What You Are and What You Think You Are: A Necessary Crisis

The side of what we actually are, and the side of what we pretend and imagine we are, are two contradictory sides. These two contradictory sides, however, exist in everyone without exception. The action of the Work, once it is beginning to be wished for, makes us become gradually aware of this contradiction—over many years.

Then we begin to have traces of real suffering—interspersed with all sorts of attempts at self-justifying and excuses and reactions—until we become, by inner taste, sick of self-justifying and excuses and so on. This marks a stage in the Work, a definite point in self-development.

Maurice Nicoll, “Stages of Awakening in the Work" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 2, p. 456)