Remembering oneself is just as if an actor on the stage who had become completely absorbed in the role they were playing suddenly remembered that they were merely acting the role and that they were really somebody else and not the part they were playing. This would mean that they would wake up. They would no longer take themselves as the hero or the king or the cardinal that they were playing. But what do we do? We are just like that actor who has forgotten that we are playing a role. We find ourselves fitted into the parts belonging to every phase of tragedy and comedy but we identify with everything. We do not see that we ourselves are something else, something different, and so we do not remember ourselves and so we are said in the Work to be asleep.
If we identify we cannot remember ourselves. The Work lays the greatest emphasis on Self-Remembering. It says that the most important thing we have to do is to remember ourselves and it adds that this can only be understood when we realize that we do not remember ourselves. Now if you are identified you are not remembering yourself. Some slight forms of identifying lead very speedily to bigger forms and of these one has to be careful, just as one has to be careful about all small things that start up in oneself innocently, so to speak, and very speedily lead into unpleasant places in ourselves such as very unpleasant forms of negative emotion. One has to be just as careful where one walks inside oneself, after a time, as where one walks in the world visible to one’s senses.
Maurice Nicoll, “On Self-Remembering” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 2, p. 737)
Working Note: For Today’s Inner Effort
Orientation: See identification as taking the role to be yourself.
What to Notice:
A small reaction that quickly becomes stronger.
Being “the one offended”, “the one explaining”, “the one in a hurry”.
Inner talking that defends the role you are in.
How easily you become the situation.
Moments where there is no separation at all.
Work Effort for Today:
Catch a small identification early.
Do not go further with it.
Pause and sense yourself apart from the role.
Let the reaction continue without taking it as “I”.
Remember: Do not become the role; something else can be present.
