Aims Part 7
January 9, 2026
Aims Part 7: To Love the Work
Perhaps you’ve noticed that it's been a month or so since you last meditated. Maybe that spiritual book someone lent you stays unopened on your bedside table. Days seem to slip by without the practices that you hold sacred. Even though we can forget our spiritual practice from time to time, if we are devoted to spiritual growth, our hearts return us to both the study and the living application of this sacred work, time and time again.
We know in our souls that spiritual growth and the expansion of consciousness require steady devotion, and that devotion is born from love. George Gurdjieff first used the term “The Work” to describe his teachings, including the Enneagram, because he knew that genuine inner transformation requires effort, sincerity, and energy. These thoughts compose the following spiritual aim: to love the work.
All actual spiritual work pushes against entropy, the natural drift toward forgetfulness and gradual disintegration. Yet what we receive in return is immeasurable. As spiritual understanding opens within us and we begin applying it to our everyday circumstances and relationships, something astonishing happens: our perception shifts. We see how the ego, left unchecked, inevitably leads us into suffering, and we discover that approaching our concerns spiritually is gentler, wiser, and far more effective.
The work includes searching for the truth in everything. Our souls recognize the truth from our depths. After a talk John Philip Newell gave, he recounts that a lady in the audience came up and said, “Sir, I never heard anyone say it until you shared tonight, but I knew it; deep down, I’ve always known that!”
We continue the work by attending teachings and gatherings of like-minded seekers. In the work, we absorb wisdom. And we expand into more spacious beings. We trade our habitual ego strategies for presence. We experience reality as it truly is, no longer filtered and distorted by old patterns. We feel free, full, and happy, and we want others to feel this too. This is a state we never wish to leave.
For this reason, one of the essential aims for a spiritual seeker is to love the work. When we love something, we return to it repeatedly. The work meets our deepest needs, nourishes our souls, and gently guides us back “home.” But being at home within ourselves is not something we can simply will. It requires devotion, and love is what makes devotion possible.
Even so, it is easy to drift. We may grow lazy, skip our meditation, or forget our spiritual practice. We may convince ourselves that we have grown enough. Or we may resist rearranging our lives to put our new insights into practice. Distractions can pull us away from the work of the soul. So, we forget just how vital, transformative, and precious this growth truly is.
When we put the work on hold, we settle for our current level of consciousness, and then inevitably entropy sets in. But when we stay devoted, when we love the work, we are continually led into new horizons, fresh realizations, deeper relationships, enlivening communities, and wiser ways of meeting life’s dilemmas.
It is exciting to love the work. It is exciting because the work is alive, and when we love it, we become more alive as well.
Spiritual practice: How would you assess how you are doing in your spiritual work, and what measurements will you use to do this? Look at your measurements and ask yourself how your life would be without growth in those areas.
Self-inquiry: What about entropy may be attractive to you?
Prayer:
Dear God, Grant me infinite love of the infinite work… Your work. Amen
