When You Cannot See What to Work On

Many people in the Work find difficulty in understanding what personal aim means, in regard to work on the side of their Being—that is, on the kind of people they mechanically are. Here is a definite stage in the Work. They cannot see what to work on in themselves. One reason is that they do not apply the ideas of the Work to themselves and do not try to do what the Work tells them to do.

They do not observe themselves from this angle. Being satisfied with themselves in life, they do not see the place, so to speak, where Work on themselves begins. They are not estimating themselves from what the Work says but from life-standards. But the Work-standards are quite different from life-standards. You may be all right in life but all wrong in the Work. That is why it is necessary to realize that the Work is a new way of thinking.

Maurice Nicoll, “Personal Aim" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 1, p. 173)