EVERYONE WHO HAS ENTERED THE WORK HAS ENTERED THE EXOTERIC circle of the Work. There are three circles: exoteric, mesoteric and esoteric. Outside these circles, what is there?—the wilderness, the darkness, the Moon world, a world of heavy duality, jealousy, hatred, lies and violence, steeped in mechanicality, animality and false personality. People who live in this world live under the Law of the Moon and its influences. Each of us is in some sense a rebel, for the Moon has never completely hypnotized us. We have questioned, searched and heeded the inner call, and so have now crossed the border to the exoteric.

How did we get here? Can we remember? Reflect for a moment on all the noticeable coincidences, the zigzag steps that somehow led us here. I know for myself the first memory I have of the appearance of the Work in my life was when I was 12 or so and I decided that I wanted to be a writer. And what does a writer do? Well, he enrolls in a book club, or so I thought. And what is the first book sent to me? Katherine Hulme's The Nun's Story. (Definitely a book I would never have chosen.) Only because I had paid for it did I read it. I found it haunting in some way I couldn't quite formulate. After that, in college, I remember reading Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge, about a war hero's search for truth. And later a philosophy professor stating that the Stoics believed that "Events you can't control, your attitudes you can." Now how to do that? Five years later I was handed Meetings with Remarkable Men. Strangest book I ever read. The author is telling and withholding something at the same time. I asked everyone I knew if they had heard about "this Gurdjieff guy" but no one had. It took almost seven years before a noticeable coincidence brought me to my teacher and his suggestion to read Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson.

Why did it take so long? Who can say? It would all be speculation. But in those days, before the "dawn" of the now fading New Age, there was nothing to tell you the Work existed. All the faux-Fourth Way teachings, the various inventions (a blend of Gurdjieff, Sufism, Taoism and 'Transpersonal' psychology is popular) were still to arise.

So it's important to know the long winding trail that brought us here. All the little knocks on the door, the things that didn't seem to mean much at the time but, in retrospect, do. For me it began with The Nun's Story. It was what we call in the Work a "B influence." There are three influences: C, B and A. C influences are a direct influence of spiritual consciousness. This consciousness produces B influences, which are the forms of C influences that enter into ordinary life. A influences are all the dense products of the Moon world. All B influences must become A influences, because everything over time must level, distort, slow down and degenerate.

Consciousness, not being a thing, does not degenerate. Entropy does not apply. Consciousness is ... is That in which all things appear and disappear. If we observe closely, we will see that we leave consciousness, it doesn't leave us. We leave it because we identify ourselves with things gross and subtle. We say "I" to them, own them, invest in them, become them, and so live the life of A influences.

So now that I have entered the Work—the world of C and B influences— now what? What happens when I get what I want? Well, for a time, of course, there is joy, discovery, newness. It's the honeymoon phase when everything is roses-roses. What awaits me is thorns-thorns. That is, through the correct application of being-Partkdolg-duty I begin to see what I am, not what I think I am. In order to be born into deeper levels of self/Self and Work, I suffer myself, my false self, and all its vanity and self-love.

But more precisely, what is the Work? This depends on who I am, where I am, what the conditions and circumstances are, but always the Work is to be present. And in being present to observe impartially one's centers and their functioning, to see the manifestation of the "I" of the moment, to strive not to get trapped identifying with that "I." Or, if trapped, to see that.

Ordinarily, when we think about being present we identify ourselves with the intellectual center. When most people outside the Work (and those in faux-Work) speak about being present what is meant is a certain balance and clarity, an equipoise in the intellectual center—that moment when our attention is focused on what's before us (and possibly a certain awareness also of the intellectual center), when we're not lost in a reactive cloud of thought or emotion. But that is the ordinary meaning, a Moon world definition. It's just a "time out," a certain space in one center, the head brain, the formatory mind, the mechanical part of the intellectual center, the part that's always talking to me. No matter how sharply I may delineate, it's still the Moon world if I am not grounded in the instinctual-moving and feeling centers. That is, I'm all head, no body. I'm only a thought, a feeling, an impulse; there is no awareness of a body (except when it experiences lust, fear and so forth). I've taken the Great Fall, a descent into the Moon world. Now the question is how to make the ascent to the Earth world, and so knowingly enter the physical dimension, become consciously embodied.

So let's begin with what we have. What is ours, really? Only time, energy and attention. The Moon world ordinarily takes all of our time, energy and attention because it's predicated on the "person world," and we've all been educated to be totally concerned with our person, its needs, fears, desires and history. The Law of the Moon (there are 96) sucks us dry of our life, our possibilities for anything higher. We think we're living but we're being lived.