Prayer and Self-Remembering: The Art of Inner Balance

The original idea of prayer was to put us in a state of Self-Remembering, to let go our troubles, or, as it were, to ask for help and acknowledge our powerlessness to do. But prayer, in this sense, is very difficult. To pray mechanically, or violently, or tragically, or out of duty, or piously, cannot give results. Prayer can only be answered when all three centers co-operate. And the three centers can only co-operate when they are "in focus" and this is when we are somewhere in the middle of the pendulum-swing and not one-sided.

The art of Self-Remembering is an attempt to put us somewhere in the middle of this swing. Being in the middle is to be in the state of Self-Remembering. Working on being identified is separating oneself so that one is not swung from one side to the other. It can be said that Self-Remembering is striving to be in Third Force and that non-identifying is striving not to be in the two opposite forces.

Maurice Nicoll, “The Opposites: Third Force” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 1, p. 333)