The Unveiling of Chief Feature

Suppose that you have observed yourself for some considerable time and you begin to see yourself over the period of time acting in a certain way. You see how something starts, leads to something else, and so on. In fact, you see yourself in action, in movement, so to speak, inner and outer, in some typical way of behavior. This is a photograph.

Now when these photographs begin to form themselves the next stage is that one notices flashes of insight into one's life that go far back. Then one begins to become more conscious of one's level of Being, of the kind of person one has been all this time and has never seen owing to the action of buffers. Now is the time when it begins to be possible to gain some idea of what one's Chief Feature is.

Maurice Nicoll, “Commentary on Chief Feature" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 2, p. 509-10)