As you know, we all take ourselves for granted. And what does this mean? It means that we take ourselves as being fully conscious, capable of making every right adaptation to circumstances—in short, of having no machine laid down in us at all. We are quite certain that we have no fixed attitudes, ways of talking, no fixed tendencies, or even no habits. We may admit to a few physical habits but I do not think that anyone easily admits to having any emotional or mental habits. But the Work teaches that we have habits in Intellectual and Emotional Centers that are far more important than physical habits and far more significant.
People grow up as Anglicans, as Roman Catholics, as Presbyterians, as Quakers, as Methodists, as Atheists, as Agnostics, or even as scientists, and they are perfectly certain that their minds and their emotions are quite free from mechanicalness—that is, that they are open-minded. All this has eventually to be made conscious and overcome so that we begin to be universal in outlook and in our feelings. But it cannot be overcome unless your self-observation is keen and full of integrity, otherwise you will not shift from where you are and you will remain a mechanical man or woman in life—that is, you will not change—and so will not understand what the second education means, the real University that you have to attend to become healed, through External Considering… To regard yourself as mechanical is extremely difficult and extremely painful but it will change your whole relationship to other people.
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: Observe mechanicalness in yourself before observing it in others.
What to Notice:
Fixed emotional reactions.
Mechanical certainty in your opinions.
Habitual ways of thinking and speaking.
Resistance to seeing yourself as mechanical.
Work Effort for Today:
When a fixed reaction appears, pause inwardly.
Say: this is a mechanical habit.
Do not immediately follow the reaction.
Remember the aim of becoming more conscious.
Remember: To see your own mechanicalness begins real change.
