Being Dissatisfied

About forty years ago, I met a man, his name was Gregory Grover, and he was conducting a meeting about the ideas of Gurdjieff, which was written in a book by Ouspenski, called “In Search of the Miraculous.” This one meeting changed my life. At the time I was married to a very attractive women and I was only 30 years old at the time: we worked in and owned a beauty salon, and we had nice home. I think most people would say I had the American dream.

I believed that all the things that I accomplished externally and the possessions I had were suppose to give me happiness and a relief from the inner pain I constantly felt: feelings of doubt, fear, uncertainty, depression, and at times over powering feeling of worthlessness would overtake my soul. My negative self-talk was telling me that I’m not good enough, I’m not educated, I’m not very smart and in many areas I felt inferior, I’m a dark skinned Mexican American so I shouldn’t expect too much from myself. I attempted junior college but I dropped out, not smart enough. I was too impatient, my efforts in applying myself to learning about things I didn’t know were rather low; unfortunately, strong conditional habits created resistance to wanting to change and creating something new.

Our resistance to change can be so strong that it is almost impossible to break away from the negative beliefs and negative self talk that controls our thinking; we are familiar and accustomed to depend on the negative voices which make it impossible to hear anything new. Many of you are dissatisfied, but what do you do with this dissatisfaction? To offset your inner discomfort or pain, some of you may excessively use drugs, alcohol, over eat, have many sexual partners, gamble, or party excessively so you can feel better at the moment, and yet the pain remains.

I was fortunate and grateful that I met my past spiritual mentor, Mr. Grover, who introduced me to Gurdjieff and Spinoza and in time, through great effort and inner work I was able to find a way out of this confused mental and emotional state.