Fighting to Remember: Beyond the Kaleidoscope of States

If you are in a bad state you remember yourself in one way, and when in a good state you have to remember yourself in another way and it is often more difficult.

But in every case you do not give full belief to your state but to something you could be and indeed once were—something you have forgotten. In the act of Self-Remembering you distinguish yourself from the person you have become in life. And you distinguish yourself from your present thought and mood. Slowly it is given you to see that all this is not 'I'. Otherwise one simply remains one's random foolish thoughts and useless states—a kaleidoscope.

We must fight to remember ourselves. Struggle not to believe your states—only the state of Self-Remembering.

Maurice Nicoll, “A Short Note on Different Ways of Self-Remembering" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 3, p. 926)