The same five questions to all three mentors. A minute each. Three different answers.
One thing you would tell a person deciding whether to apply.The sentence a student said that you still think about.The thing people get wrong about determinism.What you stopped doing after a year of this.What the practice has not changed.
Anastasios, B. Doyle and Zubin answer in turn. The last question is the one worth waiting for, and none of them claims the practice removed the difficulty of being alive.
Book a session with any of them, and please name the person you wish to speak with:
The practice is Spinoza-based, drawing on Gurdjieff, Zen and Lao Tzu, and applied to ordinary life.
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The last question is the one that separates this from most of what you will hear about any practice. None of them claims it removed the difficulty of being alive. The pain is still there. What has changed is the ability to see it and be free of it.
Three people answer, and the answers are not the same.
Anastasios has been in the practice for eight years and now mentors in it. He came from a background in finance, and runs a painting business now. He is the one who will tell you that whatever decision you make will be wrong, and he means it kindly. He talks about the boogeyman still being the boogeyman, but you know where he is standing. If you want a mentor who will not let you dress a thing up, it is him.
B. Doyle has been in the practice five years and mentors in it. He is precise about what happens in a session and precise about what you will not be given, which is assurance. His answer here is about fear, and about whether you can afford to go on loving your pain. He writes for his students as well, which tells you something about how he works.
Zubin moved from being mentored to mentoring recently, so he remembers the ground you would be standing on. He listens longer than most people are comfortable with, and he says so. His answer to the sentence he still thinks about is the hardest moment in this video, and he does not flinch from it. He is direct about who this practice is not for.
You do not need to choose between them. Watch this, see whose way of talking you recognise, and book a session with that one.
A note before you watch. One answer refers to a student’s thoughts of ending their life. It is spoken about directly and without detail, but it is there.
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