(Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) - Wheat field with poppies and lark, 1887.)
The image above was used in the post Becoming a Child Again, on the Journal of Gurdjieff Studies Substack.
Why this particular image? What connects it to the article?
It was the following text in particular, with quotes from Maurice Nicoll, that inspired the choice of picture:
Maurice Nicoll wrote on 4th May 1941 his Commentary that has been titled The Fourth Way. It is around this time that he is walking a lot, one week nearly a hundred miles. Night bombers are active, the winds can be cold, but “Primroses and violets carpet the earth” the tulips are coming out, larks overhead and cuckoos calling. Tranquility is side by side with signs of violence. Nicoll says that he has a tendency to agoraphobia and prefers to stay in his room or where he is and is reluctant to go out for a walk; but when he actually gets himself walking - “and what a job” - he enjoys it. In this commentary, The Fourth Way, he admonishes his people that they should not identify with a place or a particular kind of external work, but adapt themselves to whatever presents itself.
It is tempting to let oneself be absorbed in a peaceful rural scene, for example, or similarly pleasant places and experiences, or, on the contrary, to identify with something difficult and unpleasant that one has to experience. More challenging, yet ultimately more rewarding, is to cheerfully use everything that comes one's way, and to walk between the swing of the pendulum of "fortune" and "misfortune."
This seems connected to Nicoll's insight about
"...taking in impressions more consciously – in fact, transforming them by willing what happens."
(Maurice Nicoll - Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, Vol. IV, p.1390.)
Actually, the greatest peace seems possible only from the fullest possible digestion of what life has to offer.