Purification of the Emotional Center

I suppose that by now many of you begin to understand how much you enjoy your negative emotions. The Work says that to reach a higher level of Being there must be no negative emotions and that the negative part of the Emotional Center must be destroyed in us.

The purification of the Emotional Center must, practically speaking, destroy the Emotional Center in us as it is now, with all our little personal, sensitive, difficult reactions, our little personal feelings about everyone, our bundle of sensitive likes and dislikes—in short, our very small petty emotions, that we have as long as self-emotions govern us.

When you begin to serve this Work really you have to lose these petty, daily, small self-emotions and you can only do so by realizing that the Work is much bigger than you. You have to serve the Work and not yourself. The Work must not be a function of yourself but you must become a function of the Work.

Maurice Nicoll, “Commentary on Giving Up One’s Sufferings" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 3, p. 855)