If you have no idea how you behave, if you cannot see yourself at all, but are completely identified with yourself, then indeed all work on yourself is useless. You will have no idea what the Work is about or where its point of application lies—namely, in yourself. Remember, we are heavily guarded by buffers, attitudes, and pictures of ourselves.

But this Work tells you to observe yourself in the light of what the Work teaches, so that you can change yourself. That is, it starts inside you, like a spy, inside your heavily guarded fortifications. Yes, Observing 'I' is a spy.

Therefore the whole matter depends on sincerity with oneself. If you refuse to acknowledge to yourself what you observe, you will get into a lifeless, negative inner tangle. If, on the other hand, you privately acknowledge it, then even if you find yourself unable to change anything, you find gradually that you are being helped—not in the way you expected—just because you acknowledge.

Maurice Nicoll, “Note on Self-Remembering and Self-Acknowledgement” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 3, p. 1183).