Not Addition, but Transformation

Remember that the Work is not by addition to what you are, but by transformation of what you are. The Work is to change you, not to add something to you as you are, but to change completely what you are now. You cannot do this Work and remain the same. You cannot add the new wine to the old bottle of yourself. Ask yourselves, some of you, have you really changed at all, and do you really wish to change yourself? Or are you full of self-merit? And if you wish to change, what is it you have to change, from what you understand of the teaching of the Work?

Let me remind you of these words: "To act from the Work is to remember yourself." Then you will will the Work against your self-will. Even Christ himself said that He did not do His own will but the Will of Him that had sent Him. Do you see what esotericism means? The Work and all its careful and lovely teachings gives an opportunity of willing what it teaches and not acting from self-will. Self-will gets us nowhere. But meditate on what the Work teaches and notice whether you have ever, in your life, really acted from the Work—-that is, if you have heard, understood and obeyed it at any moment.

Maurice Nicoll, "The Work-Teaching About Man as a Self-Developing Organism" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 3, p. 938)