The first stages of the Work are sometimes called "cleaning the machine." The Work tells you more about what not to do than about what to do. Now people often ask: "What am I to do?" On that side the Work says only two definite things: "Remember yourself" and "Observe or notice yourself." That is what you must try to do.

But on the other side the Work says many things about what you must not do. It says, for example, that you must try to struggle against being identified, try to struggle with mechanicalness, with mechanical and wrong talking, with every kind of internal considering, with every kind of self- justifying, with all the different pictures of yourself, with your special forms of imagination, with mechanical disliking, with all varieties of your self-pity and self-esteem, with your jealousy, with your hatreds, with your vanity, your inner falseness, with your lying, with your self- conceit, with your attitudes, prejudices, and so on. And it expressly speaks of struggling with your negative emotions taken as a whole.

Maurice Nicoll, “A Note on Negative Emotions” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 1, p. 160-161)