Feeling Inner Helplessness

The Work says that you as you are cannot do and that this is one of the things you have to become aware of through self-observation. If you still imagine you can do, if you still think you can always remember and keep your aim, then you will make no room for the Work in yourself and the Work will not be able to help you. You will not feel your inner helplessness. If you begin to feel your inner helplessness in a right way, you will feel the need of the Work to help you.

How can the Work help you? It can help you only if you begin to obey it. To feel the need of the Work is to feel you need something to guide you. If you are going to let something guide you, you must obey it. You must try to obey the Work. Of course, if you understand nothing, you cannot obey the Work. So you have to think what it is that the Work teaches and get it clearly into your mind. You have to think, you yourself, in your most private and real thoughts, what this Work is saying to you all the time. If you have thought in this deeper, intimate, private way, you will see that the Work tells you more about what not to do than about what to do.

Maurice Nicoll, "Note on Negative Emotions" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 1, p. 160)