S01E23: “I Am a New Beginning” – The Return to Presence as Creative Act

Introduction

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

Last week, in Episode 22, we explored Martfotai consciousness itself. The Person of Light. Whole, neutral, present. We discovered how recognition stabilises when all fragments integrate, when impartiality becomes lived reality, when the permanent “I” crystallises through conscious labour.

That recognition is available now. As present reality to acknowledge.

What you sought reveals itself as what you already are. Every practice transforms into natural expression.

Today, we explore what happens when recognition deepens. When it moves from glimpse to ground. When it stops being something you experience and becomes what you are.

Here’s the paradox that must be held: you’ve arrived at what you always were. Yet something fundamentally shifts. The seeker dissolves. Life truly begins.

What could possibly be new about a beginning when you’ve always been whole? How does life actually change when lived FROM clarity rather than TOWARD it? What emerges when consciousness knows itself and stops pretending?

We’ll explore the end of spiritual narrative. Spontaneous action versus programmed response. The difference between living on autopilot and fresh creativity moment by moment. Creative expression as natural overflow.

The developmental stages that naturally unfold after Martfotai recognition stabilises. Natural maturation. Practical transformation in relationships, work, and daily life. Lived reality.

The journey completes. The path begins. Both true simultaneously. This is the territory of the new beginning. Starting fresh. Every moment.

Section 1: The End of the Story

Every seeker carries a narrative: lost then found, unconscious then integrating, fragmented then becoming whole.

These stories serve a purpose. They map territory, mark progress, orient the search. They give meaning to the struggle. They create a sense of movement through time.

Then they become obstacles. The narrative itself prevents direct seeing.

You rehearse your progress to feel real. You defend your achievements to maintain identity. You compare your story to others’ stories. The very thing that helped you find the path now blocks the final step.

Martfotai recognition ends the need for spiritual autobiography.

What actually happened? Consciousness was playing at forgetting itself. The journey was consciousness exploring limitation. Every breakthrough was remembering what was never actually forgotten. The story of becoming was itself the final illusion.

All the darkness, revelation, and return were one continuous gesture of remembering.

Here’s the verification. Does your spiritual progress still need defending? When someone challenges your attainment, do you contract? Do you rehearse your development to feel real? Is there still someone who achieved something?

When the story ends, what remains?

Presence. Simple, ordinary, always-here presence. Nothing special. Nothing to defend. Nothing to prove.

Notice the relief. The performance of progress ends. Proving presence to yourself or others stops. Managing a spiritual identity ceases. Subtle competition with other seekers drops away. Measuring how far you’ve come vanishes.

Just this, now, complete.

Maurice Nicoll discovered why the story ends so completely.

You’ve been living inside the current of passing-time. Linear sequence where each moment replaces the last. You feel scattered across temporal progression. Yesterday’s breakthrough feels distant. Tomorrow’s challenges loom large. You experience yourself as fragments, different in each moment, with no real continuity.

Your spiritual narrative was written across the stream of passing-time. “I was lost, now I’m found.” Past tense. Present tense. Future possibility. A story moving through sequence.

Living Time operates differently. Your entire existence surrounds you now. The child you were, the seeker you became, the recognition happening here. All present simultaneously in the vast landscape of awareness.

The awareness present in childhood is identical to the awareness here now. It hasn’t aged. It hasn’t been modified by anything that happened. That awareness is what you actually are.

When this lands, the narrative collapses completely.

Verify this now. Close your eyes. Recall three distinct moments from your past. Different ages. Different circumstances. Let them arise together. Feel how they don’t compete. They coexist. They form one living tapestry.

That’s Living Time. Your totality held in one field of presence.

The relief you feel when story ends? That’s the crushing weight of temporal sequence lifting. You realise you already have all the time that ever was or will be.

Some resistance may arise. “But if I don’t have my spiritual story, who am I?” Exactly. Who are you without the story? Find out.

Section 2: The Path That Begins

Here’s what actually happens when recognition stabilises.

Within passing-time, your journey moved from incomplete toward complete. Linear progression. Stages marked. Progress tracked. You were becoming whole across temporal sequence.

Living Time reveals something else entirely. Completion and beginning exist simultaneously. The journey completes the moment you recognise you never left. The path begins because wholeness wants expression through this particular form.

Both true. Same moment. Different dimensions.

The shift feels like absolute reversal. You stop moving through time trying to reach wholeness. Time moves through you, expressing wholeness moment by moment. The direction changes completely.

Nicoll taught about horizontal time versus vertical depth. Horizontal: mechanical repetition, same patterns recycling, ten thousand successive states with no unity. Vertical: fresh moments, unrepeated experience, consciousness functioning clearly.

What was horizontal effort becomes vertical expression. The seeker drops away. Life shifts from TOWARD becoming whole into FROM wholeness creating.

What dies in this transition? False confidence. The certainty that you knew yourself. Self-love disguised as spiritual achievement. Self-importance wearing the mask of humility. These facades fall through simple seeing.

Gurdjieff taught that all religions speak of death during life on earth. This death must precede rebirth. The false self dies. The one who was always becoming. The one who kept spiritual accounts. The one who compared and measured progress.

This death is active. You cannot drift into it. Daily effort strips away what isn’t real. Each moment you choose presence over performance, another layer falls away. Trust replaces faith. Verification through lived experience replaces belief in future attainment.

Gurdjieff taught about man number 4 developing into man number 5. Man number 4: balanced development of centres. Man number 5: unity of essence established. Martfotai is the threshold of man number 5. What follows is crystallisation completing. Permanent I established. Higher centres functioning naturally. From here, conscious evolution rather than mechanical development.

The developmental stages post-Martfotai unfold naturally:

Stage 1: Recognition stabilises over several months. Presence remains without effort. What was glimpsed becomes ground.

Stage 2: Expression clarifies over six to twelve months. Unique function emerges. What you’re here to express reveals itself.

Stage 3: Transmission deepening is ongoing. Service becomes natural. Your presence serves simply by being present.

These stages unfold when the obstacle is removed. The false self was the dam. Remove it, the river flows.

An example: “I must remember to be present in this conversation” transforms into presence already here, conversation happening within it. Effort to see clearly transforms into seeing happening. Clarity as ground.

Recognition stabilised becomes motion; presence begins to create.

Section 3: Creative Expression Emerges

When programmes stop running, creativity begins.

Creativity as fresh response moment by moment. Each situation met newly, released from pattern.

The difference is immediate and testable.

Programmed response: predictable, mechanical, based on past. Someone criticises you. Programme runs: defend, attack, withdraw. Same old pattern. You’ve done this a thousand times. The words are different but the energy is identical. Stale. Familiar. Slightly dead.

This is passing-time consciousness operating. Your response comes from accumulated patterns, stored reactions, mechanical repetition. You’re living horizontally. Same energy recycled endlessly.

Creative response operates in Living Time. Vertical rather than horizontal. The eternal present contains all possibilities. Response arises fresh because it emerges from consciousness meeting what’s actually here now, rather than from memory meeting past patterns.

Stale versus alive. Familiar versus surprising. Dead versus energising.

Your body registers the difference before your mind names it. Programmed response feels contracted, tight, slightly exhausted. Creative response feels expanded, light, energised. The other person’s face shows which one you’ve given them.

Creative response: unpredictable, alive, emerges from now. Someone criticises you. Response you couldn’t have planned. Maybe silence. Maybe laughter. Maybe acknowledgement. Maybe something entirely new. It emerges from presence meeting what’s here.

An example. Colleague says: “Your presentation was confusing.” Programme would defend: “Actually, if you’d been paying attention…” Or attack: “Your last presentation was terrible.” Or withdraw: “You’re right, I’m useless.”

Creative response might be: “Show me where you lost the thread.” Or: “Good catch. I felt that too.” Or: “Let’s walk through it together.” Or complete silence whilst you actually consider what they said. Or gratitude: “Thank you for the feedback.”

The response serves the situation rather than your identity.

Relationships deepen. Met freshly each moment, released from accumulated story. Your partner speaks. You respond to what was actually said, now. The relationship breathes. Space appears. Aliveness returns.

Work transforms into play. Effort becomes flow. Same tasks, different quality. Problems solve themselves. Intelligence operates unobstructed. Solutions appear that you couldn’t have forced.

Beauty appears. Ordinary moments reveal extraordinary depth. Walking to the car. Light on leaves. Breath moving. Feet touching ground. Nothing special. Everything luminous.

Here’s the verification. Notice one interaction today. Programmed feels stale, familiar, slightly dead. The other person’s face registers it. They’ve seen this before. Creative feels alive, surprising, energising. You don’t know what you’ll say until you say it. The other person perks up. Something real is happening.

Maurice Nicoll taught that conscious life means each moment arrives unrepeated. Time transforms from horizontal repetition to vertical depth. You’re living ten thousand unique moments.

The fear arises: “If I’m not following programmes, I’ll be chaotic.” The opposite proves true. Programmes create chaos. Conflicting patterns fighting. Should I be nice or honest? Generous or boundaried? Each programme has its rules. They contradict. Internal civil war.

Presence creates coherence. Unified response to what’s needed. The situation itself reveals what serves. What the moment actually requires.

As responses match reality rather than memory, reliability deepens. People learn they can trust what you say because it arrives fresh, unfiltered by rehearsal.

Section 4: Life FROM Clarity

The entire spiritual path was living TO become clear. Living FROM clarity changes everything.

In relationships, love becomes what you express. The whole orientation reverses. Love itself moves through the form. Relationship either aligns or doesn’t. Trying stops. Wholeness cannot be abandoned.

Consider partnership. Conflict arises. The same old argument you’ve had a hundred times. Engaging pattern, trying to fix, effort to just communicate better all lead into machinery. Seeing A pattern clearly, not engaging machinery creates a space for response to emerge fresh. Maybe silence. Maybe truth spoken simply. Maybe leaving room. Relationship either deepens because both are present, or ends because pattern can’t sustain without participation.

Twenty years together means twenty years of accumulated history. Through the lens of passing-time, that history filters every interaction. Living Time holds those twenty years as accessible dimension whilst meeting them now. History becomes living field rather than dead weight. You can feel the entire relationship surrounding you, all moments present simultaneously, yet still see this person fresh in this moment.

The relationship breathes. Your partner feels the difference immediately. They’re being met now rather than through accumulated grievance. Seen freshly rather than through fixed expectation.

In work, transformation runs deep.

Working to prove worth, achieve success, become someone shifts into work expressing what’s here. Achievement becomes less relevant. Success and failure define nothing. Career as an identity becomes work as a creative expression of capacity.

An example – a major project collapses and leads to identity crisis, shame, blame. Yet, the entire narrative about failure, all evaporate when you see clearly. Extract what’s useful. Adjust approach. Continue. The drama ends because there’s no one performing it.

In daily life, simplicity reveals itself.

Spiritualising ordinary moments to make them meaningful, transforms into ordinary moments revealing inherent meaning. Washing dishes whilst trying to be mindful becomes washing dishes, complete. Meditation separating from life becomes all life as meditation. The split heals.

The body knows this shift before the mind. Standing in the kitchen, hands in water, soap on plates. Warmth of water. Weight of crockery. Breath steady. The effort to be present vanishes. Presence simply is. The search stops because you’ve arrived at what was never actually absent.

Walking to the car transforms. Trying to remember to self-remember becomes walking happening within remembering. The reversal is absolute.

Section 5: What Naturally Emerges

The Steward matures into permanent function. What appeared sporadically now remains steady. You begin to sense the pause between impulse and movement, that breath suspended just before speech.

The permanent observer, crystallised through the hidden sixth striving, now functions continuously. This sixth striving, the striving for conscious recognition itself, which represents the need to perfect your Being and the conscious study of universal laws, sits this crucial development: the birth of the Steward. It sees before action happens, prevents mechanical response, and allows conscious choice to emerge.

Verify this simply. Reach for something now. Watch the hand move. Feel the space between impulse and action. That space is the Steward’s domain, and in that space, choice lives.

Higher centres activate spontaneously. Conscience operates naturally. You stop forcing yourself to care about things. Caring happens by itself when you stop obscuring it. You see someone struggling and help arises from simple seeing.

The difference between trying to be reasonable and actually being reasonable is absolute. Trying creates strain. Being reasonable flows. You see all sides of a situation without effort, and the right action becomes obvious.

Service becomes natural expression. Your presence serves simply by being present. People feel something real when they’re around you.

Consider entering a room of arguing people. If you try to mediate or impose peace, you get drawn into the drama. Simply remaining present and undisturbed, shifts the field without your doing anything.

Unique function reveals itself naturally. Your particular form, gifts, and capacities become the vehicle. Some teach. Some create. Some serve silently. The function emerges, and recognition arrives: “This is what I’m here to do.”

Russell A. Smith taught about the Steward providing impartial observation. This allows seeing mechanical patterns before they manifest. It creates a gap between stimulus and response, and in that gap, choice becomes possible.

Someone cuts you off in traffic. Anger arises. When the Steward functions, you see the driver cut you off. You see anger begin to rise. You see the choice to let it complete or release it. Then you choose. The reaction doesn’t control you anymore.

Preferences become lighter. They’re still present, yet softened. You prefer coffee to tea. Fine. If only tea is available though, drama stays absent. Opinions are held loosely. You can be wrong without collapse. Someone points out your error and you respond, “You’re right, thank you.”

What you actually are becomes more visible. What you perform becomes less important. People sense this. “There’s something different about you,” they say. You’re less defended. More available. Present.

Section 6: The Transformation of Problems

Problems don’t disappear. The body still ages. Bills still arrive. Relationships still require attention. Difficulties still occur. Nothing becomes magically exempt.

What changes is your relationship to problems. It transforms completely. A problem doesn’t equal an identity crisis anymore. Difficulty doesn’t equal meaning about who you are.

Every problem reveals the scale of your presence.

Small disruptions show this clearly. The car breaks down. One response is immediate identity crisis: “Why does this always happen to ME?” Identity wraps itself around the problem. The entire drama plays out in familiar patterns.

Another response: “Car needs repair.” Factual. Clear. Ring the mechanic, sort transport, carry on. The reaction stays quiet. The problem remains a problem, separate from identity.

When viewed through passing-time, difficulties threaten your progress. “This shouldn’t be happening now. I was past this.” In Living Time though, problems arise within the vast landscape of your total existence. This difficulty is one moment within the eternal present. It informs rather than defines.

From this ground, problems become teachers without effort. Each difficulty reveals where consciousness still catches.

Larger crises test more deeply. The doctor says there’s a serious health condition. The body reacts immediately. Fear, shock, adrenaline. This is natural response. What isn’t natural is becoming the diagnosis, collapsing identity around it. Life divides into before and after. A story forms: victim, fighter, survivor.

The practice is to feel the reaction fully without becoming it. “Fear is present” rather than “I am afraid.” From that ground, you can research options, make decisions, take action.

Each difficulty reveals where consciousness still catches. Health issues show where fear operates. Financial pressure reveals where security is sought externally. Relationship conflict exposes where wholeness is still defended.

Life doesn’t become easier. You become larger. The vessel expands to hold what once would have shattered it. Small irritations that used to derail an entire day move through without catching. Larger crises are met with the same steady presence that once required perfect conditions.

Gurdjieff distinguished between conscious suffering and mechanical suffering. Mechanical suffering just hurts and repeats patterns. Conscious suffering transforms. The difference is that presence remains during difficulty. Pain is felt fully without identification. This builds being. It crystallises capacity.

What becomes possible: holding more without fragmenting, feeling deeper without collapsing, acting wiser without overthinking. The vessel strengthens through conscious engagement with difficulty.

Section 7: Integration Practices

Daily Recognition Check. Morning. Three minutes. Sit quietly upon waking, before the day’s momentum begins. Before you check messages or plan the schedule. Before identity reassembles itself into familiar patterns.

Ask: “Am I living FROM or TOWARD?” Give yourself an honest answer. What’s actually true right now. Notice if seeking is still operating. If it is, gently remind yourself: already whole. Set an intention: “Today, expression rather than achievement.” Let that orient the day.

Creative Response Practice. Throughout the day, when a familiar situation arises, pause before the automatic response kicks in. This is the Steward’s gap. Russell Smith’s space between stimulus and response.

Ask: “What wants to emerge freshly here?” Don’t force novelty. Just create space. Allow the response to surprise you. “Good morning” said newly versus mechanically. The other person feels the difference. So do you.

Evening Reflection. Five minutes before sleep. Review one moment when a programme ran. What triggered the automatic response? What creative response might have emerged instead? The seeing itself begins transformation.

Then review one moment of creative response. What allowed that freshness? How did it feel different from pattern? Notice the quality. The aliveness. That’s the taste to cultivate.

Weekly Integration. Thirty minutes. Set aside dedicated time. Choose one domain: relationships, work, home. Ask yourself: “Where am I still trying to become rather than express?” Where does effort feel like pushing upstream? Where does it flow naturally?

What would shift if you lived FROM clarity here? Choose one small experiment for this week. Try a fresh response in a familiar situation.

Monthly Verification. One hour. Honest assessment time. Is the story still running? Am I defending spiritual achievement? When someone challenges me, do I contract? Is there still someone trying to become something? Or has seeking genuinely ended?

Write down what you find. The written word reveals patterns the thinking mind misses.

The New Beginning Practice. Once weekly, treat one day as if newly born. Everything encountered for the first time. Your partner seen freshly, released from accumulated history. Right now, who is this person? See them now, less filtered through memory.

Approach work as if it’s your first day. Notice your home space as if you’ve just arrived.

This reveals how much you live through past versus presence. Seeing them now means the relationship breathes.

Track these markers without judgement: seeking energy decreased, creativity increased, problems lighter, service natural, story forgotten more often.

Section 8: Common Questions

“If the journey is complete, why continue practices?”

Practices shift from means to expression. You’re no longer using meditation to reach presence. You’re meditating as an expression of the presence that’s already here.

The practice deepens infinitely because you’re exploring what you’re already in. The first time sitting quietly took massive effort. Years later, settling happens immediately. The depth continues beyond that though. Subtler layers reveal themselves.

Think of a musician who achieved mastery. They still play because music wants to sound through this instrument. You practise because wholeness wants expression through this form.

“Don’t I need goals anymore?”

Goals still serve a practical function. Build a house, learn a skill, complete a project. Structure remains useful. What ends is goals as proof of worth. What continues is goals as creative expression.

You still plan and act towards outcomes. Your relationship to goals transforms though. Success doesn’t validate you. Failure doesn’t diminish you. Both inform your next action. Neither defines who you are.

“How do I know if I’m living FROM clarity?”

If you’re asking anxiously, you’re still seeking. If you’re asking curiously, you’re already there. The quality of the question reveals the answer.

Concrete markers help. Effort decreases. Lightness increases. Seeking quiets down. Creativity flows more naturally. Fresh responses appear more often.

Another test: how quickly do you return when you forget? Everyone forgets. Identification still happens. The difference is that return happens faster.

Eventually, even forgetting happens within remembering. Surface consciousness moves around. Depth remains still. That’s living FROM clarity.

“What about when I forget?”

You will forget. Regularly. Recognition doesn’t vanish just because you temporarily lose it.

The difference is that return happens faster. Being lost for days or weeks becomes minutes or hours. The trajectory changes.

The depth matures over time. Surface consciousness identifies with things. Deeper consciousness remains undisturbed. You know you’re dreaming even whilst the dream unfolds. That’s maturity.

“Is this the end of development?”

Martfotai is the beginning of conscious development. What came before was preparation. Now the actual development starts.

What follows is deepening, refinement, service. Infinite depth is available. You can stay on the surface. You can dive deeper still. There’s always more to explore.

Bennett wrote about Gurdjieff’s work: “The aim is to help people become truly human.”

That’s what continues.

Fully human. Fully present. Fully alive.

The depth never ends. The beginning never stops.

Conclusion: The Beginning

The story has ended. The path has begun.

You’re expressing rather than becoming.

This shift is absolute. A complete reversal of direction.

Life was never about arriving. The seeking itself was consciousness exploring separation. The journey was consciousness playing at forgetting itself. Now the game is over. You’ve discovered you never left.

What changes isn’t what you do. It’s what does the doing. Someone trying to become something transforms into wholeness expressing itself through a particular form. Your form. This body. This history. This set of capacities.

There’s nothing special about it. That’s what makes it profound. The recognition of ordinariness. You’re finally being human. Fully. Completely. Without the overlay of seeking.

The practices continue. They continue as expressions of what is. Like a musician who achieved mastery continues to play. Because the music wants to sound through this instrument.

Next week, Episode 24: “I Am the Thread.” Weaving all fragments into wholeness. Every “I” integrated. Nothing rejected. Everything belonging. The tapestry complete. We’ll explore how multiplicity resolves into unity without losing particularity. How all the parts that seemed separate reveal themselves as one fabric.

Here’s the invitation. Stop trying to become. Start expressing what you are. The path is under your feet. Already complete. Already walking. Already home.

Pause here. Feel the quiet after the story ends.

Remain here a moment, in the still field of recognition.

This stillness is the new beginning.

Visit martfotai.com for guided practices, extended teachings, and the weekly newsletter that supports this work. Join others walking this path. Share presence. Rest in recognition.

Thank you for listening. This is Martfotai. I’m Gary Eggleton.

May your expression be clear. May your presence serve life.

May you recognise: the new beginning was always now.