Standing Amidst Life: The Power of Aim in the Work

Now unless we have some kind of aim the Work cannot influence our lives for then we are not surrounded by the Work, but remain open to all the influences of life. We can compare aim in the Work with something inside which we stand for the time being. If we remember our aim in the midst of life we feel at once that two quite different things are acting on us—namely, life, which will always make us behave mechanically and this aim in which we are standing for the moment, which prevents us from behaving entirely mechanically.

And although it may eventually fail we at least get the taste for a moment of what it might mean to stand within the influences of the Work, and so have a certain power over the influences of life acting on our mechanical Personality. This is why the Work emphasizes so much the necessity of having some kind of aim. It may be even a short aim for a few moments, a few hours, but that is better than nothing. Aim is on many scales.

Maurice Nicoll, “Commentary on Memory” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 3, p. 907)