Swinging Selves and the Still Point

At present it can be said that we should try to see pendulums in ourselves and in life and try not to identify with the two ends of the swing.

Our moods are all hung on to pendulums. We should not trust them. Unfortunately we identify with them. We take them as ourselves. We say: "I feel", "I think", and so on.

We forget that "Real I" is in the center of the pendulum-swing, and we allow ourselves to swing between excitement and dejection, between enthusiasm and depression, between over-valuation and under-valuation, between conceit and humility, and so on, endlessly. In all this there is no center of gravity.

Maurice Nicoll, “The Opposites" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 1, p. 328)