Transforming Impressions Consciously

Now suppose you are sufficiently interested and sufficiently conscious to notice how impressions fall on you mechanically, and suppose that you have sufficient valuation of the Work to wish to transform these impressions, which means not letting them simply fall on their usual place, exciting your usual dislikes and hatreds.

Now suppose you apply a Work idea of this kind at the moment when you notice that someone is making a customary negative impression on you. If you understand something of what it means when it is said in the Work that people are mechanical, then you will not accept the impression so easily. You will realize that it is not the person's fault. You will realize that the person always does this, always says this, because he is a machine. At the same time you see your own mechanicalness and how you are constantly doing the same thing.

Maurice Nicoll, "The Digestion of Impressions” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 1, p. 338-9)