How to begin?
I don’t know. Not knowing is a good place to begin.
First of all I come to stillness. I see that I am not still. Not yet. So I wait. A space appears approximately at the center of a triangle formed by the points of my cerebellum, sacrum, and solar plexus. My attention is drawn there and rests. A moment of stillness. A beginning.
The last days of summer have arrived. The evening song of the cicadas and crickets grows quiet. The air doesn’t vibrate at the same electric frequency as it did at the start of August. A faint scent of fall and a subtle chill descends. It is the beginning of the end of a cycle.
Twenty years ago, I wrote a column that was an ode to my first gray hair. I sang its praises and heralded its coming. In the intervening time, I fathered and nurtured two children. Now they are mostly grown. And my head is full of gray.
A cycle begins again, the last cycle of life.
The first cycle was to grow up, to raise myself. I learned to exercise my nature and design. I fell in love, broke hearts, and suffered broken hearts. I weathered fits of triumph and depression and spent more energy than was necessary simply because I had the energy to spend. So much was squandered, wasted, and yet some of the energy engaged with real work, and I created something in myself and things in the world.
The second cycle was a rebirth, and I learned to love. It began with the love of a dog, which took me by surprise. He was run over by a tow truck and I discovered that I loved him. I sold my motorcycle to pay the surgeon. My dog lived another day to chase squirrels across busy roads. But the deed was done—the conception of a love real enough to sacrifice myself.
And then the child was born and his aura was bigger than the house. I was in awe. I danced with him in my arms and sang him to sleep in the middle of the night while his mother rested from nursing. I had been born again with his birth. What followed was a sweet honeymoon of infancy, replete with all the treasure accompanying our new life.
Then came the work of tending toddlers. The constant demand tempered my love and tested my temper. I had to work on myself in the face of the terrible twos. I was a provider and the most important thing I could provide was to work on myself in the company of my children, in the vortex of our shared atmosphere. We grew together.
The next period was like crossing a desert. Sure there were periodic and predictable oases, but there were long periods of simply putting one foot in front of the other. Taking out the garbage and doing the dishes and driving the kids to school. And watching the children go through phases of emptiness and fullness, cycles of death and rebirth, molting and shedding of skins that enabled them to become more resiliently themselves.
With each change in the being of the children I went through a change also. I had to be vigilant to notice that a new approach was needed as they became more independent, and required wider boundaries, subtler forms of guidance. They needed enough freedom to fail, to drink so much they vomited, to drive fast enough to skid off the road and crash, to fall in love so hard their hearts broke. They needed to find their limits for themselves.
Now the cycles of growth in the life of the children are slowing. They are mature, and can no longer depend on automatic development for initiation. I hope their appetite for growth is strong and they will begin to initiate themselves through conscious labor and intentional suffering.
I have relied on my children’s cycles for my own initiations in the second turning of the wheel of my life. Being party to these cycles of transformation transformed me also. And now something new is needed.
I watched my children go away, and felt grief. Not because they were leaving, but because grief is the natural and correct response to separation. This is a kind of death. And a rebirth.
Now I once again have to initiate myself in this last cycle, the remaining time until my body undergoes the sacred process of dying.
I see a quickening of interest, a sense of a need that’s inviting service, a larger sphere for becoming able to love.
A cycle begins again, the last cycle of life.
How to begin?
I don’t know. Not knowing is a good place to begin.
Jason Stern will give three introductory talks on inner work September 15, 22, and 29 respectively, titled: Gurdjieff: Essential Practices of Inner Work for a Time of Transition; A Taste for What is Real: Cures for the Disease of Suggestibility; How to Help Our Children: Working on Ourselves for Those We Care for Most. More information at Harmoniousdevelopment.org.
This article appears in September 2025.
