Our group meets in Los Angeles in person when we don’t have global pandemics, as well as on Skype. Our group leader is a longtime spiritual student in diverse traditions.

The banner says “syncretic transformational work group.”  Work group means we focus on praxis, doing practices and activities that free us of illusion and false identification.  

Reality is always here, yet we cannot see it as we are.

Transformational means we are working not to embrace dogmas or philosophies, but to contact reality directly through insight. Reality is always here, yet we cannot see it as we are. We cannot see it by looking more intensely, finding the right place to look, or finding the right interpretation of what we see. We cannot see it by puzzling over descriptions of it. It won’t be revealed by applying a new technology or following a mechanical procedure. We work for a radical change, a transformation, into someone who does see. The great wisdom traditions all agree that humans have the potential for that transformation built in already.

Syncretic means that we consider the various great wisdom traditions of humanity to be branches of one tree, or at least trees in one forest. People in our local group participate in several different schools and everyone is welcome. Ultimately, the difference between traditions that have contact with reality are superficial. Human beings are mostly alike, and reality is mostly alike, so what human beings can do to contact reality is mostly alike.

Human beings are mostly alike, and reality is mostly alike, so what human beings can do to contact reality is mostly alike.

Our group is named after George Ivanovich Gurdjieff’s term “the Fourth Way” because we often speak using his language and ideas, and the format is similarly secular. A Fourth Way school is not identified with any religion, culture or institution. It depends on the degree of “objective reason” of the living people who lead it. Our work is also often inspired by Buddhist traditions.

 The site is still new and more material will be posted in the coming months.