Passive Effort: The Art of Not Identifying

All effort in the Work is passive. Self-development starts from passive Do. Effort is something very quiet and deep and clearly seen. It is not noisy, not pretence. It is not contracting muscles and thrusting chins out.

Effort in the Work is about effort on your inner states, where you are in your psychological country. All effort in the Work is about becoming more conscious of yourself to yourself. All effort in the Work is about seeing where you are inside—in what place internally in this vast psychological country—and separating yourself from the innumerable bad places in that country.

Effort in the Work is about being sincere to oneself and so knowing what one's motives really are, and not pretending. Effort in the Work is about remembering oneself and not becoming at every moment identified with everything and everybody. Effort in the Work is to stop inner talking.

Effort in the Work is not to let negative impressions fall where they mechanically would fall. Effort in the Work is not to pile up internal accounts against others, but to try to see in yourself what you blame in others—as, for example, unkindness.

Maurice Nicoll, “On Realizing that One is Not Conscious" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 3, p. 1005)