To return to this early formation of the Work in oneself—it can be compared, as it were, with a small new Being gradually being organized in oneself whose will is scarcely enough to be felt as yet. Now we can establish in ourselves with certainty that to take a life-situation in a Work-way rather than in a mechanical way changes our relation to the life-situation. This is one of the things that we can see for ourselves is so. That is, we can be certain about it. In the earlier days of this teaching, this point was often insisted on— namely, “What can you be certain about in the Work so far?” Start from that. When we have no certainties in the Work, we have no center of gravity, no point in the Work, as it is called. We have not started, or rather, this new thing has not started. It used often to be said that for some years we can only work through borrowed force, but that the time will come when this borrowed force, coming from another, is gradually withdrawn, until one has to find one’s own force to continue.
It is at this stage that it is so necessary to establish certainties in oneself concerning the Work. This demands a fresh reviewing at intervals of all the ideas of the Work and gaining another crop of meaning from them. It is only from the living ideas of the Work that has life in itself that one’s own Work-’I’s can be kept alive. This new thing, this new Being, has to be nourished until it is strong enough to maintain its own existence. For this reason we have to act in such a way as to protect this Being in ourselves and nourish it. All new insights, observations and experiences that we can establish for ourselves as certainties nourish it. It is particularly the inner perception of the truth of one or another of the Work-ideas that nourishes it. For through this the side of the Will is drawn into this new thing. When you will to do this Work your Will passes through the knowledge you have of it and the two increase.
Maurice Nicoll, “On Keeping the Work Alive in Oneself” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 3, p. 844)
For your reflection: As this day unfolds, can you meet one life-situation in a Work-way rather than mechanically—and let that small act feed what is growing in you?
