We Must Start from the Beginning

There are no short-cuts, and all steps must be undertaken

Learning a New Skill

Yesterday, I sat in an audience watching elementary school string ensembles performing in a competition—one of which I had helped prepare. As I observed the various stages of development among the children’s playing, I was struck once again by a simple but essential truth, something I’ve also been noticing more in private music lessons: the development of any real skill—particularly one that involves the whole person, including body, mind, and emotion—requires time, effort, and repetition, and quite a lot of all three.

The students’ playing was, unsurprisingly, still in a formative phase. Posture, movement, rhythm, ensemble, intonation, phrasing, dynamics, colour, and mood were all present in embryonic form, but the execution remained very much a work in progress.

It reminded me of a camera lens slowly coming into focus. At first, the image is blurry to the point of being indecipherable. Then, as the focus improves, vague forms begin to emerge. A bit more and the general shapes are clear. Eventually, the details begin to sharpen, textures and fine lines become visible, and finally, one can see something close to the reality of the subject.

In learning any new skill, we begin from a blank slate, and over time, by layering new knowledge and experience upon the old, the skill gradually gains in depth, complexity, and precision—just as the lens gradually brings clarity to the image.

In terms of the brain, what’s happening is equally instructive. As we learn, new neural pathways are laid down. At first, these are fragile, faintly drawn connections that require effort and attention to activate. But through repeated engagement and consistent reinforcement, they become stronger, more efficient, and increasingly habitual. The process of myelination helps to reinforce these pathways, enabling them to transmit signals more quickly and reliably. This, however, cuts both ways: myelinated pathways can reflect both conscious learning and unconscious habit. In other words, they can just as easily represent automatic reactions and deeply ingrained conditioning as they can new insight or understanding.

Take, for example, a child learning to read and write. The early stages are focused on learning the alphabet, often with mnemonic support: A is for Apple. The letters are drawn clumsily at first, sometimes traced on worksheets. Slowly, the child begins to associate letters with sounds and sounds with words. Then come simple combinations—C-A-T becomes CAT—and the child is taught to sound out each letter in sequence. It is a monumental leap when reading begins to feel fluid rather than mechanical, but even then, it is just the beginning. Eventually, short sentences give way to paragraphs, and those paragraphs, through years of cumulative development, lead to essays, stories, and analysis.

Now imagine placing a textbook on quantum mechanics in the lap of a kindergartner and expecting them to comprehend it. Or handing a beginner violinist a Paganini concerto and asking them to make a start. The idea would be absurd. Learning must proceed in the right sequence, covering all steps, and this principle holds across all domains of skill acquisition.

If this is clearly true in such basic educational contexts, then why do we so often overlook or resist it in other areas, particularly those that involve inner development? Why would it be any different when it comes to learning a new way of being?

Different Types

It might seem reasonable to assume that anyone could follow a common curriculum, and that learning is simply a matter of moving from point A to point B. However, this assumption runs into difficulties when we acknowledge that different people are, in fact, different types.

Some children, for example, are more physically oriented, others more emotionally sensitive, and still others more mentally inclined. Likewise, people have sensory preferences—visual, auditory, kinaesthetic—and these influence not only how they learn, but what they’re able to grasp quickly, what takes more time, and what might require a completely different approach. Cultural conditioning and personal worldview also colour how new information is received and processed.

Despite this, the modern education system tends toward a one-size-fits-all model. When a child doesn’t fit the prescribed mould, they are labelled as having “special needs” or as having “fallen through the cracks.” But perhaps it’s the system that fails to account for difference. That discussion, though, is for another time.

Habits and Conditioning

Another complicating factor is that, by the time we’re ready to begin learning something new—particularly in adulthood—we’ve already become set in many ways. We come with fixed patterns: behaviours, thoughts, postures, beliefs, and emotional reactions, all of which have already become established and often unconscious.

These habits, these conditioned ways of responding to the world, are not just psychological—they are physiological, embedded in the neural architecture of our brains. They feel familiar, safe, and are often mistaken for truth. In esoteric language, what was once unknown has become “known.” Our inner landscape is littered with definitions, labels, concepts, and reflexes that, once cemented, offer strong resistance to anything that threatens to change them.

To learn anything new—especially something that may contradict or challenge what we already “know”—requires not only effort, but a willingness to unlearn, to dissolve or at least revise prior understandings. It means going up against the machinery of our own nervous system, which favours well-worn pathways. Anyone who has tried to give up a deeply ingrained habit will know just how difficult this can be. It takes not only intellectual resolve, but full-bodied commitment—thought, feeling, and action aligned over time.

We Are Machines

From the standpoint of these habitual responses and fixed neural pathways, Gurdjieff’s statement that we are “machines” becomes not just metaphorical but literal. From a young age, through imitation of our parents, education, media exposure, and social influence, we are conditioned. These inputs shape neural architecture. And once the pathways are set, they activate automatically. We respond without reflection. We react rather than act. We believe we are choosing, but the choice was made long before our conscious mind caught up. And yet we continue to believe that we are awake, autonomous, and free.

We are not. The machine is running the show.

Learning Something New

So, what does all this mean for those trying to learn something genuinely new? It means we must start from the beginning—and take all the necessary steps, however slow or awkward they may seem. And we must be aware that the sequence of steps may differ depending on our type, our prior conditioning, and our context. But one thing is certain: nothing can be skipped.

And yet, in the world of spiritual development, including in the realm of Gurdjieff’s Work, there seems to be a widespread belief that things are somehow different. That here, we can pick and choose. That we can mix traditions, update teachings, omit what we don’t like, and arrive at understanding through shortcuts and selective application.

Since Gurdjieff’s death, many have treated the Work not as a unified teaching but as a smorgasbord of ideas and methods to be combined according to personal preference. Some reject the foundational practices like sensing, assuming they are only for beginners. Others believe that Gurdjieff’s early ideas are outdated or irrelevant. Some reduce the Work to Movements, others to exercises, others to self-observation, cosmology, or the Enneagram. Pieces are elevated, distorted, isolated. The whole is rarely preserved.

Gurdjieff saw this happening in his lifetime and warned against it. He knew that our type, our habits, and our sleep would lead us to split the Work into fragments and follow only those that resonated with our predispositions. The intellectual types gravitate toward the ideas and cosmology. The emotional types are drawn to the music, the Movements, and the storytelling. The physical types focus on bodily effort, “shocks,” and discipline. Each clings to what comes most naturally and avoids what does not.

But the Work, as Gurdjieff gave it, is not a self-serve buffet where we can pick and choose what appeals to our subjective palate. It is a multi-course meal, prepared by skilled chefs using recipes crafted by a Master. If we alter the recipes, skip courses, introduce external elements, or prematurely jump to dessert, we risk missing essential nutrients—or worse, suffering indigestion. Engaging with the entire offering, including the parts we might initially dislike—especially those parts—is essential.

First Steps

Just as one must first learn to hold the violin properly before playing it, one must also learn the foundational steps in the Work. In Gurdjieff’s terms, this means beginning with self-observation and self-remembering. We must study the machine—how it functions, how it reacts, what it does without us. But this is not an intellectual exercise alone. Self-remembering involves the whole of us—thinking, feeling, and sensing. It’s not a trick or a mantra, but a lived integration of our centres in the present moment.

To begin, we return to the body. We start with sensing—the link between mind and organism. And we do this over and over, refining it slowly, making it more vivid, more conscious. Feeling is added to sensing, and feeling becomes a higher form of sensing. As we receive impressions more consciously, something new begins to appear at the centre of our being. But we must not try to leap ahead. Every day we must begin anew. Repeat, repeat, repeat. What appears needs feeding, nurturing, and conscious attention.

The first steps are simple, but not easy. But many ignore them, mistake them, underestimate them, or assume they are past them.

We must begin at the beginning. And we must do the work, again and again, just as a musician must return daily to scales and exercises. Our neurology must be rewired. Our whole system must be replumbed, so to speak. This takes time. It cannot be rushed. It’s a drop-by-drop process of inner transformation—of inner alchemy.

And it cannot be done for us. No guru, no teacher, no dead saint or living authority can transmit what we have not earned through our own effort. Even a Gurdjieff or Madame de Salzmann, no matter how revered, cannot give us what they themselves gained only through years of struggle and practice.

And above all, we cannot indulge the fantasy that we can cherry-pick what we like and still arrive at transformation. Gurdjieff’s Work is a complete teaching. To benefit from it, we must engage with it fully, slowly embodying it. That means going against everything in us that resists. And it also means acknowledging that we need help—real help—from those further along.

One can’t learn surgery from books alone. One can’t learn the violin by watching others play. And at some point, if we are sincere, we will recognise that we need a guide. Only then will we be ready to listen.

But only when we are on our knees.

As Gurdjieff said, we must come to realise our nothingness. That we are machines. Until then, we live in comforting illusions.

We must start from the beginning.

And maybe that beginning is the moment we truly see that we do not know. That we are at a dead end. That we have been living in illusions and ignorance. That all our worldly accomplishments are powerless to satisfy the deeper longing inside us—that quiet inner voice that whispers that something is not right, that something is missing, that we are missing.

The heart of the Work lies in that something which has been covered over by layers of sleep, resistance, pride, ignorance, and fear. Until we touch that something, the Work remains an abstraction—or worse, a hobby, a fascination, or a badge for the ego.

So, may that small voice inside, faint though it may be, plague you. Haunt you. Torture you. And place you in utter anguish. Until you finally listen. Until you finally heed its call.

That voice is a gift, given from Above. Hear it, don’t turn away, and allow it to move you. That’s the real beginning.