You must all have understood by now that False Personality, which leads the way by means of two giants, Pride and Vanity, is always behaving in such a way that there is no truth in what you do. The more you go with False Personality, with your imagination of yourself, governed by Pride and Vanity, the more will you get distant from the internal part of yourself called Essence which can only grow through what is true and what is good. Now when you see you are in the wrong—that is, when you get a little behind False Personality with all its Vanities and Prides—you take force backwards or interiorly into yourself and these moments of confession or separation from what is false will cause Essence to grow because you give it energy that would otherwise have gone into self-justifying.
You know a man or woman who is always expostulating and saying: ‘I did not mean that—in fact, I never said it.’ In such a case there is no internal perception of the truth. The False Personality is served by lawyers of a low class who always say that you are right and the other person is wrong. But if you have an interior self-observation and that is sincere, you know that you are wrong and the whole thing is your fault. Now False Personality would never admit this, owing to its low-class lawyers that we employ which are really self-justifiers, self-twisters.
Maurice Nicoll, “Reversal” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 4, p. 1378).
Working Note
Today, when you notice the impulse to defend yourself, do not follow it at once; see whether there is a quieter place in you that already knows the truth.
Today’s Aim
To distinguish sincere self-observation from self-justification.
Notice
The instant you begin explaining yourself.
The need to appear right.
How quickly blame moves outward.
A quiet recognition that comes before the excuses.
The relief of not having to defend an image.
Practice
If you make a mistake today, resist correcting the story before observing the fact. Remain with the simple perception of what happened without adding explanations or inward arguments.
Let that moment of honesty be enough. Do not force remorse or self-criticism. Simply withhold energy from self-justifying and allow it to return inward.
Remember
Truth enters where self-justification falls silent.
The Weekly Aim
“I will observe the ‘I’ in me that wants to be right.”
