Practical Aims for Transformation

Here are some more suggestions about aim:

• Find out what helps and what hinders you in working and what stops you from working.

• By keeping to Work aim we create will. You should weigh your aim and see what you are prepared to give up for it. Aim requires effort.

• Notice what you regard as a nuisance and make yourself passive for a time.

• Notice your inner doubts and try occasionally to answer them clearly from the Work-ideas. This is a very good occasional aim and makes you think.

• Observe your boredom and your tendency to speak of your life as dreary and so on. This is very important, as it prevents a lot of self- poisoning.

• When you have just criticized someone, go over what you said carefully and apply it to yourself. This neutralizes poison in you.

• When you are alone, do not let yourself think you are quite alone, and out of the Work. People allow themselves to change too much in this respect—they let go, so to speak.

Maurice Nicoll, “Personal Aim” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 1, p. 176)