If you begin to observe yourself, you will then, at that moment, become two—an observing side and an observed side. Unless you divide yourself in this way and struggle to make this division more and more distinct, you will never be able to shift from where you are, because, always taking everything that takes place in you as yourself, you will say ‘I’ to it all and so everything will then be I in you, and by identifying yourself with everything that happens in yourself, and taking it all as ‘I’, you will make it impossible to change everything, for everything will hide itself behind this illusion of ‘I’ and continue to live in you.
In fact, the whole crowd of people in you—the crowd of separate ‘I’s in you—both the useful and useless—will have, as it were, equal rights and be equally protected by you because you will be quite unable to distinguish them from one another since you take them all as yourself. This is merely one way of putting the situation within you if you remain convinced that you are one. Now you cannot begin to change until you are able as the result of self-observation to say: ‘This is not I’. As soon as you can begin to say this internally to something you observe in yourself, you begin to separate it from yourself. That is, you begin to take the feeling of ‘I’ out of it and the result is, eventually, and often only after a struggle, that what you have observed begins to move away.
Maurice Nicoll, “On Additional Means of Self-Observation II” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 1, p. 20-21).
Working Note
Today, whenever a reaction arises, quietly see if you can say, “This is not I,” not to reject it, but to make the small inner separation that allows observation to begin.
Today’s Aim
To strengthen the observing side without identifying with what is observed.
Notice
The instant you say “I am angry.”
The difference between seeing a reaction and becoming it.
How quickly one state claims to be your whole self.
The small space that appears when you simply observe.
A reaction weakening after it has been clearly seen.
Practice
Several times today, especially in moments of irritation, anxiety, or self-importance, pause inwardly. Observe the state without arguing with it or explaining it. Gently say, “This is not I.”
Do not try to push it away. Let the separation itself do the work.
Remember
What you can quietly observe no longer needs to carry your whole feeling of “I.”
The Weekly Aim
“I will observe the ‘I’ in me that wants to be right.”
