One point that the Work mentions is that we must observe that we do not remember ourselves. For that reason everything goes wrong in this world. Yet we are taught that we were made to remember ourselves, and, being brought up amongst sleeping people, we forgot ourselves and absorbed the psychology of sleeping people. Therefore we have to rediscover ourselves. We have forgotten ourselves. What we take as ourselves is, in fact, the growth of False Personality, which is acquired from the influence of life and so causes us to be far from what we really are.
And yet there is, overhead, so to speak, Real I—that is, what we really are and have forgotten. The return to this feeling of I is one of the great objects of this teaching. Only by stripping ourselves slowly, layer by layer, coat by coat, of what is not ourselves, can we begin to feel the vibrations of Real I. Now you cannot begin to remember yourself unless you realize, each in your own way, that at every moment of the day you forget yourself and so do not remember yourself. Speaking from one side, about this great and many-sided subject of Self-Remembering, one might say here that a man, a woman, who do not remember themselves, identify with everything that is happening to them.
Maurice Nicoll, “Self-Remembering” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 4, p. 1333).
Working Note: For Today’s Inner Effort
Orientation: Observe one moment of forgetting yourself today.
What to Notice:
Being completely taken by an event.
Identifying with praise or blame.
Acting from False Personality.
The Work disappearing from mind.
Work Effort for Today:
Remember yourself in the middle of one ordinary event.
Pause without outward display.
Sense the body briefly.
Let the event continue without identifying.
Remember: I have forgotten myself. Remember now before identifying.
For Your Reflection:
When do you become completely identified with what is happening?
A difficult conversation, an unexpected delay, a passing mood—any one of these can seem to become our whole world. But there are moments when we catch ourselves before we are entirely swept away.
That small recognition creates a little space, enough to remember ourselves and return with a different quality of presence.
How does this show up in your own experience? Join the conversation in the comments below.
