Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I have just read Gil Friedman's book, Gurdjieff: A Beginner's Guide and feel that for the first time I have an idea of what Gurdjieff ideas were all about. In the past, I have tried to read books by Gurdjieff himself and gotten very little out of them. Friedman's book has translated Gurdjieff into ordinary English that is both very readable and understandable, and goes through Gurdjieff's ideas in a step-by-step approach that is easy to follow. Friedman writes in a conversational manner and gives many examples from everyday life. How we react to misplacing our keys is just one of them that I found very interesting. One of the most interesting concepts of Gurdjieff that Friedman discusses, and I am now attempting to apply in my life is the concept that any time we want to accomplish something, the First Force, there will be resistance to accomplishing it, the Second Force, and unless we anticipate this Second Force, it is unlikely that we will accomplish our goal because we will give up, not realizing that there was going to be a resistance that we had to overcome to obtain our desired goal. So, now when I want something, I think about what type of resistance I will face in the task itself and from other people. This is also why politicians often make these big promises that they can't fulfill because they never anticipate the resistance to obtaining their goals. There were several other concepts from the book that I have found very useful and feel I can work at applying them in my life.
The chapters of the book are very short, a couple of pages at most, that made it easy to read and the extensive Table of Contents offered me a very good way to find subjects I wanted to go back to. If you have any interest in understanding Gurdjieff's ideas, I would highly recommend this book as a place to start.
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2011 Update
Are you ready for self-transformation?Many spiritual teachers promise transformation, but Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff delivers. Gurdjieff (1872-1949) was born in Alexandropol on the border of Russia and Turkey. Gurdjieff's teachings contain many concepts that, taken together are referred to as the Work. The idea behind the Work is that our first birth is our physical body, which is all we need to get through life. But we are capable of developing into something higher, just as an acorn can stay an acorn and die or develop into an Oak Tree, we can develop into something higher. Gurdjieff offers a radically original version of man and his potential for self-development. "Gurdjieff, A Beginner's Guide: How Changing the Way We React To Misplacing Our Keys Can Transform Our Lives" is a beginning guide to the teachings of Gurdjieff. Practical and eminently readable, it leads the reader through some of the main concepts necessary for self-transformation.
