I Can Work

We must remember that we can do this Work. What would be the good of teaching a system of Work that no one could do? Gurdjieff once said: "All call out in loud voices and say: I can work." We did this and I think we all got force from it. So every one of you say to yourselves sometimes just this phrase: "I can work," because this is what we can do. I can remember myself according to my own level; I can separate from negative emotions according to my own state and my own level; I can stop making internal accounts; I can practice non-identifying; I can stop fantasies; I can stop self-justifying; and so on.

And even if it is only for a short time yet you are working if you can do this and you will change your level of Being, not downwards, but upwards, not outwards, but inwards, and through this you will come under different influences, better influences, influences in other words that belong to your next level of Being, your next telegraph wire, this next level of Being close to you and above you. But you will never get up to this telegraph wire, this next level of Being, unless you practice this Work and you cannot practice it unless you begin to feel its good and so begin to value it as one of the most important things you have ever met in your life, because if you do not value this Work and if you do not see that it is about something other than what you have ever done before in your life, it will simply pass into your ordinary level of Being, your mechanical Being, and will become twisted and distorted and useless.

Maurice Nicoll, "On Changing Our Level of Being" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 2, p. 728-729)