What do you think real aim is as distinct from artificial aim? As I said, real aim can only spring out of long observation and real valuation of the Work. There is a phrase that Ouspensky used to use: ‘The Work will find a way for you.”This is a very good phrase to remember but it demands that you have a constant relationship to the Work in your soul, in your depths. It is the Work that changes us because the Work brings us a little closer, little by little, to Higher Centers, which are always telling us what to do and how to live our real lives and which we cannot hear owing to the traffic of life in the mechanical parts of centers.
The great aim was given in the Gospels: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven,” i.e. seek another actual level of being, promised to us both by the Gospels and by this Work… All the concepts and ideas of the Work are necessary to make real aim, and one thing above all others is necessary—that we are dissatisfied with our level of being and feel that there is the possibility of change.
Maurice Nicoll, “Commentary on the Meaning of Aim in the Work” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 2, p. 631)
Working Note: For Today’s Inner Effort
Orientation: Distinguish real aim from aim formed in False Personality.
What to Notice:
An aim that depends on results, recognition, or imagination.
Changing aim according to mood or circumstance.
Inner talking about your aim as something already possessed.
A quiet dissatisfaction with your level of being.
Moments when the Work is remembered without outer reason.
Work Effort for Today:
Form a small aim connected to the Work.
Observe what in you opposes it.
Do not follow the opposing voice.
Return to the aim without explanation.
Remember: Real aim comes from deeper dissatisfaction, not from self-love.
