The Inner Murmur: How Complaint Undermines Inner Work

Now, if I will to do what I have to do, I will not make inner accounts against others. But if I do what I have to do and all the time think that someone else should do it and that it is unfair that I should have to do it, then I am making internal accounts. That is, I am internally considering.

And this will give rise to endless inner talking in myself —a sort of inner muttering and complaining and brooding, that will go on and on by itself, for the sign of the negative part of Emotional Center working is that it all goes on and on by itself—a sort of perpetual secret grievance that may spread over and darken all one's inner life.

Maurice Nicoll, “Internal Considering and Inner Talking” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 3, p. 1118)