — principles that benefit “school” because they are really just an increase in “school”-related demands — i.e. the three lines of work — deemed essential to each student’s evolution. If these principles, i.e. demands, damage the students personally — say causing tension in a marriage, or a job —  it is always due to flaws within those students; for “school” established its demands to feed its “higher calling”, the institution’s secret “aim”; thus these demands could never be damaging.

School doobies come to believe that if school’s aim takes top priority, then our lives are rightly ordered and everything else should be informed by that.  Other elements should fall nicely into place — family, work, friends, health, wealth, personal passions and callings. However, “school” kept its secret and sacred “aim” a mystery to the plebes, even as we worked for and towards it. If anyone asked, “What is the aim of the school?” our “teachers” would infer that the inquiring student was not ready for that knowledge.  Increasingly, students would ask for “help”, confessing that he or she was failing in the struggle to meet both “school” and life demands; Increasingly, opening him/her self up to more criticism and manipulation.

Imagine buying into this doctrine, as I did, only to discover after leaving that “school’s higher calling” is to ensure that its invisible Queen, Sharon Gans, could outfit her Park Plaza condo with high-end red bathtubs and such and retire in luxury. Queen Gans appeared in Boston only twice during my five-year tenure; both experiences were surreal and revealed her as creepy, crazy and mean. After leaving I learned that this exulted leader was a two-bit actress, who had been in one movie and married the cult’s former leader, a charming sociopath named Alex Horn.

But, I needed to believe that “school demands” were  feeding the betterment of society — however they made me squirm (see recruitment post, i.e. third line of work); that we “schoolmates” were foot soldiers in God’s army, spreading the  word far and wide. For initially these governing “school principles” had worked for me and my life had improved; that was the hook. The fear of being “school-less” set in and became the basis of my choices, feeding a sense that without “school” I would lose everything, setting me up nicely to ask for “help” from my wiser “teachers”; certainly those who knew me better than I knew myself would not lead me astray when it came to the important area of work and money. I learned well not to trust or follow my inner compass. But it never stopped pointing me away from “school”.

Part 2: ANY JOB won’t do – how it stopped working

Cubicle Life

While in “school”, I conducted three job searches over five-years. With “help” from my sustainer, and my “teachers”, I successfully landed work and increased my income the first two times.  I progressed from temporary worker, to editorial assistant to marketing copy writer and my salary increased accordingly.

As with most “school-sponsored”, aim-driven adventures, those quests required frantic, frenetic and constant efforts to find ANY JOB. I made cold calls, walked my resume into offices, handed fliers to McMansion owners offering myself as a house cleaner ( side note – many female “students” end up cleaning houses at one point or another), while submitting as many resumes and cover letters as possible.

These experiences forced me to grow. I dreaded stopping into offices and the door-to-door soliciting. However, I would walk in fearful, talk to whomever I found sitting there, discover that most people were either indifferent, or friendly, and walk out leaving a piece of dread behind me. Once I landed an interview on the spot. Both searches contained two elements that verified the magic of school-sponsorship: Externally,  my efforts picked up a momentum and potential employers appeared to respond accordingly – calling consistently to offer interviews and job opportunities. Internally, every time I left a piece of dread behind, I changed as a woman; the world looked less frightening  and more exciting.

I still credit “school” for this transformation, for its insistence on these efforts shed light on my fear of other people transforming it into excitement when I discovered that most people were not to be feared; however, I was unaware that I was replacing one fear with another: what would my life be without “school”? What if I lost this “source” of wisdom? How could I function? For I knew that I wasn’t functioning so well before my school days.

But a big disappointment awaited me: once I’d landed work, the “ANY JOB will do” doctrine didn’t work for me. In fact, my copy writing position perfectly portrayed the job I never wanted, solidifying that I was living the life I never wanted. Even in my deepest “school”-induced stupor, I saw that my workplace and me were caricatures and that I had all the makings of a ridiculous “The Office”-like sit-com:

The artsy, liberal and creative hippie woman squanders precious days in the institutional, deadening, soul-sucking, life-draining and male-dominated software company. Every commute she stews in frustration and resentment in her lime green, peace-sign adorned, V.W. Beetle,  while battling other commuters in the race to windowless, grey-carpeted, corner cubicles. When in the cubicle, she spends her days writing vapid  press releases about non-existent products (otherwise known as vaporware) for a non-existent audience. In between she checks her email, reads Facebook posts and shops on Amazon.com. A quick stroll around the office reveals a prevalence of Facebook posting, Amazon shopping and Web surfing.

Every morning this woman would attempt to counter her contempt for this empty ritual by stating “aims” to dredge up enthusiasm.  She would force herself to join her mostly male co-workers at the lunch table — racists who spent their lunch hour yelling about Barack Obama for whom she’d canvassed votes in 2008 (By the way, after I silenced my lunch mates by telling them all about the Martin Luther King biography I was reading; after that I stopped sharing my mid-day break with them). Every afternoon she would struggle to keep her eyes open, aim long forgotten, wanting desperately to be anywhere else.

In the evening, she would drive to her cult, where she would  flall around doing “body work” with classmates and then, with her fellow “students,” file in silence in to the “classroom”. There she would sit in a circle to “participate” in a highly-orchestrated class “discussion”, which entailed “teachers” calling on students granting them permission to speak, calling on them as though running a kindergarten classroom — I have to give “school” credit for naming itself so aptly.

Most of me was too steeped in “school” indoctrination to awaken to creepiness of this scene, where adults allowed themselves to be treated like school children. But the still, small voice kept whispering “What are you doing?” She kept poking and pointing at the picture, whispering, “something’s wrong.” But, despite my ever-growing discontent, I needed to believe that “school” would show me the way. “You are just bored,” I told myself. “You’ve a decent salary. Grow up. Buck up. Collect the check. Do the work.”

I grew more miserable, restless and evermore lost.  I chalked my misery up to my flawed character. I soldiered on, ever fighting and losing battles between starry-eyed believers who thought I should keep wearing an ill-fitted suit, and the rebels who kept saying, this suit is too fucking confining; there has to be a better outfit. Between, the inner battle, and the ever-growing “school” demands, my anxiety and judgement compounded; solitude, quiet reflection and sane decision making seemed vague and unreachable concepts that didn’t apply to me. Discouraged and depleted, I tried harder. The harder I tried, the more discouraged and depleted I became. The more discouraged and depleted I became, the more I thought “I must not be trying hard enough” and the harder I tried to try harder.

Every “school” attendee runs a version this viscous circle.

Needless to say, over time, I became a shell going through the marketing motions, invisible and ineffective five days a week. Come evening, I would then go to “school”, to feed on its “wisdom”, my soul ravenous for something meaningful and purposeful. And, as dad’s days waned, I felt that mine were draining away, too. He passed away May 5th 2009, leaving me to face life’s impermanence, and question what I was doing with my remaining days.

Thank God I had “school”!

Part 3: Work and Money – ANY JOB Gives me the boot

In 2010, amidst the throws of the Great Recession, I lost the dreaded copy writer job. I was thrilled. Suddenly, the woman who longed for creative, autonomous, purposeful and meaningful work, no longer had to commute to a grey-carpeted corner cubicle to pen tedious, boring, inconsequential and unread fiction. I celebrated!

“School” soon interrupted my merriment; ruled by its Any Job Will Do doctrine and its tutelage, I frantically and desperately scrambled for any work. As unemployed ranks swelled and panicked, I soaked in the tenor of the country and “school’s” insistence on urgency; I applied for and took almost any job that would have me (drawing the line at McDonald’s). Work begets work, I was told. I took that “help” in earnest.

Given my experience, I can safely say that parasites and predators crawl out of the woodwork during an economic crisis — after all, opportunities to take advantage of desperate people abound. For example, in my urgent state, I discovered “marketing” and “customer service” positions that magically mutated into door-to-door sales jobs. (Yes folks, door-to-door sales still exists). These employers must have all attended the same How to Scam the Desperately Unemployed into Selling Your Crappy Product summer camp. Job seekers beware, should you fall into such a scheme:

1) Call a phone number provided in an ad.
2) Friendly young voice informs that this job is not “sales” but “customer service”. And, to boot, “We train you!”
3) Schedule an interview.
4) Arrive at interview to enter an office crowded with half unpacked boxes, motivational posters leaning up against walls and unemployed 20-somethings filling up folding chairs, scratching through applications, and filing in and out of a corner office.
5) Wait for at least 40 minutes after the appointed interview time, as the competition files in and out of the corner office.
7) Finally meet with interviewer (always half my age) in coveted corner office, who reveals that “customer service” really means selling vacuums, or knives (if you can believe it) door-to-door.
8) Try to convince the prepubescent interviewer to hire me, while thinking, “Are you fucking kidding me? Where’s the candid camera guy?”

In the knife-selling scene, as unknowing knife-selling wannabes scratched out applications, an over-zealous manager led the newly chosen through a motivational pep rally in the adjacent room; the accompanying games and cheers made my insides curdle like outdated milk. Yet, I stayed and fumbled my way through the interview, trying to convince Mr. twenty-something that I could dream of no better job. After the interview, my feet spurred me out the door and down the stairs, accelerating with each step from walking to trotting and – once out of the building –  sprinting to my car while fighting off the urge to scream. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job, and I wasted a lot of time following the “any job will do” doctrine.

During this dark period, I recall feeling like school was constantly monitoring me. When every cell in me screamed “No!” – like during this knife-sales interview — my fear of not “making my aim” shackled me to this ridiculous, desperate and anxiety-driven job search. For a good school doobie knows that there is no greater sin than not making your aim. I was certain that God (i.e. “school”) would punish me for even considering blowing off any employment opportunity, no matter how skanky.

My fear of “school’s” otherworldly omnipresence illustrates what I now call magical “school” thinking. The properly indoctrinated hand divine powers to the institution. When putting efforts towards “school”, or anything “school”-related (like our aims), we believed ourselves immune from damage and danger. Our lives ceased to have their own innate momentum and rhythm of ups and downs. In our minds, “school”, or lack of “school”, dictated and orchestrated all; “Without school, I would never have [the marriage, the house, the job, etc.],” we told ourselves, and each other. If we followed school doctrine, we believed our lives would unfold in concert, every wish falling into place. If we break school rules, wrath and hellfire will surely follow, our little lives descending into depravity.  Given that we believed school-related efforts to be divine directives, we felt immune to, and became blind to damage it inflicted on our psyches, our relationships, our jobs, our families, our spouses and our limited time here on earth.

When it came to my job search, had I been in my right mind,  I would have told Mr. Interviewer, “Good luck with your knife-selling scam. I’ll pass.” But my inner compass was cowed by previous experiences, when the school-sponsored and directed job search worked — at least in terms of getting of any job; whether or not the job worked for me was (of course) inconsequential. Besides that, my history of pre-school employment failures loomed large, feeding my worst fears. I imagined myself homeless, shivering and begging quarters in Harvard Square.

Those days, I existed in a strange isolation; despair, fear and fatigue brought on by secrets and “school”-sponsored “help” piled a wall between me and friends and family. I kept trying and failing to find work — why weren’t my efforts paying off, I wondered? These principles used to work. I must need to try harder. A potpourri of character-building experiences followed: I worked domestic jobs that paid low hourly rates including babysitting, elder care and housecleaning. Trader Joe’s rejected me repeatedly and in several locations. And I bumbled my way through two shifts at a coffee shop, while every cell in my body screamed “Noooooo!!!”

Magical “school” thinking was the only thing that led me to the coffee shop.  In my right mind, I would have never considered applying for this position, heeding my previous not-so illustrious waitress-ing legacy.  I would have recognized myself for the person I have always been — one who gets flustered and make silly mistakes when facing growing lines of demanding customers. I would have honored the strengths I’ve always had — listening, empathy, writing, the arts and creativity. I would not have bothered applying for jobs that required skills I’ve tried and failed to hone in the past.

I applied at the suggestion of my “wiser teacher”,  for “school doctrine”  had informed me that I didn’t know who I was, couldn’t count on my first 40-plus years of life experience. Better to acquiesce to those wiser and more evolved beings who had been “doing the work longer” and saw things about me to which I was blind. Those beings inferred that the frantic and desperate search, and willingness to work anywhere, earned a reverent “school” doobie  illusive and coveted help from the invisible world – the divine help that accelerates a job search to a fever pitch, mysteriously attracting potential, yet inappropriate, employers.

At one auspicious occasion, I blew an interview for a $10-an-hour concierge job at Mass General Hospital. In my anxiety-ridden state, I had arrived at the wrong time and then mumbled, bumbled and stumbled my way through. Again, the interviewee was probably half my age; he sent me an email o’ rejection a few hours later. I confessed this to my closest friend, Janet who responded, “What the fuck were you doing wasting your time applying for this job?”  What I was doing was heeding “school” principle; following the “help”.  I had stated a five-week aim to get work, any work. Aim is everything, I’d been told. Aim is your God! (Translate into “school” is your God). Of course I couldn’t tell her about that “help”, or the aim, because that would be “leaking” – a violation of “school” rules.

As I continued to follow “school” rules and heed instruction, my life was devolving into a series of losses, humiliations and reminders of my incompetence – the coffee shop flop being the most obvious illustration. Since, at the time, getting a job was my stated five-week aim, quitting the job was unacceptable. But quit I did; I then confessed my sin in class during our required aim reports. Often aim reports give “school” license to deliver the verbal lashings that all “school” attendees receive eventually.  My time had come; my “teacher’s” face darkened. She tersely boomed out (insert Wizard of Oz voice here), “Who are you to quit a job?” and then announced grandly, “You have a bit of a princess in you.”

As the more evolved being, this “teacher” was providing the revelation needed for me to overcome these weaknesses and evolve — otherwise known as “help”.  My face was burning with humiliation; for the princess declaration echoed my relentless inner judges who had long ago convicted me of laziness, entitlement, incompetence, and more! In my right mind, I would have told her to kiss my ass and left “school’s” hallowed halls immediately, leaving behind the impression of my middle finger sticking in the air. But in my school stupor, I simply soaked in the humiliation and fumed (and did I ever fume). Magical “school” thinking informed me that this exposed weakness was — however embarrassing — necessary to my “evolution”,  “We all go through it,” I told myself.

Later, in a private conversation, this teacher fortified her point saying to me blithely, “Maybe you will always struggle to get work.” Her prognosis filled me with dread. Already a neurotic mess, I recall thinking, “Maybe she’s right!  Maybe I will never have what it takes to hold down a job.” However, at some point after the humiliation, another “classmate” referred back to the “princess” comment as great “help” given by a “teacher” to me. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and interrupted my school-induced coma; my inner rebels knew that my school days were numbered.

Now, on looking back, I see my need to confess as ridiculous. I felt like a sinner because I quit a $9/hour coffee shop job. The truth is that — as an adult — I had made a sane decision based on my gut instincts and personal history. There was no reason to justify or confess this decision to anyone – I knew in my gut that I wasn’t going to grow into this job. I knew continuing it was going to be an empty exercise in trying to be someone I am not and that it would only rub salt into my frenzied, depressed and anxious state. I knew that it was the worst thing I could do for my emotional health, because I was trying to contort myself into a role that I could never fill and that I was marching into another employment failure, driving home my already-well-branded sense of entitled Jewish-American princess who will always struggle to find and keep work.

But you see, dear readers, what I knew was to be dismissed and swept aside; I was to bow to the voice of the “school” wizard. Therein lies the most damaging aspect of “school”. It wears away at your soul, until you become its empty, fear-driven vessel, malleable, pliable and easy to manipulate.

When I honored my instincts and said no to the job, I began to wake up to the truth: I couldn’t continue the “school”-sponsored job search. My inner compass and instincts were in direct conflict with “school principles.” I had questions about aptitude, natural proclivities and strengths, but I never asked them in class because I knew, based on witnessing and receiving five years worth of “help, that “school” would wave them away. These considerations were inconsequential. We plebes did not know our aptitudes and strengths. Still, the quiet inner voice kept whispering, “there is something wrong” and increasingly she butted up against the louder “school” voices that proliferated the message of with “help” from “school”, you can transform from lazy, entitled Jewish American princess into a “real woman”.

Between the low hourly rates I received for domestic work, the running around, the constant searching for any paycheck and the repeated rejections, my already worn down sense of worth started to wear through. My bedraggled psyche felt pulled in several wrong directions; I longed for the day when I could focus on and walk towards those things to which I felt innately drawn. I had been waiting for “school” to grant me permission; I started to know that “school’s” permission would never come. But I was festering in the fear that if I left “the help” my life would only get worse. Thankfully, at a certain point, my husband heard the quiet inner voices that I kept dismissing and he pushed me to open my ears. When I finally heeded them and decided to leave, I told myself “If my life goes to shit, at least I’ll be able to say that it did so on my bidding.”

When I did leave, I found the opposite to be true.

Work and Money Conclusion: “School”-Free Life is Good

Gratitude

Thanksgiving, 2012, kicked off the holiday season recently, and it inspired me to tell you, Dear Readers, a few things for which I am grateful:

• After I left school in August of 2011, I stopped my insane school-sponsored job search. With real help from a vocational counselor, I relaxed and clarified who I was, why I dismissed my personal strengths, and what type of work environments would be best for me.  I now work at a Harvard-affiliated facility that is tops in my chosen field. My days are meaningful and purposeful; my fear of being unemployable dropped away, along with my lifelong occupational restlessness. Today I live internally driven days, with focus and my aim. I no longer squander my days away, wishing to somewhere else, doing something else. The work I do requires that I be in the moment.

• As a second job I provide music therapy to developmentally-impaired adults. Ironically, every Thursday night, at 6:30 — when I would have been in “class” — I drive to Billerica to work with a father and son. The son wrestles with many cognitive challenges, including limited language skills; he reminds me weekly what gratitude is, how to be in the moment, and how to connect with the essence inside another. There are no classes, lectures, or orchestrated “discussions”; there are no hierarchies, unreasonable demands, or proliferated deceptions. There are no surprise projects, or parties, thrown in out of the blue to sweep aside my insignificant, inconsequential life. Simply the presence of these two souls — loving father and son — our respect for each other and our mutual love of, and connection through, music has taught me more in the last year about higher vibrations, gratitude and freedom than anything taught by “school”.

• That said, I am grateful to “school” for what I did learn there. I would never have encountered the ideas Gurdjieff unearthed without it — granted, I had to leave “school” to learn that Gurdjieff existed. I probably wouldn’t have read Hans Christian Anderson and Grimm’s fairy tales, either, or a slew of other classics: Emerson, Tolstoy, Twain, etc. But the most enduring and life-altering lesson came from “school” pushing me into a corner and forcing me to ask myself this question — should I continue living the school way, or do I follow my internal compass? Only then did I comprehend the lesson we all learned from The Wizard of Oz —  the answers I had been seeking externally lived within me all along. “School” is simply a group of men and women hiding behind a curtain and presenting a fallacy as truth. When I stopped seeing those men and women as superior and enlightened and instead raised the curtain on a group of fallible humans, caught in a web of deception — at that moment — I walked into that illusive state of “ready”.

Over the past year, my husband and I have been joking that “school’s” real aim is to make life suck enough for its students that they wake up and say, “Wow, this is really fucked. If I’m going to ruin my life, I’d rather do so on my own terms, thanks.” We often hypothesize that Robert secretly cheers on the heretics, congratulating us for graduating, while in the hallowed halls he condemns us as “disgruntled ex-students.”

As one of the “disgruntled ex-students,” I have come to see the “school” experience as a necessary detour on my meandering yellow brick road. That path led me in, through, and out of the life I never wanted. It clarified the life I dreamed of, imagined and ached for. It was exactly what I needed to learn how to follow my inner compass to my yellow-brick road, as a woman who has become “ready” to live the life I am meant to live, and to be the woman I am meant to be.

My father has been gone four years now; today, given the experience of losing him, and having had joined and left a cult,  I finally get his parting gift — “People do things when they are ready.”

Welcome to the Holiday Season 2012, Ex-Schoolmates:

We heretics all know if we were still in “school” the weekend after Thanksgiving would have been spent at the Billerica space: building, planning, thinking, scheming free Christmas trees, compiling electrical tape, untangling Christmas lights, planning menus, looking for cardboard, deciding when to call in sick to work and coming up with clever insincerity(s) (i.e. lies) to justify all of the time away from home and family. We would have been gearing up to allow “school” to devour every free moment with its never-ending holiday party demands, sleep deprivation, and list-keeping in several different notebooks.

As much as the Christmas Party held a certain awe, a feeling that we were creating something special and amazing, I didn’t miss it last year. I don’t miss it this year. I am grateful and relieved that it will never again crowd my psyche, steal my time and damage my family.

This year may those of us who’ve reclaimed our lives put the energy, time, and expenditure previously given away to “school” into our families, friends and homes. May we spend this holiday season decorating our houses, planning our meals and parties, purchasing presents and planning surprises for, and enjoying, our loved ones.

Raise a glass — or two, three or more — to school-free holidays and a fabulous school-free New Year, and life!

Cheers!

This excerpt is the last of a 4-part series on the Country Retreat penned by blog-contributor Charlie Chaplin:

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

For the kids

One evening, walking from the room where I had just showered and dressed for dinner, I came upon one of the older students berating her daughter.  Apparently the girl was dawdling in getting ready for the Saturday dinner of her final retreat attendance (being too old to return in the future).  I could hear the fear in this mother’s voice that her daughter’s laxity would reflect poorly on her in Robert’s eyes.  She was jabbing her finger at her daughter, saying “you are NOT going to be late for dinner your last time here!”  I can only imagine how the girl perceived her mother’s intense loyalty towards these people who were otherwise absent from their lives.

This moment shocked me, especially as I had just become a father.  It was one event of many that changed my feelings about what it might be like to have my loved ones share the school experience with me.  Since attending more events with the older class, particularly the Christmas parties in New York City, I had gradually come to realize that a good number of students in that class were married to each other.  My initial reaction was mostly envy.  How lucky these folks were to be free of the need for deception that brought me such anxiety!  How fortunate to be able to experience each other at their best, working for their own evolution and that of their classmates!  I remember the impressions class following one Christmas party, when a student spoke of the pride she felt for her husband, seeing the work that he had put into his role in the choir and band.  She welled up with emotion, brought to tears.

Now, seeing the number of children belonging to these school couples, I realized that they did not escape the need for deception, or the deprivation of their time and energy from loved ones.  On an earlier occasion, talking about my impending fatherhood with the same woman I overheard berating her child, she said in a half-joking manner that the worst part of being in school with kids is the amount of money you end up spending on babysitters (her husband was also in OSG, in my own younger group).  I also had not previously considered that the divided loyalty that manifests indirectly as deception and inattention with regards to a spouse outside of school would not disappear if that spouse were in school, but rather become more overt and direct.  I never saw a man rise to speak in defense of his wife if she were being unfairly criticized by teachers, nor a woman defend her husband.

Still, however their divided loyalties affected their relationships with each other, these students had the benefit of being adults with a framework for understanding their situation, and the (admittedly not easy) choice to perpetuate or end it.  Not so for the children.

It was only after experiencing the retreat that I realized how awfully strange these kids must feel about all of this.  On one terribly awkward occasion, a line of children came through the living room just as we were starting a meeting.  Robert and the other teachers were clustered at one end of the room, and the rest of us were haphazardly packed together on the opposite side facing them, sitting on couches, chairs, the floor or standing up.  We sat in silence as the children marched single file, following their attendant adults through the room on a path between us students and the teachers.  Robert admonished the poor planning which had made that walk-through necessary and said it wasn’t good for the kids.  In my mind I agreed with him wholeheartedly.  The older kids especially must have found it odd, and I’m sure they were equally confused as to why their caretakers were being swapped out every fifteen minutes, as we took turns watching them in order to maximize everyone’s meeting time.

My increasing doubts about my own participation in school also began to affect my interpretations of some of the assigned reading material.  Of the commentaries we read, I most clearly remember one about the vastness of space and the relative insignificance of man in the universe.  My CR aim for that period included something about realizing the scale of the cosmos and my own infinitesimal place within it.  This is certainly worthy of contemplation and helpful in gaining perspective.  Yet it did raise an additional question:  If I am so insignificant, to what end was I suffering all the financial cost, time spent, deception and anxiety of school?  It made sense when I felt a personal benefit and believed I was growing and evolving by learning and doing things I would not otherwise.  Then I was clearly purchasing something of value with my time, money and efforts.  However, once it had become a clear detriment to sustaining the things in life I most cared about (primarily my relationship with my wife and child), why carry on?

This is where the loftier notions of school can be used to set a different kind of hook.  In basic form, the ideas presented in school can be broken into two categories, psychological and cosmological.  On the one hand, you have a model of human psychology that can be pretty useful in stretching your mind and your ideas of what’s possible.  On the other hand, you have a mishmash of mystical and occult notions of how the universe works and man’s special place in it.  The way this cosmology is presented, God needs our help in “repairing the universe”, and our failures in school (the most monumental of which is the failure to remain in school) harm not only ourselves, our teachers and our fellow students, but also let down God.

Several times I heard our struggles with deceiving our loved ones compared to those faced by the French Resistance in World War Two, which felt almost offensively phony.  Members of the Resistance faced real threats of physical harm to themselves and their loved ones, including possible violent death.  To the degree that they concealed their activities from their families, it was for their own protection, and they were willing to take these risks and assume the burdens of deceit because the cause for which they fought was so clear, visceral and immediate.  For us, there was no real evidence that we were fighting for any particular cause or helping anybody in any tangible way.

Of course, invoking one’s duty to help God repair the universe (and the shame of selfishness in denying such a sacred duty) went hand in hand with appeals to fear that failure in life was inevitable without school’s help.  Leaving school would cause you to lose everything you value due to your own unchecked weaknesses.  Without school, you would fall fast asleep, your behavior would become entirely mechanical, and you would exist under the “law of accident”.  You would no longer have that mystical protection – not only against outside forces or circumstances, but also (perhaps especially) against yourself.  More than once, the primary factor in my decision to remain in school was the fear that I would cut myself off from an essential source – that the removal of school influence would make me a lesser man, fast asleep in my withering consciousness, and this would lead to the inevitable erosion of my wife and child’s well being, and the decline of my relationship with them.

While exploring my memory of the CR events to gather material for this series of posts, the Emerson quote above (or a rough approximation thereof) kept bubbling up to the surface of my mind.  Emerson’s Self-Reliance was one of the texts we read together in class that made a lasting impression on me, and I pondered it whenever seriously considering leaving OSG (Odyssey Study Group).

On the one hand, reading and discussing this essay with others in class provided an example of what I most loved about being a student in this esoteric school.  I read it with careful attention, underlining passages I found particularly poignant and relevant to my own life.  It was clear that others made similar efforts to engage the material.  Our class discussions of this essay strengthened my picture of our group as a collection of earnest seekers, mutually supporting each others’ efforts towards expanded conscience and consciousness.

On the other hand, the essay was strongly focused on honoring one’s own unique, individual point of view, overcoming cowardice and doing what feels right; so much so that it compelled me to listen to my own doubts and follow my increasingly persistent inner voice, even as it urged me to walk out on the group that had fostered my careful contemplation of this text to begin with.

This quote in particular stuck somewhere deep in my mind, and it forcefully resurfaced when I started to feel most potently the conflict between my ever-expanding obligations to school and my responsibility for my growing family.  I started to feel that the things in my individual life, especially my wife and son, were my “plot of ground”, where I would find my “kernel of nourishing corn”, and that directing my attention and efforts towards abstract, lofty school aims was equivalent to turning to those parts of the “wide universe” in which my nourishment would not be found, but rather only “envy”, “imitation”, and most explicitly, the failure to take myself “for better, for worse”, as my “portion”.

When my son was about four months old, we were told there wouldn’t be another retreat for several months.  I felt enormous relief, and let go some of the concerns that had been eating at me.  One particular concern about CR was that it seemed common and expected that students with children would bring them along.  While this idea initially sounded intriguing, as a way to give my wife a break and give my son an experience of “higher vibrations”, in practice I found it unsettling.  I thought I could see in the eyes of the older children that they found this whole thing very strange, especially when they were paraded through the middle of our meeting.  Seeing that mother so freakishly concerned that her child’s behavior might reflect poorly on her among this group also gave me pause.  I didn’t want to be in a situation where I would find my love for my son in direct competition with my loyalty for school.

The announcement of a new CR schedule came a few months later, at which time I was seriously considering leaving. It was certainly one of the major factors that pushed me over the edge.  As with Christmas Party preparations, third line work, and the seemingly nonstop run of late-ending classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, this was one more thing I met with 1% excitement and 99% dread and anxiety.  In the past, I had told myself to power through the interval and make a profit, but now I was feeling only diminishing returns.  I didn’t want to do it anymore.  I was done.

Country Retreat Back Porch

This excerpt is the third in a series of Country Retreat posts, penned by blog-contributor Charlie Chaplin:

My memories of the few Country Retreats (hereafter referred to as CR) I attended blur and jumble together, such that I’m not even sure how many I ended up at (either three or four), or how many nights I slept over (I can only recall one). I am sure that my only Friday evening there was the first one I was invited to. Every other time, I drove up alone in the early morning on Saturday. Since my wife was either pregnant or taking care of our infant during this period, I insisted on being able to leave immediately, if necessary, and went up early Saturday rather than coming directly from work Friday evening. I couldn’t abide leaving my wife and child (soon-to-be or newly born) for two and a half days straight. As long as I arrived early enough for the full day’s work, they let it slide.

I enjoyed the solitude of those trips, driving down back roads through small Massachusetts towns, surrounded by the early morning mist. Groton particularly impressed me as quaint and lovely, where the speed limit slows to a crawl, allowing the opportunity to soak in the pleasant peacefulness of the town center. It served as a rough halfway point. The population density seemed to drop off after Groton, and the roads seemed to stretch and disappear into more wooded and mysterious realms. The return trip gave just the reverse impression, with Groton marking the emergence back into my everyday reality. One time, on my way home, I stopped at a roadside farm store for a fresh pie to to share with my wife. It was one of the best pies I’ve ever eaten.

While I can’t speak directly to the ways a typical Friday evening agenda differed from the one I experienced, my impression is that they were basically the same – dinner, then meeting and talking about the weekend’s work agenda.

The rest of the weekend proceeded according to a common schedule. Saturday began with a 6 AM wake up call, executed by designated students within each room or area of the house. On the occasion I remember, I was up without needing to be awoken, due to the unusual environment and the absence of curtains thick enough to block the early morning light. We all went to the main living room for a meeting at 6:15 to establish everybody’s work schedule. When each group had gathered at its designated location, everyone stated an individual internal aim in addition to the external group aim. A typical internal aim might include working fast, relaxing, working without resentment, being useful, etc. The group aim could be to chop and stack all of the wood in a particular pile within the next hour. Assignments included physical outdoor work, cooking, childcare, cleanup and creative work such as weaving. After the initial work period, we all ate breakfast together and received our assignments for the next work period, which lasted until lunchtime. With lunch came another meeting to discuss afternoon work aims, followed by another work period, after which we evaluated our work and noted what remained to be done the next day.

At this point, we had a chance to shower and get dressed up for our fancy dinner. We transformed the space by moving around and arranging a lot of tables and chairs and beautifying them with tablecloths and candles. It was very nice, though nowhere near as elaborate as the Christmas parties. The food planning and preparation generally fell on the shoulders of the same few talented chefs who had this responsibility whenever culinary expertise was required.

The Saturday dinner was generally quite pleasant and enjoyable, with excellent food and beautifully dressed fellow students. We were able to sit, eat and talk more or less casually about whatever we pleased. After dinner we met again to discuss our impressions of the day’s work as well as the reading we had been assigned (from Maurice Nicoll’s Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, which can be found at amazon.com or downloaded for free here ). Four or five people made suggestions for the next reading, and Robert selected one upon consulting with the other teachers. Many of the older students had the entire six-volume set of Nicoll’s Commentaries in bound photocopies, which they had purchased from school. It was suggested, but not insisted upon, that we in the younger group might want to do the same. We each stated a CR aim to inform our work on ourselves until the next retreat. These aims were to be periodically said aloud, preferably daily, on the voice mail of our aim partners.

Sunday began as Saturday – 6 AM wake up, meeting, but only one work session. The remaining time was spent cleaning the houses and taking an inventory of food, drink, and supplies that would need to be replenished for future visits. We left the space as spotless as we found it, some students hauling away trash in their cars.

In spite of the regimentation of time and extraordinary physical demands, I found many aspects of the weekend exciting and invigorating, particularly the work sessions. It felt good to work hard physically, at least to a point, and to spend time out in the woods. In general, my opportunities to work outside with tools are pretty limited, and I found it satisfying. One weekend we chopped wood, and I felt a special delight in landing the ax in the just the right spot to make the wood magically split apart with no apparent resistance. Another time we built a shed from scratch, and I enjoyed climbing on top of the half-built structure with a hammer and pounding in nails to attach the plywood roof. Sometimes the biting flies were incredibly frustrating, but we tried to see it as an opportunity to separate from our mechanical responses to them. At times the work itself was just taxing and unpleasant, such as when we had to move large, heavy pieces of wood uphill through the forest while being shouted at to hurry up and finish before we ran out of time to make the aim. In that afternoon’s meeting, Paul said that he had assigned that task knowing that it was impossible, which added to our sense of accomplishment for having succeeded. The atmosphere was mutually encouraging and congratulatory. I cannot recall anyone being called out for insufficient effort.

At one of my first retreats, we were cleaning up after an ice storm. There were split branches laying on the ground, or in some cases dangling limply from the trees, requiring us to climb up and detach them. These we collected and pushed through a gas powered mulching machine. I remember lifting branches over my head with my work gloves and shoving them into the machine, scratching up my arms. One branch backfired into my chest and left a bruise. I didn’t mind any of it and saw the bruises and scratches as physical evidence of having worked hard. There was a close call when the pile of mulch built up enough to surround the exhaust from the machine, and by the time anyone noticed, smoke was beginning to rise from the pile, which was damn near fully ablaze. We doused it with water and moved the machine away from the pile, relieved that we had averted what could have been a disastrous fire.

I remember mainly feeling amused by this potential calamity. I felt no harm could befall us while working on a school event, as we were somehow mystically protected. This was the same feeling I had several times while riding the school-chartered bus down to New York City for the Christmas party in near-blizzard conditions. While I was anxious about my own deception and fearful of negative repercussions with my wife, I can’t recall any practical fear that our bus could crash or any number of other entirely plausible misfortunes could occur on our various school adventures. Something about that promised protection altered my cognition, not by a lot, but enough to tilt the balance in favor of what now appears a kind of foolish wishful thinking, or at least faulty risk-assessment. I suppose there was something of this same mechanism at work in evaluating the potential for damage to my marriage – the sense that so long as I was laboring for a higher good, what I cherished most in life would not only be protected but enhanced by forces working in the “invisible world”.

Country Retreat, Pt. 4: The Grande Finale