Small aim must serve great aim

Let us say that a person makes a small aim to cook an excellent dinner. There are so many ways in which that excellent dinner can be cooked —I mean, psychological ways, not ordinary ways. Now suppose you have made a big and real aim that you are going to try to remember to act in life without identifying and that you are going to try to practice this great Work-exercise at least several times a day.

Then, of course, in taking this small aim of cooking an excellent dinner in conjunction with this general and real aim, it would really be one example and you would have to cook it without being identified and if anything went wrong or someone put in something wrong, you would have to separate from those 'I's that will start to become negative.

Maurice Nicoll, “On Obeying the Work" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 3, p. 821-822)