Seeing Is Not Yet Doing

We can speak about our general level of Being as a level characterized by sleep and mechanicalness, but if we take our Being on a different scale —i.e. on a much smaller scale—our Being, although it is mechanical in the general sense, has within it gradations or degrees of less mechanical and more mechanical.

We therefore find ourselves in the position in this Work of being able to see better than we can do. In certain situations we have flashes of understanding in which perhaps we see quite clearly what we should do and yet we find it impossible to do what we have seen. We are dragged down by our average level of Being which is that which does. We see, for example, quite clearly in a moment of insight that we should behave in a certain way but when the practical moment comes we behave in the former way. This discrepancy is inevitable and must be endured with the very greatest patience.

Maurice Nicoll, “Commentary on One’s Level of Being" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 3, p. 846)