The Great Work

The Alchemy of Awakening as a Practice and Dicipline

Harrowings falls under the category of Philosophy with a sub-category of Humor here on Substack. It’s part of the “Cosmic Joke” that this life on earth can be. As I have related in the past, it’s also the publishing arm of the Harold B Gill Foundation, LLC, which seeks to collect, protect, and preserve the creative works of the three Harold B. Gills of which I am the final example. The middle one, my late father, used to wake himself up laughing at jokes he’d told himself in his sleep. It’s happened to me as well.

I’m grateful that two years ago tomorrow, I was able to speak at his memorial service and for all those who showed up. The notice was relatively short as we didn’t think many would attend. It ended up being a fairly good turn out for which I’m grateful.

Now to “The Great Work” in which we are all engaged; this Alchemy of Awakening at which we are all making incremental progress from birth to the transition back into the eternal from which we appear to have been projected. My own path has taught me that we are all manifestations of “The One.” Emanations of the Monad, we are shards of this source of being. To illustrate, I often flash back to a prayer offered by Wavy Gravy in this short trailer for the film directed by Michelle Esrick:

At about ten seconds into this trailer he is seen praying at his altar saying “Help me be the best Wavy Gravy I can muster.” In the film, it continues with him asking that the day be blessed as it transpires and he asks in the name of a whole list of holy beings ending with “all the forms and shards in which thou has manifested.” His teacher is the late Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hahn.

As well happen, I’ve now gotten myself distracted by the story of Hugh Everett, III and his lifestyle which led to his sudden death by heart attack at 51. You can read it for yourself but it leads me to question what is a life well-lived. Wavy will soon be 90 and there will be a celebration out in California which one of my neighbors will be attending. It will benefit Seva.org which restores sight to the needlessly blind.

I’m drawn back to Hugh Everett, III however:

The relationships between fathers and sons is, of course, a major theme here. I’m grateful for this example of archival work done by Mark Everett. I wasn’t aware of Mark as a musician either. This is part of “The Great Work” - whenever two individuals come into contact, if anything happens at all, both are transformed.

I hope to be a positive influence on all with whom I have contact today. “Onward!” is my general way of signing off on these short essays. The hope is that it sparks something in the minds of my readers. That’s the general aim here of this “Great Work” if that indeed is what it is. They say it is. Who are “They” anyway?

I don’t know that there are actually “others” - as mentiones above, we are all manifestations of “The One” and, turning back to Thich Nhat Hanh, I just encountered this quotation of his in my Facebook memories:

“Handling our suffering is an art. If we know how to suffer, we suffer much less, and we’re no longer afraid of being overwhelmed by the suffering inside.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

We also get an opportunity to help alleviate the suffering of “others” - who, again, are iterations of our Selves. The “Great Work” strives to reintegrate that which has apparently been disintegrated. This can come about by realizing that everything is already always integrated, although we may perceive it differently.

The key thing is to bring this awareness into everything we do, regardless of what it is; regardless of where we are. So it seems to me now. I could change my perspective on all of this as new information comes to light. If there is a single takeaway from the film “Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives,” it is that egos can have a hindering effect on ideas that move us closer to an understanding of the truth. Such was the case in the interaction between Neils Bohr and Hugh Everett, III, in any case. Imagine if Bohr had had the humility to accept that Everett might have had a useful insight into the nature of quantum mechanics!

Well, we now have this artifact of his son’s film to look upon and we have this Substack to keep the work of Harold B. Gill, Jr. alive into the future.

This post, dating back to the time of the founding of the Harold B Gill Foundation, LLC, is the beginning. I am grateful to the inspiration provided by Jesse Paris Smith which sparked my own remembrance of my father as she remembered hers.

Onward!

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