62: My Secret to a Happy Life

62 

My Secret to a Happy Life 

Yesterday Penny and I made our first batch of Italian sausages in Georgian Bay just like my parents used to make; well, not quite, because in this batch we did not add fennel seeds to our spices of salt, black pepper, chili pepper flakes, granular garlic, and paprika. We made the first batch without the fennel seeds because I’m going to give some of these sausages to my Italian neighbor who does not like fennel seeds in his homemade sausages; and today we’re going to make the second batch with fennel seeds, but with a little less paprika.

After we ground the meat and mixed it with the spices, Penny fried up a couple of small patties to taste the result, and we found it a little dry; so I added a cup or so of red wine that I had made last fall with my Italian neighbor and mixed it into the meat and Penny fried up two more patties and it tasted fine, and then we spent an hour or so stuffing the meat into the casings that we slid onto the funnel attachment of our electric meat grinder.

I like fennel seeds in my Italian sausages, but there was a time when I denied myself the pleasure of eating sausages altogether because I had taken up a special way of life that was inspired by the Sufi path that Gurdjieff’s teaching had introduced me to. Synchronicity had introduced Gurdjieff into my life by way of Ouspenky’s book In Search of the Miraculous in my second year of philosophy studies at university, and as I “worked” on myself with Gurdjieff’s teaching I created what Gurdjieff called a “magnetic center” which attracted me to teachings of a similar nature, like Sufism and the sayings and parables of Jesus. Actually, Gurdjieff called his Fourth Way teaching “esoteric Christianity,” which was inspired by the secret teachings of the Essenes that Jesus was initiated into when he was young.

The premise of the Sufi Path is that one must “die before dying” to become their true self, which is a very difficult thing to understand, let alone practice; but this is what Jesus meant with his paradoxical saying: “He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life his life for my sake shall find it.” And since I was on a quest to find my true self I took Gurdjieff’s teaching of “work on oneself” to heart, which over time pulled the secret way of the Sufi Path and Christ’s sayings and parables into my life; and by secret way I mean cultivating a special attitude with life that nourishes one’s inner self.

This then is the subject of today’s spiritual musing that came to me this morning while  “talking” with St. Padre Pio for my book The Sign of Things to Come, a creative exercise in what Jung called “active imagination” not unlike Neale Donald Walsch’s “conversations” with God; and as I shared yesterday’s sausage making experience with my fellow countryman (Padre Pio was born in the village of Pietrelcina not too far north from where I was born in the village of Panettieri, Calabria) I got the strongest feeling to write a spiritual musing on this special attitude that is essential for the growth of one’s inner self, an attitude of conscious living which is reflected in a poem that I wrote many years ago— 

Sufi Sausages 

The best sausages that I ever tasted

are made from a secret recipe that I found one day

while looking for the secret way. 

I was so hungry for God that I would have eaten anything

to preserve my spiritual strength; 

and I did, a cult concoction of sun and nonsense

that gave me spiritual cramps for many years. 

Then I chanced upon a Sufi sausage maker who gave me

a secret recipe that changed my life forever. 

“You take the casing that you have,” he instructed me,

“and stuff it with the meat of the last supper.” 

I had no idea what he meant, until I re-read the Christian Bible;  

and from the moment I caught the light that Jesus shone, 

I discerned the Sufi sausage maker’s wisdom,

and I began to practice the sacred art of Sufi sausage making. 

The first few batches that I made were much too spicy,

because I stuffed my casing with every esoteric meat

that I could find; 

but with time, patience, and an ardent desire for God,

I learned to stuff my casing with the freshest meat of all, 

the tender  flesh of my own simple, daily life;

and the more I died to my mortal flesh, 

the sweeter my sausages tasted, and the more strength

I gathered for my long journey back home to God. 

          The most difficult aspect of my quest for my true self was decoding the secret language of the secret way, which is so well hidden that only the most devout seeker will ever decode the meaning of life’s purpose; but once I did, the secret way of the Sufi path and Christ’s sayings and parables gave up their secret, and life finally began to make sense to me.

But I still had a lot more living and many years of writing before I could explain the secret way, until one day I realized that it all came down to a special attitude with life that reflected the essential truth of every spiritual teaching in the world, and by special attitude I mean the secret of conscious living that Gurdjieff’s teaching made me wise to.

Of course, we are all conscious despite what Gurdjieff said about man being asleep to life, but consciousness is relative to every person, and waking up to life is a matter of degree and circumstance for everyone; but it was Gurdjieff’s purpose as well as the Sufi path and the sayings and parables of Jesus to speed up the process, which in the language of the secret way means taking evolution into our own hands to complete what nature cannot finish.

Nature will only evolve us so far, said Gurdjieff; and to complete what nature cannot finish we have to take evolution into our own hands by cultivating a special attitude with life that speeds up the process of becoming our true self, which is the essential meaning and purpose of our existence.

It took years for me to realize why nature cannot evolve us to our full potential, but the more I “worked” on myself (which I encoded in my poem as the sacred art of Sufi sausage making), the more I grew in truth and understanding, and it finally dawned on me one day that the secret way was all about resolving the consciousness of our dual nature; or, as Jesus expressed it in the secret language of his teaching, making our two selves into one.

In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, Jesus was asked by someone when his kingdom would come, and he replied, “When the two will be one, and the outer like the inner, and the male with the female neither male nor female.” And the two are one when we speak truth to each other and there is one soul in two bodies with no hypocrisy, as this saying is explained in The Unknown Sayings of Jesus, by Marvin Meyer.

This special attitude with life that I’m talking about then is nothing more than learning how to live one’s life consciously, which means with karmic responsibility; because as long as we refuse to wake up to the governing principle of life, which in my book The Sign of Things to Come St. Padre Pio called “the law of corrective measures,” we remain trapped in the endless cycle of recurrence, which is why we have to take evolution into our own hands to complete what nature cannot finish and become our true self. And if I were asked to define what I mean by this special attitude of the secret way, I’d be forced to say: simply be a good person, and let your conscience be your guide. That’s my secret to a happy life. 

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