Just think how easily upset people are—I am not talking here about being criticized, which is a much more difficult thing. Are most people upset easily? They break a shoe-lace in the morning and instantly curse someone, their breakfast is not according to their taste, and they lose their temper, and the paper does not arrive in time and they get angry and go off and sit in trains fuming. Is not all this very small and absurd ? Is it the Work and its size ? Do you not think that this Work is about something bigger than all this ?
I remember saying once by way of commentary that if you want to know to what extent you have being, notice where you lose your temper or get negative, because that means that you have come to the end of your being. This is why Esotericism emphasizes patience so much, because the capacity for patiently enduring things and especially the capacity for enduring one another’s unpleasant manifestations is a sign of the quality and development of being. The less you can stand, the smaller the being.
Maurice Nicoll, “What it Means to Work on Oneself” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 4, p. 1280).
Working Note: For Today’s Inner Effort
Orientation: Observe how little things govern mechanical states.
What to Notice:
Small annoyances producing negative emotion.
Loss of patience over trivial events.
Inner complaining during ordinary inconveniences.
The feeling: “This should not happen to me.”
Work Effort for Today:
When irritated by something small, remain externally quiet.
Do not inwardly complain for ten seconds.
Endure the unpleasant manifestation consciously.
Remember the Work is greater than the event.
Remember: The place where you become negative marks the limit of being.
