The Inner Work, Volume III

Reshad Feild

Study Material of a Living Inner School

“The first thing to understand is that on the path it is the teacher who chooses the pupil, and not the other way around. Thus it can easily be seen that this is the reverse of the normal educational system, where we ‘get what we pay for’. In the inner path, it is the quality of the aspirant that counts, not his or her money or merely his or her intellectual ability. It is the quality of the heart that needs to be polished in order to be able to reflect the Attributes of God, that is the key into such a school. It is the willingness to learn what counts, not the desire to acquire knowledge, power, or wisdom. It is the courage to be able to give up what is no longer useful on the journey that is the leather for the seeker’s shoes, and it is the incredible perseverance necessary that makes up the soles of the shoes with which the pupil will have to walk.”

Contents of Volume III

A Commanding View · An Introduction to the Way · Honesty · The Two Confrontations and Victory · Going Home · We Are to God as the Pupil Is to the Eye · World Citizens · A Beautiful but Demanding Responsibility · What Makes Something Sacred? · The Four Turns · Time and the Octave · The Sacred Impulse, the Tone Scale and the Names · Essence and Function in a Living School · Names and Functions · Advice on What Not to Do · Rituals and Spiritually Suburban Life · Feelings and Thought Pattern · And What Does That All Mean to You? · The Meaning of the Teacher in the Sufi Tradition · Spiritual Psychology · The Fire Exit · Index