I Can Work: A Shout from Real I

It is necessary to say sometimes: "I can work". To say to oneself: "I can work" is a good thing and gives a little shock to oneself. It scatters those stealthy negative 'I's that tend to come in through one's unguarded spots.

It is necessary to renew the sense of the truth of the Work continually in one's most interior, private, real, almost wordless thought.

At the Institute I remember Gurdjieff once making us all shout at the top of our voices: “I can work.“

Maurice Nicoll, "6144: Great Amwell House, January 17, 1948” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 3, p. 1109) and “Commentary on the Mind” (Vol. 2, p. 549)