Work on Oneself

There are three lines of Work: Work on oneself, Work in relation to others, and Work in connection with the Work itself and the self in relation to it.

Unless a person Works on himself, the second line of Work remains theoretical and imaginary. Work on oneself brings in all of what this Works teaches in a practical manner and is a necessary starting point. Work on ourselves helps us understand how we can live more consciously in everyday issues. Generally, we are continually identified with something. Life conquers us throughout the day and it extracts all conscious power from us. It is necessary to discover something in us that prevents this from happening, that is, prevent the events of our lives from drawing out all our strength through identification and internal consideration.

This Work states that because of our mechanicalness, our strength is drawn from us by negative states, worry, anxiety and all varieties of identification. That is why we are told that we must remember ourselves, thus stopping the loss of strength. We do the most stupid things as if they were enormously important and suffer the illness of sleeping humanity: identification. Gurdjieff says it is the worst disease in the world, and that when a person is identified he is asleep, hypnotized.

One of the main ideas that Gurdjieff introduced is that human beings are capable of awakening through the act of self-remembering. This event causes a shock, the first conscious shock. It is through this shock that we move away from the hypnotic sleep of humanity on earth. This is the heart of Gurdjieff’s teaching, but the rest of ideas introduced by this Work are also important: self-observation, work with negative emotions, honesty with oneself, internal consideration, the theory of buffers, imagination, etc.

The first shock or self-remembering is about the way in which we receive the impressions that reach us. It is said that there are three types of food for human beings: ordinary food, air and impressions. The Work teaches that the human machine is given a mechanical shock through breathing and that it is possible to give it another shock that is not mechanical. This is called the first conscious shock and it is what distinguishes a human being who is asleep, immersed in life, dominated by the influences, from one who begins to awaken. The human machine can live without being given this shock. Then he only serves the purpose of organic life, the purpose of nature. But it is said that man was created as an organism capable of self-development, able not only to fulfil the purpose of nature, but also another order of laws. But only we ourselves can provide this action through conscious effort in Work.