Now in relating yourself to other people—that is, beginning to think what the second line of Work means and to apply it—what you have to begin from is the idea that you yourself are a machine. Only through self-observation carried out rightly can you begin to see your own machine, your own mechanicalness. However, as we are we take ourselves and other people as being fully conscious, as capable of independent action, as not being ruled by past associations—in short, as not being machines. So in consequence we blame people very much for not behaving to us as we think they ought to behave and through this we start trains of inner talking and negative emotions.
Probably you all know how we are always very disappointed in other people. We expect our husbands and our wives, our sisters and cousins and aunts, and our friends, to be quite different from what they are, and all this lays down a kind of secret grievance in us, a form of Internal Considering, which cannot be cured unless we understand about mechanicalness. It is like a typewriter finding fault with a mincing-machine. It is like complaining that a pair of gloves of a different size from your own does not fit you. We have to start by seeing our own mechanicalness.
Maurice Nicoll, “The Second Line of Work” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 3, p. 781).
Working Note: For Today’s Inner Effort
Orientation: Begin from the fact of your own mechanicalness.
What to Notice:
Secret disappointment in other people.
Inner talking about how others should behave.
Mechanical blame.
Forgetting your own machine while observing another’s.
Work Effort for Today:
When grievance begins, remember: this person is mechanical.
Then remember: so am I.
Stop the inner complaint for a moment.
Observe the reaction without identifying.
Remember: See your own machine before blaming another machine.
