Eating the I: A Direct Account of the Fourth Way- The Way of Using Ordinary Life to Come to Real Life (In Search of the Self), Revised & Expanded Edition

2007 Expanded edition. Includes a gallery of 17 paintings depicting different stages in the journey. The search for one s real self is a sacred quest, an archetypal journey, whereby the seeker eats through the web of illusory "I's" that mask his or her real self-identity. In our times, this search has rarely been reported in such a candid and compelling manner as it is in William Patrick Patterson s book Eating the "I". Dispirited and disappointed in life, the author s life dramatically changes when he is introduced to the esoteric teachings of the Fourth Way - the way of transformation in ordinary life. Unique to this rich and practical teaching is its insistence that the student's negativity and confusion are the sources of his awakening. Life's shocks and uncertainty - that which he is most trying to avoid - are in fact that which can help him to awaken. Writing on many levels, and in the strong vibrant voice of a natural storyteller, Patterson describes his twelve-year search that takes him from secret meetings in a Manhattan townhouse, to the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico, to Dublin and the Aran Islands, to England s Lake District and a medieval Scottish chapel, to his boarding of Allan Watt's S.S Vallejo and discovery of the "Holy Fool". Into his life come many memorable and powerful people: Trungpa, a Tibetan Master of Crazy Wisdom; Vali, a beautiful and enticing witch; Casey, a Jungian painter; and Stanley, an arch-adversary. Yet by far the most remarkable and unforgettable of all remains the man chosen by Gurdjieff to lead the Fourth Way in America, Lord John Pentland. Eating the "I" shows how the pressures, conflicts and uncertainties of the technological world actively serve our awakening. Life is used to come to Life.