Now let us take one of the ideas of the Work from which we are taught to observe ourselves and from which we must think and build up within ourselves a new point of view. There is the idea that Man, that Woman, cannot do. Have you ever thought about this idea? Remember that an idea is comparable with a very delicate and complicated machine which, if handled wrongly, may do you very great harm. If you were to handle a great dynamo wrongly without understanding its connections you might easily be killed.
Now this idea that we cannot do is like a great dynamo. It can furnish you with light or it can kill you. You can take it wrongly, as I have seen many people take it, as when they say some such thing as this: ‘Well, if we cannot do, what is the good of trying anything?’ This is a quite wrong understanding of the idea that we cannot do. ‘Everyone,’ said G. on one occasion, ‘is doing the only possible thing that he or she can do. Everything that is happening at this moment is going the only way it can possibly go.’ He was talking about mechanicalness. As long as we are asleep things will go the only way they can possibly go, by an infinite number of lines of cause and effect.
Maurice Nicoll, “Stages of Awakening in the Work” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 2, p. 554).
Working Note
Carry this idea quietly today, not as an excuse but as something to test: before blaming yourself or another, first observe the mechanicalness of the moment.
Today’s Aim
To observe mechanical reactions before imagining that they are conscious choice.
Notice
How quickly you say, “I decided.”
The automatic nature of familiar reactions.
The impulse to blame yourself or someone else.
How events unfold before you become aware of them.
The moment observation interrupts the usual sequence.
Practice
When something unexpected happens today, resist explaining it immediately. Instead, ask inwardly, “What is happening mechanically here?” Observe the chain of thoughts, emotions, and reactions without trying to alter them.
Let the observation come first. Any possibility of doing differently begins there.
Remember
What is seen as mechanical no longer has to remain entirely mechanical.
The Weekly Aim
“I will observe the ‘I’ in me that wants to be right.”
