Willing What Must Be Done: A Journey into Self-Remembering

Today I will speak to you about one method of Self-Remembering in terms of the following Work-phrase: "Try to will what you have to do." I once said by way of commentary that when the telephone rings you must not let it take you to it but go to it. By this I mean, will it. To will what happens to you has a most marvellous issue in your own relationship to Second Force. Of course, if you are going to the telephone sighing and groaning and saying: "Why should I have to do this?" do you not see that you are making life full of Second Force?

On the other hand, if you will what you have to do, for instance, scrubbing the scullery, as I had to do at the Institute, peeling the potatoes, lighting the fire at dawn, and all the rest of it-—if, I say, you will it, there is no Second Force there. So if, therefore, I will what I have to do, I will reduce Second Force, but if I hate what I have to do I will increase Second Force possibly so much that I will become a nervous wreck.

Maurice Nicoll, “On the Formation of a Psychological Body” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 4, p. 1389)