S01/E06: “I Am Free of Illusion” – Beyond Grief, Projection, and the False Self

Introduction – Silence as the Gateway to Truth

Welcome back to Martfotai, a quiet path to wholeness, inner freedom, and becoming.

This podcast is dedicated to exploring the deeper waters of presence, awareness, and the natural unfolding of consciousness.
It is not a belief system. Not a theory.
But a practical way of transformation, built on direct experience, rooted in the Work of G.I. Gurdjieff, and refined for those ready to integrate swiftly and completely.

Martfotai means “Person of Light”, from Marta and Photon.
It points to one thing: self-individuality, clarity, and the return to stable being.

In Gurdjieff’s Fifth Obligolnian Striving, he wrote:

“The striving always to assist the most rapid perfecting of other beings… up to the degree of the sacred Martfotai, that is, up to the degree of self-individuality.”

That is the aim here. That is the Work we do. Not to discuss it, but to live it.

I’m Gary Eggleton, and today’s episode brings us to one of the most difficult, most human moments on the path.

Not the fragmentation we met in Episode 1.
Not the story we began to dismantle in Episode 5.

But the moment when something, or someone, you loved disappears.

A connection collapses.
A reflection fades.
And what remains is silence.

Sometimes it’s someone you trusted.
Sometimes it’s a part of yourself.
Either way, the recognition vanishes, and with it, something essential dissolves.

Something remains,
but the connection is gone.
The recognition is missing.
The presence you once shared has vanished.

And the grief that follows is real.

It’s the grief of losing someone who didn’t die,
Or the grief of seeing a version of yourself you can no longer carry.

Of being erased while still standing in truth.
Of watching your name, or your role, rewritten in a story you didn’t author.

But here in Martfotai, we do not resist what appears.
We look at it with clear eyes.

Gurdjieff said, “A being attracts its own life.”

What came to you was not random.
It came because your being was ready to see something, clearly.
To meet something unintegrated.
To transmute something long buried.

This isn’t punishment.
It’s alchemical opportunity.
The moment where grief does not collapse into victimhood, but becomes the raw material for something real.

So we do not take the higher seat and say,

“I am right. They are wrong.”

We take the lower seat and ask:

“What in me attracted this?”
“What part of me still needed to be seen?”

We hold the accusation without feeding it.
We bear the false story without defending.
We turn the cheek inward, and watch what appears.

And we recognise, too:

This episode is not just about losing others.
It’s about seeing the selves you performed through… dissolve.
The identities that no longer serve.
The roles you held for safety or belonging.
And how to honour their passing as part of your becoming.

“You lost the illusion they asked you to believe in. That is grief, yes. But it is also freedom.”

This episode is not about how to win back connection.
It’s about how to see what the disconnection revealed.
And in that seeing… how to become something new.

Because between what you thought was real and what actually is,
there is a silence.
And that silence, if you let it, becomes transformation.

(pause)
Let’s begin.

2. The Quiet Death

There is a kind of death that doesn’t take the body,
but takes something more difficult to bury.

It takes the connection.
The recognition.
The reflection of who you were in their eyes.

It takes the story you believed you were part of.

And it leaves behind… silence.

There’s no funeral.
No ceremony.
No shared goodbye.
Just a sudden absence, where presence used to live.

And the mind scrambles to understand:

“Did I miss something?”
“Was I too much? Not enough?”
“Did I say something wrong?”

But beneath those thoughts, something in you already knows:

They are still alive, but the presence you knew is no longer reachable.

The voice is the same, but the presence is not.
The words are familiar, but the warmth is gone.
The shared reality you once stood in has vanished.

And here’s what makes it even harder:

You didn’t leave.
You didn’t change.
You didn’t break trust or betray truth.

You were simply… erased.
Quietly.
Systematically.
Rewritten in a story you didn’t write,
a story they were handed by fear, by illness, by pressure, or by someone else’s control.

You are still standing in truth.
But they no longer see you.

This is the grief of being cut out of someone’s life
not because of what you did,
but because of what they could not bear to see.

You wonder if the whole connection was imagined.
If you misunderstood it from the beginning.
If maybe… it was only real for you.

But stop here.

And breathe.

Because in Martfotai, we do not look at grief from the wound alone.
We look from the being that attracted this moment.

“A being attracts its own life.”

Not as blame.
But as mirror.

This grief was not a mistake.
This silence was not accidental.

It came so that you could see something, not just about them, but about yourself.

You were drawn into the illusion not only by their performance,
but by your need to believe it.
By the part of you that still hoped to be seen.
By the part that gave your light away in exchange for belonging.

And now, that illusion has died.

Not them.
Not you.
The illusion.

And what do we do in Martfotai when the illusion dies?

We take the lower seat.
We do not defend.
We do not fight.
We sit where the pain is.
We let it burn.
And we ask:

What in me needed this mirror?
What in me was still willing to trade presence for approval?

This is the quiet death.
The death of the image.
The death of the role.
The death of the identity that relied on their validation to feel real.

It hurts. Yes.
And that grief must be honoured.

But if you stay long enough in the silence that follows,
you’ll notice something else stirring.

Not despair.

Not relief.

But… clarity.

And clarity doesn’t cry for the illusion.
It lets it fall.
And begins to walk forward, lightened, emptied, free.

This is where the real Work begins.
Not in avoiding the pain,
but in using it to transform.

(pause)

3. Projection and Inversion

One of the most disorienting moments on the path is when you’re suddenly accused of something you did not do,
something so unlike you that it feels surreal.

You try to protect,
and are called controlling.
You speak from truth,
and are told you are divisive.
You ask for transparency,
and are told you are power-hungry.

And you stand there, breath caught in your chest,
wondering: “How did this become my name?”

This is projection.

But not just psychological projection.
Not just denial or emotional immaturity.
This is spiritual inversion.

It happens when someone cannot face a truth rising in them,
so they assign it to the one who sees it.
They cloak their shadow in your presence,
and then back away, saying:

“See? Look what you’ve become.”

It is maddening.
Because you were not wrong.
You were not reactive.
You were simply… lucid.

But in the presence of distortion, clarity is dangerous.

Because it threatens the illusion someone else is protecting.

And when someone is trying to preserve a false story,
a story about themselves, or about who they need you to be,
they will destroy the one who sees through it.
Not with malice, necessarily.
But with fear.
With self-preservation.
With unconscious allegiance to an identity they cannot let die.

So they paint you in the colours of their fear.
They cast you as the disruptor, the betrayer,
the one who made the storm.

And here is where the real test begins:
Will you defend yourself and descend?
Or will you do what was once spoken on the mountaintop,
“Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matthew 5:39).

This is not weakness.
It is the refusal to become what you are accused of.
It is the quiet power of the one who sees through the story,
and no longer needs to be seen rightly within it.

We don’t fight the projection.
We see it.
And we take the seat it assigns us.

We take the accusation.
We take the mischaracterization.
And instead of feeding it with our energy,
we turn the cheek inward.

We ask:
“What part of me needed to see this?”
“What part of me needed to stop seeking validation?”
“What part of me still believed I had to be understood to be whole?”

And in that inward seeing, something else happens:
The higher meets the lower.
The wound meets the witness.
And in that space…
a middle begins to form.

This is the deeper meaning of the verse,
not to surrender to harm,
but to refuse to echo it.
To meet distortion with stillness.
To let illusion fall, without falling with it.

This… is the Work.

This is the moment Gurdjieff described as:

“A new arising from the previously arisen through the Harnel-Miaznel, the process of which is actualized thus: the higher blends with the lower in order to actualize the middle, and thus becomes either higher for the preceding lower, or lower for the succeeding higher.”

In plain terms: something new is born, not by escaping the pain, but by holding it consciously.

The projection becomes the very condition for transformation, not because it was true, but because it revealed what was still hidden.

Something about your identity.
Something about your need to be seen.
Something about your previous entanglement with the illusion.

A Gurdjieff aphorism helps us here, “Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself, only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity.”

So, we do not resist it.
We do not explain ourselves endlessly.
We do not beg for truth.

We sit.
We breathe.
We see.

And in that stillness, the projection loses its power.

Because what you don’t feed, starves and fades.
And what you see clearly… no longer owns you.

See it, do not be it.

(pause)

4. The Climb and the Mirror

Once the projection clears,
once the illusion begins to dissolve,
what remains is not just grief…

It’s sight.

You begin to see not just what they did…
but what your being was ready to see through.

Because this didn’t just happen to you.

It happened for you.

And not in the sentimental way.
Not in the bypassed spiritual cliché of “everything happens for a reason.”

But in the deeper, harder truth:

“A being attracts its own life.”

Which means the betrayal, the rejection, the exile,
it came because your being still had something to transmute.

You didn’t cause it.
But you were ready for what it would show you.

You begin to see that you didn’t just suffer the illusion…
you participated in it.

You co-created the role.
You wanted to believe the connection was what you needed it to be.
You saw signs, but softened them.
You knew the mask didn’t fully fit, but you smiled anyway.

Why?

Because a part of you still hoped.
Still needed to be seen.
Still believed you had to belong to feel real.

So when the illusion collapses, it’s not just them you see.

It’s you.

The version of you that accepted half-truths for the sake of harmony.
The version of you that feared what would happen if you said, “No more.”

And that’s when the real mirror appears.

The climb doesn’t just show you the mountaintop.
It shows you the path you took to get here.

You see every step where you abandoned yourself to hold a connection.
You see every moment you quieted your truth to stay inside somebody else’s story.

And now, that story has ended.

Not in their certainty.
But in yours.

So you take the lower seat again.

You don’t rise up in blame.
You don’t demand to be seen.
You sit, and you hold the mirror inward.

And in that posture, something new is born.

The higher blends with the lower,
and the middle begins to form.

The middle is where you stop performing.
Where you no longer need to be right.
Where you no longer need to be received.

You simply are.

Whole.

Clear.

Unburdened.

You don’t demand they see you.
Because now, you do.

You don’t need to be invited back into the story.
Because you’ve begun to write your own.

And in that stillness, you realise:
This was never a fall. It was a rising.

And in that seeing, you remember: I am free of the illusion.
You climbed.
You saw.
You stopped pretending.

And now, for the first time in this story…
You are no longer part of their illusion.
You are present in your truth.

(pause)

5. Letting Go

There is a moment on the path when pain no longer demands to be solved.
It simply asks to be witnessed.
Not with the mind that wants to understand,
but with the presence that no longer resists.

This is not the grief of losing a person.
It is the grief of losing who you were in their story.
The grief of seeing, at last, that you once believed the reflection was real.

But now it breaks.

And in that breaking, something else becomes possible:
You stop trying to fix what was never whole.
You stop rehearsing the lines that kept you in the play.
You stop clinging to the self that was written in someone else’s ink.

Letting go does not mean forgetting.
It does not mean detaching with pride or shutting the door with bitterness.
It means finally ceasing to perform for the version of you that needed to be loved at any cost.

That version tried.
It carried hope.
It shaped itself to be wanted.
And now, its task is complete.

There is a quiet sadness in that.
But it is a sacred one.
Because you are not exiling this part, you are freeing it.
You are not rejecting who you were, you are releasing the need to remain it.

You don’t need to be angry.
You don’t need to be right.
You don’t need to be seen.

Because now you see.
Not through their eyes.
But through your own.

Letting go is not a collapse.
It is a return.
A return to the ground beneath performance.
A return to the one who no longer needs to audition for belonging.

And from that ground, a new stillness rises.
A stillness that does not grasp, defend, or seek permission to exist.
It simply breathes.

You are not walking away from love.
You are walking away from illusion.
From the false reflections you once agreed to live inside.

And that is not loss.
It is clarity.

This is not about closure.
It is about no longer needing an ending to feel complete.
You understand yourself.
And that understanding… is enough.

This is how the middle forms,
not by climbing higher, or sinking lower,
but by no longer being pulled in either direction.

You become still.

And in that stillness, you return.
Not to who you were.
But to who you are –
clear,
unwritten,
and free.

(pause)

6. The Silence That Remains

What happens after the illusion is seen…
after the identity dissolves…
after the grief has burned clean?

Not noise.
Not resolution.
Not triumph.

Silence.

But not the silence of loss.
Not the silence of waiting.

A deeper silence.

The kind that does not demand to be filled.
The kind that simply… remains.

At first, it feels hollow.
You expect something to rise, some answer, some closure, some return.

But nothing comes.

And if you stay, if you take the lower seat even here,
refusing to grasp, refusing to narrate,
that silence begins to change.

It becomes clear.
Still.
Alive.

It becomes the evidence of your transformation.

Because only the one who no longer needs to be seen
can remain at peace in this kind of quiet.

This is the fruit of Harnel-Miaznel.

The higher, your clarity, has met the lower, your wound.
And together, they have actualized the middle.

Not a reaction.
Not a collapse.
But a calm center that no longer feeds what passed.

“A being attracts its own life.”
So this silence is not a mistake.
It’s a mirror.
It’s the absence of what you no longer need.
The absence of what you no longer fuel.

You are not waiting.
You are not chasing.
You are not defending.

You are simply here.

No longer in exile.
No longer in their story.
But in your own presence.

You don’t need the old reflection to feel real.
You don’t need the illusion to be rewritten.
You have stopped feeding it.

And now, this silence is yours.

You are not what they said.
You are not what you feared.
You are not what was taken.

You are what remains…

When everything else falls away.

(pause)

Closing Reflection & Invitation

If you’ve ever been cast out of someone’s life,
replaced in a story you never wrote,
accused of things you never did,

Know this:

You did not fail them.
You completed the mirror.
You saw what they could not.
And in that seeing, you became a threat, not to them, but to their illusion.

You may never be seen clearly by them again.
But that does not mean you are confused.

You may never be welcomed back.
But that does not mean you are lost.

You have stepped beyond their narrative.
Not by force.
But by seeing it for what it is.

And now… you are free.

You took the lower seat.
You bore the accusation.
You watched the illusion collapse,
And you did not collapse with it.

You fasted the “I” that needed to be understood.
You stopped feeding the part of you that begged for closure.
And in that fasting, the middle was born.

This is the Work.

This is the transformation Gurdjieff called for when he said:

“Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself, only with yourself. Therefore thank everyone who gives you the opportunity.”

Because a being attracts its own life,
and what came to you came not to destroy you,
but to awaken the awareness within you that was ready to rise.

So now, let it rise.

Let it be quiet.
Let it be still.
Let it need nothing.

Let it be

Because you are no longer waiting for them to return.
You have already returned to yourself.

You are free of the illusion.
And you are not alone.

This is the path of Martfotai.
Not the path of belief, but of seeing.
Not the path of perfection, but of presence.
A path that begins in fragmentation… and ends in integration and light.

To continue this walk with us, and to receive new episodes, live class invitations, and special practices, visit martfotai.com and register your email.

This is how we continue,
Not through fixing the past,
But through feeding what brings us home.

I’m Gary Eggleton, and this is Martfotai.
Until next time.