The Invisible Mirror: Seeing Your Own Cares

Do you observe when you are full of cares and anxieties and thoroughly identified with life? Has it ever occurred to you that this is one of the things that you have to observe? And has it ever occurred to you that this is a sign of your Being, of what you are—for example, that you are a person whose level or quality of Being is such that he or she is always full of cares and worries?

Now some might suppose that this is quite easy to observe. Certainly it is quite easy to observe in another person but it is extraordinarily difficult to observe in oneself. It is extraordinarily difficult to observe that one is worrying and full of cares and anxieties, and realize that it is due to the kind of person one is in regard to one's level of Being.

Maurice Nicoll, "Work on Being” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 2, p. 704)