The Work explains to us that we must have an AIM. It says that without an aim we cannot do the Work. We can listen to it, attend meetings, sit looking at the diagrams on the board, but this will not be the same as doing the Work. And unless we do the Work we will never understand what it is all about. This peculiar relationship to ourselves, that we call I, however, and conceive to be really and truly us, does not permit us to have personal aim in the Work.
Personal aim implies some aim you have about yourself. It is about changing yourself—about changing something you have observed in yourself. But the existence of Imaginary 'I', which is the Work formulation for this peculiar relationship we have to ourselves that we call I, prevents us from having any intelligent aim about ourselves. It acts as a powerful hypnotic. Owing to it we appear to be real persons, real men and women, unified and definite, with names, careers and positions, the same today as yesterday—solid and unshakable, undeniable facts. This is due to our fatal habit of sensual thinking with regard to everything. It would be a good experience for us to look in the glass and see no one there at all.
Maurice Nicoll, “Aim and Imaginary ‘I’” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 5, p. 1662).
Working Note: For Today’s Inner Effort
Orientation: See how Imaginary ‘I’ prevents real aim.
What to Notice:
Taking yourself as one solid, continuous “I”.
Speaking inwardly as if you are always the same.
Making plans to change without observing anything.
A sense of certainty about who you are.
Reactions that contradict this image.
Moments where this “I” weakens or shifts.
Work Effort for Today:
In a reaction, notice: “This is one ‘I’, not all of me.”
Do not follow it immediately.
Hold the sense of observing it from a slight distance.
Return to this several times today.
Remember: What I call “I” is not one, and not always the same.
