Seeing Your Level of Being

Can you see your level of Being at all yet? Can you see where you stand in the world of Being yet? Do you understand about levels of Being? How can we change our level of Being? What is it we have to do to change this level of Being that we speak of as all having? The whole Work is about changing our Being and giving us methods as to how to change it.

We spoke briefly of the Sermon on the Mount as being a practical illustration of how to change one's level of Being, and we took the first saying: "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven". Now bliss is a wonderful thing to touch. The Work says that we must practice non-identifying, and non-identifying begins with not identifying with yourself. Now if you are full of yourself you are rich in spirit, but if you begin to observe yourself through what the Work teaches about identifying you will become poor in spirit—that is, you will not identify with yourself so much. What will the result be? You will find what for you is bliss. You will find an enormous relief, a strange kind of happiness in no longer having to keep up the idea of yourself with which you were formerly so identified.

Maurice Nicoll, “On Changing our Level of Being" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 2, p. 727)