Work Concept Overview

Below is an overview of Work concepts. This connected network of concepts is only begining to be built up, much is missing for now and it is not to be taken as complete or even partially so!

Work Concept List

1st Line of the Work - Work on/for one's self. - consists of Self-Observation
- consists of Exercises
- consists of Forgiving Debts, Overcoming the Past
- consists of Applying the Work Practically to Oneself
- consists of External Considering
- consists of Self-remembering, Remembering Yourself
- consists of sfhksahfasdfs
- consists of Aim
- consists of Overcoming of Negative Emotions
- consists of Sacraficing our Suffering
- consists of Creating Alarm Clocks
- consists of Liberation from Unnecessary Laws
- consists of Being Present
- consists of Movements, The
- consists of Reading Gurdjieff
- requires understanding of Obstacles to Awakening
- requires understanding of Fantasy Work
- requires understanding of New Language

2nd Line of the Work - Work with others in the Work or in Work Groups to help their development along. - consists of Realizing that others are like us and are not always the same personality.
- consists of Dealing with others so that they understand us.
- consists of Making efforts to get to know others in the work.
- consists of Seeing others distinctly.
- consists of External Considering
- consists of Encouraging and Educating Others
- consists of Group Work

3 Forces -
Full Definition: First Force, Second Force, Third Force
Active, Passive, and Neutralizing
Holy Affirming, Holy Denying, and Holy Rectifying
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit
Brahma, Vishnu, Schiva
Action, Resistance, (?the Work?)

3rd Line of Work - Work in relation to the Work's Aim. Work for the sake of the Work. Perpetuating the Work's transmission. Enabling the Work to continue to evolve as it needs. - consists of Getting in contact w/ the 3rd ( Neutralizing ) Force
- consists of Helping those teaching the Work and assisting in the transmission

A Person is the combination of their Essence, Personality, and Body - - consists of Essence, Being
- consists of Personality ( True and False )

Ahl-i-Haqq - Seekers of Truth Club -
Full Definition: For members of the SOT club God is truth and the club places the search for truth above all other life aims.

Aim - 3 types: Imaginary, Invented, Real
2 steps: Formulation of, Payment for - consists of Imaginary Aim
- consists of Invented Aim
- consists of Real Aim

When we notice what keeps us Asleep, we are nearer Real Aim.
Start with a clearly defined Aim and work consciously at it for a long time.
Will Deviate unless we call together and connect all associated Truths and re-stimulate Aim
One man's Aim is not anothers - As each person in unique in their development, their path forward MUST vary.

Ancient Prayer - The knowledge of true prayer was lost around the time of the Babalonians. They did not incorporate it into the Legominism becasue it was such a part of common knowledge at the time.

Women can activate space for prayer. Only men can make and direct prayer. - Women are denying force for preperation of sacred ground, but men become denying force for prayer. In order to send it upward, one must make denying force below. In objective sense, woman's place is in the real home. Only in this way can women become women as they ought to be, and men become men as they also ought to be.

Applying the Work Practically to Oneself - Not merely reading and talking about it, but DOING the Work. Observing oneself, seeing our automatic association, attitides, reactions, etc. - consists of Self-Observation

Associations - How one thought automatically 'rings-up' another, then it another, etc. - consists of Automatic Associations

Attention - Our degree of attention in any moment is a function of what part of centre we are operating from. Attention can be cltivated and controlled with practice, will, and effort.

One important aspect of the study of centers is the types of attention. The Work teaches that there are three types of attention possible for each of the centers:
no attention/wandering attention
attention held by the object
attention held by effort; directed attention

The Work teaches that the higher bodies discussed above are only a possibility for man. In order to form higher bodies, the correct type of effort is required. Directing dispassionate attention to each of the centers (also known as "self observation"), is one such effort. Wandering attention, or attention held by an object, are insufficient for true self observation. They are also insufficient for obtaining free will, which is one component of the higher bodies. Wandering attention and attention held by the object are sufficient for the first body, the Material Body. In other words, the Material Body does not need directed attention in order to function and fulfill its role in the Ray of Creation.
Full Definition:
This system teaches that we don't have just one brain but at least three, namely the intellectual brain (centre), the emotional brain, the instinctive brain and moving brain.

Each centre is further divided into parts, i.e. each centre has a mechanical part, an emotional part and an intellectual part. We are told that we can know which part of centre we are using by studying attention.

With no or very little attention we are in mechanical parts, for example when something becomes effortless. When our attention is held by the subject, i.e. when we are interested or excited about something we are in emotional parts. When we hold and direct our attention with effort and will on what we are doing, thinking about or feeling, we are in intellectual parts.

On the whole we operate mainly from mechanical parts of centres, and for some functions like driving that's appropriate. However, because we use mechanical parts with little or no attention for most daily tasks, we often make mistakes in what we're doing. For example we forget an important ingredient in the cake mixture, or muddle up the photocopying and staple the wrong sheets together. Consequently, we often expend more energy than necessary trying to correct our mistakes or becoming negative at the extra work we have created for ourselves, which with more attention we could avoid.

Attention Drains / Distractions -
Full Definition: Emotions
eg. Anger at not being treated as we want.
Actual Interrution
eg. Phone call, Visitor, Noises, Accidents (spills),
Idea / Train of Thought
Daydreaming / Imagining If
Song in Head / Repeating a Word or Sound
Reliving Past / Recoloring Past / Re-evaluation Past Actions
Biological
Normal: Hunger, Thirst, Elimination
Abnormal: Pain
Zoning Out

The new attention is always on the Past or Future, not the Now. BE Present!

Attitudes - The way we take things.
Full Definition: If we can see our consciousness as the removing of layers and layers, rather like the peeling of an onion skin, we realize how almost imperceptible are the changes that take place within us. First we have to eradicate the groove that had been created in the form of attitude. We are not really conscious of how unbelievably deep these attitudes have become and how difficult it is to change them. Gurdjieff calls them buffers and says that a buffer cannot be removed until we are ready for its removal. In fact, what is called a freak-out in modern psychedelic terms is when somebody has a buffer removed before they are prepared to see themselves from a different level. The best seller, The Greening of America talks of these buffers in the form of consciousness one and two to remove the buffers that are necessary before one can move to even consciousness three.

Automatic Associations -

Awareness of Immortality -

Being Present - Out of Imagination

Being Present - Immersing yourself in the NOW. Observing and being aware what is going on around you. Not being absorbed in thoughts of past or future, planning, worrying, regretting or identifying. - requires understanding of Attention Drains / Distractions

Body Types -

Brain Cells - Glial Cells - Glial cells, commonly called neuroglia or simply glia (Greek for "glue"), are non-neuronal cells that provide support and nutrition, maintain homeostasis, form myelin, and participate in signal transmission in the nervous system. In the human brain, glia are estimated to outnumber neurons by about 10 to 1.[1]

Full Definition: Glial cells provide support and protection for neurons, the other main type of cell in the nervous system. They are thus known as the "glue" of the nervous system. The four main functions of glial cells are to surround neurons and hold them in place, to supply nutrients and oxygen to neurons, to insulate one neuron from another, and to destroy pathogens and remove dead neurons.

Brain Cells - Neurons -

Bridging Intervals -

Buffers - Mental blocks that keep us from seeing our inner contradictions. Attitudes, once fixed enough become Buffers. Buffers, once removed CAN NOT BE RESTORED!!!!!
Full Definition: He is shielded from seeing himself as he is through artificial appliances which Gurdjieff called ``buffers,'' which prevent him from feeling the contradictions which exist within him, as the buffers on a railroad car cushion the shocks when the train starts, stops, suddenly changes speed, or goes around a sharp curve.
- requires Attitudes

Can be created by Attitudes that become very fixed and automatic.

Centers - Centers Include Moving, Instinctive, Sexual, Magnetic, Emotional, and Intellectual as well as Higher Emotional and Higher Intellectual. - consists of Moving Center
- consists of Intellectual Center
- consists of Higher-Emotional center
- consists of Higher-Intellectual Center
- consists of Magnetic Centre
- consists of Instinctive Center
- consists of Sex Center
- include Emotional Center

The relative weight of the centers is not the same in the psychic life of different individuals. - Gurdjieff spoke of three different types of men: man number one, in whom the moving and instinctive centers predominate; man number two, dominated by the emotional center; and man number three, in whose constitution the intellectual center takes the lead.

Chief Feature -

Lynchpin of Ego Structure
Organizing principle of a person's Personality
Primary Obstacle to Awakening
a BIG charactaristic, yet we are always blind to it. It is Buffered from us.
An overall pattern coloring all our behavior and reactions.
Often perfectly obvious to family and friends but not seen by us.
Our most obvious, and pervasive, feature.
It often annoys us when we see it in others more than anything else does. - It's what we Hate others for doing and can't understand why they can't stop or notice.

Conscience - Conscience has nothing to do with the morality which is a part of man's conditioning and which touches him only at the level of mechanical associations. It is a touchstone which unifies his disconnected parts and can lead to the development of his hidden possibilities.

Consciousness of One's Self -

Corpus Collosum - Huge bundle of nerve fibers connecting the 2 hemispheres. Begins development after object constancy, around age 1, and becomes complete between ages 3 and 4.

Cosmology & Laws -

Creating Alarm Clocks -

Dabbel - Nott writes (Journmey: 96) that after Gurdjieff's car accident he no longer used the term ‘negative emotions': he used ‘dabbel'/'devsl' for the denying part.

Daydreams / Fantasies / Phantasies -

Dealing with others so that they understand us. - Dealing with others according to on their individual quirks such that they understand us, rather than our not taking how they will take things into account and having no understanding.

Development of Conscience -

Development of True Personality -

Disunity -

Efforts -

Effort must be intelligent, and it must be based on the directions of the Work and what we have Self-Observed in relation to the Work.

Ego (Freudian) - - is part of Personality ( True and False )
- include Ego Defense Mechanisms
- include Ego Defense Mechanisms

Ego is the personality, the falseness in onself, what one has acquired from culture, education, and early family life experiences.
Based on Reality principles. Understands the real world and takes other people into accoint.
The Ego trys to meed the needs of the Id while taking the reality of the situation into account.
The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions

Ego Defense Mechanism - Compensation -

Ego Defense Mechanism - Denial - Saying the obvious is NO so. It has not happened, does not exist, etc.

Ego Defense Mechanism - Displacement - Placing blame and hostilities onto a less threatening or more available substitute than the actual cause.

Ego Defense Mechanism - Dissociation -

Ego Defense Mechanism - Fantasy -

Ego Defense Mechanism - Idealisation -

Ego Defense Mechanism - Identification -

Ego Defense Mechanism - Intellectualization - Avoiding unpleasant or unwanted emotions by focusing on facts and intellectual aspects of the problem.

Ego Defense Mechanism - Introjection -

Ego Defense Mechanism - Inversion -

Ego Defense Mechanism - Postponement - ?? Is this a new /valid mechanism ?? - The putting off till 'later' that which is unpleasant to deal with now. Seems to me it might be a form of conscious supression?

Ego Defense Mechanism - Projection - Seeing in others what you are blind to in yourself and yet that you usually 'hate'.

Ego Defense Mechanism - Rationalization - Creating a FALSE, yet logical, rational, and possibly believable reason in place of the actual reason.

Ego Defense Mechanism - Reaction Formation - Believing the opposite of the truth, that would cause anxiety.

Ego Defense Mechanism - Regression - Reverting to an earlier stage of development.

Ego Defense Mechanism - Repression - Pulling of an anxiety provoking thought or memory into the unconsious.

Ego Defense Mechanism - Somatisation -

Ego Defense Mechanism - Splitting -

Ego Defense Mechanism - Sublimation - Acting out socially taboo acts in a substitutive, more acceptable way.

Ego Defense Mechanism - Suppression - Pushing into the unconscious.

Ego Defense Mechanism - Undoing -

Elementals (Sufi: muwakkals) - Thoughts created, given birth, by man. These entities live and have a certian purpose to accomplish.

Emergence of Essence -

Emotional Center - This faculty makes beings capable of feeling emotions. This brain is dispersed throughout the human body as nerves which have been labeled as the "nerve nodes" . The biggest concentration of these nerves is in the solar plexus. Seat of Will. Primarily consists of Negative Emotions. We do not know true positive emotions without the Higher Emotional Center. Love of the normal Emotional center can turn to hate in a flash, but true Love from the Higher Emotional Center can never become negative.
Full Definition: Listen to classical music and putting your attention on it, try and feel the effects it has on you, what emotions it evokes, what pictures it evokes, for example waves or rolling countryside.

Try and listen to your own tones of voice (and others), how they can sound hurtful and blunt at times. Try and work with changing your tone to a more appropriate one.

Try and recall painful events in your life as they actually happened, without distorting what you or another person said. This requires great inner sincerity with yourself.

Try and show considerateness for other people. For example, if you're reading a book with someone, move the book over so they can read it easily too and hold it upright so they're not reading at an angle. When you can see what you can do to help another person and do it, it helps to reduce the 'me' or 'mine' or 'self' aspect of small emotions.
- has Negative Emotions

The emotional center is responsible for all the varieties of emotional states, positive and negative, - but the negative states arise only through mixing of the energy of the emotional center with the energy of the instinctive center. It is possible to develop an attention which is capable of discriminating among and separating these energies.

Encouraging and Educating Others -

Energy Parasites / Vampires / Mind Parasites -

Enneagram - - consists of Law of Ninefoldness
- consists of Law # 2 - Law of Three / Law of Triads
- consists of Law # 3 - Law of Seven / Law of Shock / Law of the Octave

Essence, Being - That which is man's own. Certain preferences, likes and dislikes, qualities and capacities that one is born with and that can not be changed. Includes a person's Personality Type.
Full Definition:
Human machine born with an essence: the structure of the lower centres, innate capacities, talents, and tendencies, the planetary body.
Structure, capacities, strengths, and defects of lower centres belong to essence.
Born with centres empty.
Some aspects of essence might survive death of the planetary body, at least temporarily.
- opposite of False Personality

Everyone is two people - the person we suppose ourselves to be, and what we really are. - - requires understanding of Self-Observation

Only Self-Observation shows us this.

Exercises -

External Considering - Taking other's into consideration for their sake. Not keeping accounts of who owes or did what. - opposite of Internal Considering

False Personality - That which is not man's own. Acquired through life by means of culture, education, imitation of others, etc. Can be broken, masteredm, and controlled through decades of difficult personal work. Involves: taking offense,
Full Definition:
A subset of personality.
is acquired by the law of accident.
is composed of layers of masks.
is based on imagination and identification.
cannot make efforts.
feeds self-love.
buffers impressions.
is your imaginary picture of yourself, your `Imaginary I'.
arranges circumstances to evoke itself.
fights back against your Work I's.
contains the expression of negative and unpleasant emotions.
must become a passive force rather than an active force in the static triad of your psychology.
is the source of buffers.
contains features.
is one of the chief obstacles to awakening.
can be overcome only by remembering yourself always and in everything
- opposite of Essence, Being

Fantasy Work -
Full Definition: Seekers are often deluded by maya after they leave the machine of life. This deception takes many forms, but the goal of all is to distract and prevent your onward journy of truth. What ends up happening to many seekers is that they involve themselves with Fantasy Work instead of actual Work.
- is part of Maya / Devil / Father of Lies / Spirit of the Lie
- requires understanding of Left Hand Path
- include Fantasy Work Trap - False Messiah
- include Fantasy Work Trap - Fossilized Organization
- include Fantasy Work Trap - Hunt the Guru
- include Fantasy Work Trap - Personal Salvation
- include Fantasy Work Trap - Starry-eyed Devotee
- include Fantasy Work Trap - Sunday-Go-To-Meetings Syndrome
- include Fantasy Work Trap - Supper-Effort Syndrome
- include Fantasy Work Trap - Think-Talk w/o Doing
- opposite of Work, the

Fantasy Work Trap - False Messiah - Opposite of Fantasy Work Trap - Devotee. Those that fall into this trap think they are Masters. - is part of Left Hand Path

Fantasy Work Trap - Fossilized Organization - The passing on of title after the Master dies. Often the even old, origional pupils may have long ago lost the true meaning and real understanding of much of the Work.

Fantasy Work Trap - Hunt the Guru - Always looking to the true teacher that will hand them everything on a platter.

Fantasy Work Trap - Personal Salvation - Subtle and dangerous. The curse of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Turns religions into cults of grovelling devotees imploring their god to forgive their sins and grant them something vaguely described as personal salvation. Salvation form what??

Fantasy Work Trap - Starry-eyed Devotee - Seeing the Master as one who can do no wrong, placing him on a pedistal. Taking words as litteral even if they do nto make sence that way. Victims of credulity and suggestibility. - requires understanding of Left Hand Path

Fantasy Work Trap - Sunday-Go-To-Meetings Syndrome - The attenting of meetings out of habit. Not being able to Work on oneself outside of the organization.

Fantasy Work Trap - Supper-Effort Syndrome - Thsi trap is subtle becasue it comes close to the truth. The Work does involve great effort, but it is a very specific and special kind of effort. This effort involves the maintenance of awareness, so it is more like the balancing act of a rope-walker than the super-efforts of a mountain climber. The real Work consists of a constant struggle against the state of identification. Many people pass their entire lives in this state, and our culture is designed to ensure its continuance.
As a result of the misunderstanding of the super-efforts required. Many people punish themsleves needlessly and without gain.

Fantasy Work Trap - Think-Talk w/o Doing - Spending all your time talking aout the work, reading about it, thinking about it, but not PRACTICING it.

Fear -

Forgiving Debts, Overcoming the Past -

Formatory Mind ( Formatory Apparatus ) - The mechanical part of the Intellectual Center.

Example: - “Formatory apparatus resembles a hired typist who works for a firm and has a large number of stereotyped replies for external impressions. She sends printed replies to other centers who are the ‘directors’ of the firm and who are strangers to each other. Wrong replies are often sent, as the typist is asleep or lazy.” Gurdjieff.
Example: - “In the intellectual centre, the mechanical part includes in itself all the work of registration of impressions, memories and associations. This is all that it should do normally, that is, when other parts do their work. It should never reply to questions addressed to the whole centre, it should never try to solve its problems, and it should never decide anything. Unfortunately, in actual fact, it is always ready to decide and it always replies to questions of all sorts in a very narrow and limited way, in ready- made phrases, in slang expressions, in party slogans. All these, and many other elements of our usual reactions, are the work of the mechanical part of the intellectual centre. “This part has its own name. It is called a ‘formatory apparatus’ or sometimes ‘formatory centre.’ Many people, particularly people No. 1, that is, the great majority of mankind, live all their lives with the formatory apparatus only, never touching other parts of their intellectual centre. For all the immediate needs of life, for receiving A influences and responding to them, and for distorting or rejecting influences C, the formatory apparatus is quite sufficient. “It is always possible to recognise ‘formatory thinking.’ For instance, formatory centre can count only up to two. It always divides everything in two: ‘bolshevism and fascism,’ ‘workers and bourgeois,’ proletarians and capitalists’ and so on. We owe most modern catchwords to formatory thinking, and not only catchwords but in modern popular theories. Perhaps it is possible to say that at all times all popular theories are formatory. OUSPENSKY-Pychology of Mans Possible Evolution
‘formatory apparatus’, that part of the brain which was busy classifying ideas and objects, putting them into pigeon holes, and thereafter returning mechanically to them as statements of truth.
In man as he is, the formatory apparatus has run wild and dominates psychic life. Its constant din of associations makes it almost impossible for a man to become quiet and observe himself as he is.
Because modern life is filled with formatory associations, even man number one and number two are often far from direct experience of their bodies and feelings. Consequently, a very important place in the Work is occupied by attention to the sensation of
Struggle with foratory thinking is struggle against lunacy in ourselves.
The head brain, the formatory mind, the mechanical part of the intellectual center.
Formatory mind works by associations. Once formatory mind makes an assessment of something, someone, some situation, formatory mind never notices the object again. - As a result of placing an absolute value upon an object, our formatory mind comes to the fallacious conclusions The mere fact that formatory mind can remember the location of the valued object is enough for formatory mind to never think about the object again.
The 'Labeling' part of our mind. The part that applies names to things and categorizes them. - Alos the regurgitating part - repeats of your common sayings.
The problem is modern man thinks with his labeling apparatus instead of his intellectual area.

Freudian Mind Structure: Id, Ego, Super Ego - - include Ego (Freudian)
- include ID (Freudian)
- include Super Ego (Freudian)

Games (Dramas) - Psychological Battles for Power

Getting in contact w/ the 3rd ( Neutralizing ) Force -

Great Work against Nature - magnum opus contra naturae -
Full Definition: The proper purpose of human life - to obtain the necessary knowledge and to sue that knowledge for self-completion. The secret work of the alchemists.

Group Work -

Helping those teaching the Work and assisting in the transmission -

Higher-Emotional center - faculty of the astral body. It enables one to have sustained states of self-consciousness, self-awareness, and other deep feelings. It does not replace, nor is it an "upgraded" version of the emotional center, as it a completely separate center.

Higher-Intellectual Center - faculty of the mental body. It enables one to have sustained states of objective consciousness and superior intellect. As above, it does not replace, nor is it an "upgraded" version of the intellectual center.

Householder -

Human Brain Biology - The human brain is composed of an ancient reptilian core, a later mamalian interveining layer (limbic system), and later mamalian Cortex/Neo Cortex. The human brain most receintly developed larger frontal lobes in it's evolutionary progress that consists of cells and structures that do not reach maturity until much later in life than all other brain areas, as late as in a persons 20's. - consists of Reptilian Brain Layer
- consists of Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (LGN)
- consists of Corpus Collosum
- consists of Limbic System, Old Mammalian Brain Layer
- consists of New Mammalian Brain Layer / Human Brain Layer
- include Brain Cells - Neurons
- include Brain Cells - Glial Cells

Structures and intelligences travel from higher brain areas down, with higher areas able to supercede and direct action. - e.g. the reptilian brain has circuits that later map to areas in the higher brain areas.

I's / Personalities & Roles / Ego States - Every person has specific and varied roles or states they go in to in automatic reactionary ways. This is the explination behind why a someone may be one 'person' at work but a completely different 'person' at home and yet another 'person' when in front of a trial Judge. This also explains why we make promises we intend to keep but at a later time anotner 'person' within us does not see it through - it's not just our view of promise that has changed, but WE are not the same 'person' that made the promise or rsolution. - include Roles

ID (Freudian) - The id is responsible for our basic drives such as food, sex, and aggressive impulses. It is amoral and egocentric, ruled by the pleasure–pain principle; it is without a sense of time, completely illogical, primarily sexual, infantile in its emotional development, and will not take "no" for an answer. - is part of Essence, Being

Based on the pleasure principle. It goes for what it wants and Ego restrains it or not.
Id is present at birth, it allows us to meet our basic survuval needs.
Wants what feels good at the time. Does not think about past or future. Always in the animal present.
Only concerned with self.
Has no consideration for the reality of a situation. It just wants.

Identification - One of the characteristics of our psychology is that we lose ourselves by becoming absorbed into events, thoughts, and emotions. In the Work we are told to observe identification as it is one of the most powerful forces keeping us asleep and prevents us from awakening. Because we do everything mechanically and are not properly conscious, we identify all the time. We identify with our thoughts, feelings and what happens in outer life.
Full Definition: e idea is similar to what is described in Indian and Buddhist literature as attachment to things either externally---for example your job, the television, food---or internally---for example your thoughts, your emotions. In other words all our activities are accompanied by a certain attitude; we become too absorbed in things, lost in what we are doing. This is called identification. It begins with being interested in something and the next moment you are in it and you no longer exist.

A good illustration of identification is the cat and mouse scenario, where the cat has spotted its prey and is oblivious to everything except catching the mouse. Other examples include:

being identified with a task one is doing on the computer so that one is not aware of anything else around one
cleaning the bath and you no longer exist---you have become the activity of cleaning the bath
identification with one's emotions so that if you think you are depressed, all you feel is depression, you are your state
identification with watching television where only the programme exists
feeling bored---identification with oneself
over-enthusiasm is also identification.

So, when a man is asleep he is identified with every thought that he has, every feeling and mood, every sensation, every movement, because he thinks this is what life is about and above all that it is a necessary part of life.

After observing yourself for a while and trying to remember yourself, you soon realise that you don't remember yourself and often do not even remember to remember yourself, the main obstacle to achieving this being identification with something or ourselves.

Identification is losing ourselves into the belief that the object of our focus and attachment is a part of us or that it is ours, and we invest a lot of lifeforce to keep it with us or make it do what we want so that we can feel happy. - It puts our small self in the center, attached to a certain thing or outcome, and everything around it either reflects positively or negatively about ourselves. What we think we have or own, can be taken away. It can be damaged or burned up in a fire. Or "they" can change their mind.. and only in the midst of this 'change' do we feel the helplessness of never having actually 'possessed' that thing we identified with. That helpless feeling is a feeling of losing a part of oneself, but it is actually an illusion of identification, because most likely, YOU still exist even after IT is gone. Identification is a buffer to experiencing Real Self and True Love with another.

Idiot Types - 21 Types of Idiot. A developed man, to the real world would seem an Idiot, he does not react mechanically and reactionairily as do all other people but spontaniously.
Full Definition: 1 ordinary idiot - Here is to the ordinary idiot, those who sit at this table.
2 super idiot - Here is to the super idiot who thinks the most.
3 arch idiot - Here is to the arch idiot, who would have us all follow him/her.
4 hopeless idiot - Here is to the hopeless idiot who gave up too soon.
5 compassionate idiot - Here is to the compassionate idiot, who sees us all in the same soup.

5.1 helps, and gives own shirt
5.2 does the same IF watched
5.3 does so on whim
5.? but gives someone elses shirt

6 squirming idiot - Here is to the squirming idiot, the idiot who wants out.
7 square idiot
8 round idiot
G. described as 'A Round Idiot is an Idiot who never stops, but continues being an Idiot day-night-year round.'
9 zigzag idiot
10 enlightened idiot
11 doubting idiot
12 swaggering idiot
13 born idiot
14 patented idiot
15 psychopathic idiot
16 polyhedral idiot

16 is the plateau of being.?

Idiots 17-21 constituted a spiritual hierarchy, reflecting progressive gradations of objective reason
Idiot 18 presented the highest development which a human being could reach, but in order to attain it, he had first voluntarily to descend again from 17 to 1, the ordinary idiot.

Idiots 19 and 20 were reserved for the sons of God.

21 - Unique Idiot (God himself being the Unique idiot)

-----
on occasion Gurdjieff has called someone a:
'simple idiot', an 'ambitious idiot', 'objective idiot', 'subjective idiot',

-----

A true "idiot" is one who knows that he does not know, a ‘conscious incompetent.’

The toasts were given at the end of a meal, usually with Armagnac or Calvados, high alcohol content Cognac’s. The group gathered to do ‘the work’, the Magnus Opus and the toasts were celebrating and honoring that we knew we were mechanical slaves, sleep walking through our lives and were will to work to awaken. Without Gurdjieffs’ help, and he died in 1949, no one got past idiot # 6.

idiot comes from greek for 'private attitude' or??? 'I make my own'

Illusions -

Imaginary Aim - Things people pick as possible Aims, but are not of the sort. An Aim to climb some mountain is an example.

Imagination - One of the chief obstacles to inner development is our imagining that we already possess qualities and abilities that we do not have, and that can only be developed through long efforts.
Full Definition: In its ordinary meaning, the term `imagination' does not allow for the distinction as to whether or not its functioning is under our control. If imagination is under our control, then its uses may be distinguished by such names as visualisation, creative thinking, inventive thinking. But when it comes by itself and controls us so that we are in its power, it is `imagination'.

Imagination may be just ordinary daydreams or, for instance, imagining non-existent powers in oneself. But it is the same thing in that it works without control, it runs by itself.

Negative imagination is imagining all kinds of unpleasant things, torturing oneself, imagining all the things that might happen to you or other people. This is distinct from real fear, an instinctive centre function, which is comparatively very rare. In most cases fear is imaginary---the fear is in you. Material is borrowed from the negative part of the instinctive function, and with the help of imagination, it creates negative emotion.

When trying to explain new experiences, imagination enters because one may feel with with one very good apparatus, and explain with a very clumsy machine which cannot really explain. So one must try to deal with facts, as when imagination starts one is lost.

Then one may be more completely under the power of imagination, imagining that one can decide what to do.

Imagination does not mean conscious or intentional thinking, but imagination without any control or result. The idea is to control imagination. If, instead of that, by certain methods it is transformed into imagination in higher emotional states, one may experience bliss, but it is after all, only sleep on a higher level. And there is no way out.

One must observe the many things that are in one's own imagination to see them. One can imagine that one is making efforts to awake. Only begin with the possible, with one step. Try to do a little and results will show you. There is always a limit. If one tries to do too much, imagination takes hold and one will do nothing. Everything cannot be changed at once. Struggle with imagination does not mean that it can be stopped, because this would require much more energy. One can only attempt to stop it.

In fact, imagination takes up very much energy and turns thinking in a wrong direction. This is why verification is necessary. Imagination causes people to easily accept mechanical influences and they begin to imitate one another so that people can spend their lives studying systems and system words and never come to real things. Without verification it is imagination or simply lying. A large proportion of our ordinary knowledge exists only in imagination. It is necessary that this work be first and foremost practical.

Life can provide a test as to whether personalities are imaginary or not. When life puts you into conditions where you can enjoy what you thought you liked, but instead you find that you do not enjoy it at all, only you imagined that you liked it, then you can see that this personality was imaginary. It does not really exist, but we imagine it exists. It exists in its manifestations, but not as a real part of ourselves.

So we imagine ourselves really. Only we are not what we imagine ourselves to be.

The right use of `imagination' then would be to `imagine', or use creative thinking and visualisation, to `imagine' oneself conscious. How would you act, think, speak and so on?

Imagination in this sense, is not the deliberate, creative envisioning that is life giving, but rather, the automatic fears and worries that slither into our minds and play out scenarios that we'd rather not live out or that we wish we had lived out. - Imagination takes us out of our body and fogs our mind with haphazard thoughts and trivial scenarios that rob us of large spans of time and creativity. Can you remember all of the thoughts that you had today? If not, where were you while your mind was absent? (How many moments of life did you miss while you were gone?)

Improvement of Memory -

Inner Stop - Stoping our thought flow in mid-stream to analyize our mental processes that un-interrupted would proceed on in an automatioc way.

Instinctive Center - Controls faculties which are completely involuntary. This does not typically encompass "knee-jerk" reactions, nor what we would typically consider reflexes. A common example of the functioning of this center is the contracting of blood vessels to facilitate the pumping of blood.

Looks after all the inner workings of the body, - such as the digestion of food, the curculation of the blood, breating, and sensation.

Instinctive Center -

The instinctive center includes the senses, simple and complex reflexes, and the regenerative processes of the body that work without awareness at the cellular/biochemical level. All the functions of the instinctive center are inborn.

Intellectual Center - This center is the faculty which makes a being capable of logic and reasoning. This one is located in the head. Seat of Contiousness. - include Formatory Mind ( Formatory Apparatus )

The intellectual center compares, calculates, and reasons.
The mechanical part of the intellectual center has a special name: it is called the formatory apparatus - , because, in the right functioning of the human machine, it is intended to set up forms for the higher parts of the center to operate upon.

Intentional Suffering (Real)(Contious) - Let us come now to the idea of conscious suffering as distinct from mechanical suffering. Gurdjieff said: "This Work is Esoteric Christianity." He meant that this Work lies hidden in the New Testament. Let us take an example. The Work teaches that mechanical suffering is useless--it leads to nothing--but that conscious suffering leads to inner development. Can we find any parallels in the New Testament? I would say that in the Gospels, in the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, we find ample--in fact, copious verification. But let us take a clear example from Paul. He has written a letter to his group at Corinth cursing them for not working on themselves. He explains that to feel one has not been working--that is, that one has been fast asleep in life and its vexatious daily troubles and therefore identified with the events entering from outside via the senses--this is to suffer in another way. He calls this "godly suffering". I will quote the passage:
"For though I made you sorry with my epistle, I do not regret it, though I did regret; for I see that that epistle made you sorry, though but for a season. Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry but that ye were made sorry after a godly sort, that ye might suffer loss by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation, a repentance which bringeth no regret: but the sorrow of the world worketh death. For behold, this self-same thing, that ye were made sorry after a godly sort, what earnest care it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves . . ." (II Cor. vii.8-11)

Now this rather outworn terminology masks the real meaning. What Paul is saying is that to suffer because you have behaved mechanically can lead to something. And so he says that the suffering of the world leads to death--that is, mechanical suffering. From this brief example one can see what Gurdjieff meant in saying that this Work is Esoteric Christianity. Esoteric means simply inner--not obvious. People easily read the New Testament without seeing what is meant. The Work, once you begin to understand what it is saying, opens your mind to innumerable things said in the New Testament. Now reflect on this remark: "The sorrow of the world worketh death." Do you see that in these words is the same idea as "mechanical suffering is useless for self-development and puts us to sleep--that is, death? A man, a woman, must sacrifice their mechanical suffering". What then replaces it? What replaces it is suffering because you are suffering. That is, you must replace the luxury of mechanical suffering by suffering because you still love mechanical suffering.

In one of the Gnostic Books--the Acts of John--which are not included in the ordinary New Testament, there is a passage which runs in this way. It is connected with the Sacred Dance that Christ performed with his disciples:
"If thou hadst known how to suffer, thou wouldest have been able not to suffer. Learn thou to suffer, and thou shalt be able not to suffer."

"Only conscious suffering is of value." -G
"Work on remorse, remember yourself, revive the scenes when you were a bad child, when you made your parents cry, perhaps. Feel again in all the details, find your faults again. Search in your past. Suffer. In that suffering you can have real happiness gi
"We must endure patiently the life conditions that we cannot change." -G

Internal Considering - Considering others for our own sake. Considering how much they owe us, what we did for them, expecting how they should treat us.
Full Definition: A special form of identification with oneself whereby we imagine we know what others think of us and make inner accounts against others. The first aspect is thinking what others think of us, feeling that one is not properly treated, that one does not receive proper recognition or is misunderstood. Or we feel insulted that we have not been estimated at our proper value.

Examples of this form of inner considering include:

worrying that you might be seen doing something stupid and what other people will think of you, i.e worrying about making a fool of yourself
worrying about inconveniencing others
feeling embarrassed for someone else because you think they are making a fool of themselves
feeling trapped by circumstances and wishing everyone or everything would go away and then it will be alright
feeling irritated with people, the weather, events, when situations do not correspond to how we think they should go.
- opposite of External Considering

Invented Aim - Aims that are not real, but not totally imaginary. They are beneficial to the extent that they have us working towards Real Aim.

Knowledge - - is part of Knowledge and Understanding / Being

Knowledge and Understanding / Being - There is a difference between what we know and what we are and can do.

Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (LGN) - The crossover network connecting our right and left optic nerves and the 2 brain halves. Each brain half gets 2 major nerve bundles, one that accoutns for our visually seeing sceens and another that traves an older base route and is more used in automatic reflexes like catching or putting a letter in a slot in the correct orrientation.

Law # 1 - The unity of the will of creation. - The only law at level of World 1 - the Absolute.

Law # 2 - Law of Three / Law of Triads - The law of three states that every manifistation is the resultant of three forces: active, passive, and neutralizing. - include 3 Forces

Law # 3 - Law of Seven / Law of Shock / Law of the Octave - The law of seven governs successions of events.
The law of seven states that whenever any manifestations evolves, it does so nonlinearly; there is an orderly discontinuity in every progression, in every series.
Full Definition: This lawful discontinuity is preserved in our music scales.
Explains why when something begins it does not just continue.
Explains why there are no straight lines in nature.

Law # 4 / Fagolished -

Law of Accident - Applies only to humanity. Other laws apply throughout the universe.
Full Definition: Accident has many different manifestations. The simplest forms begin to disappear very quickly if we are more awake.

Law of Dirrect Application / Law of Movement -

Law of Eating - A very hard law. that one class of living beings eats another class.

?? Eat or be Eaten. ??

Law of Identification -

Those who begin to remember themselves begin to get rid of the law of identification.

Law of Negative Emotions - - consists of Negative Emotions
- consists of Transformation of Negative Emotions

Law of Ninefoldness -

Law of Octaves / Law of Seven - The continual process of involution and evolution proceeding simultaneously within the Sun-Absolute.

Law of Reciprocal Maintenance / Reciprocal Feeding -

Law of RePayment for Conscious Suffering -

Law of Self Ignorance -

We do not know ourselves - this is a law. If we begin to know ourselves we get rid being constrained by this law.

Law of Solioonensius - Periodic tension in suns and planets acts on the common presences of all three-brained beeings. In humans this provokes war.

Law of the Pendulum - Everything swings between opposites.

Law of Two / Law of Duality -

Law of Work - Work comes before completion.
You are only given that gradation of reason necessary for you to do Work. Therefore if you wish for yourself a higher degree of reason you must somehow increase necessity.

Laws - Gurdjieff's cosmological laws. May have origins in Mesopotamia, Pythagoras, etc.
Full Definition: Worlds and Laws Governing them:
World 1 - Absolute - 1 Law
World 3 - All Worlds - 3 Laws
World 6 - All Suns - 6 Laws (3+3)
World 12 - Sun - 12 Laws (3+6+3)
World 24 - All Planets - 24 Laws (3+6+12+3)
World 48 - Earth - 48 Laws (3+6+12+24+3)
World 96 - Moon - 96 Laws (3+6+12+24+48+3)

Man lives on Earth, which is under 48 laws. Man himself is under many more laws, but even these 48 make change hard as they control every little thing. Fortunately not all of the laws under which man lives are obligatory for him, so he may escape from some of them, and his possibility of evolution is fundamentally connected with escaping from certain laws.

There are 99 possible laws under which you could make yourself subject.

Relationship to laws and freedom:
The fewer laws, the greater freedom, but also the greater need to follow the laws.
The fewer laws, the more law-conformable. Must also now include inexactitude in at that interval of 'transfer of influence'.
One is subject to fewer influences higher up on the scale; one has fewer choices of influence, whereas lower on the scale one can switch from one influence to another.
- consists of Second Degree Cosmic Laws
- include Law of Accident
- include Law # 2 - Law of Three / Law of Triads
- include Law of Octaves / Law of Seven
- include Law # 3 - Law of Seven / Law of Shock / Law of the Octave
- include Law of Reciprocal Maintenance / Reciprocal Feeding
- include Law of Two / Law of Duality
- include Law of the Pendulum
- include The Great Law of Correspondences
- include Law of Ninefoldness
- include Law of Dirrect Application / Law of Movement
- include Laws of Hospitality
- include Law of Work
- include Law # 4 / Fagolished
- include Law of Eating
- include Law of Eating
- include Laws of Physics / Physical Laws
- include Law of Self Ignorance
- include Law of Identification
- include Law of Negative Emotions
- include Laws of Biology / Biological Laws
- include Law of RePayment for Conscious Suffering
- include Law # 1 - The unity of the will of creation.

The Work teaches that there are 2 fundamental laws in the universe: the law of three and the law of seven.
Real laws are beings who by interaction create certain definitized manifestations which we are able to see. - One can align oneself with one such law and by doing so one can work for a being who directs a part of the Work. -G
Laws must be studied, not only of maintenance, but also of creation. - Of Destruction you do not need to know anything. When you know more, you can decide which law you are attracted to and which law you are best able to work for. -G
Laws create other laws, which create yet other laws. -G
In order to free oneself from laws it is first necessary to find one law from which we can liberate onself, and get free from it. - Then, when one has freed onself from this law, one can find another and again liberate onself, etc. This is the practical way to study laws. -G
Most of the laws we have to obey are the result of our sleep and our unconsciousness. - Every step we make in becoming more conscious sets us more free. -G
False Personality puts us under many quite useless mechanical laws. -G
One can learn to be free only by obeying more laws. - In order to get free it is necessary to submit to many more laws for a certain time. -G
You can escape lays by growth in being, no other way. -G
Laws can be studied only by first observation of them in oneself and second by becoming free from them.
it is possible to become free from one law but to put onself under the control of another in the process.
More laws create more crominals - The Tao
Law? - Knowledge cannot belong to all, not event to many. Such is the Law. -G - it is becasue knowledge is material

Laws of Biology / Biological Laws - Our biological life requires that we breathe, drink, eat, sleep, etc.

Laws of Hospitality -

Work Clubs must be created, for in homes the Laws of Hospitality apply. - Everything must be paid for.

Laws of Physics / Physical Laws -

Left Hand Path - False teachers who use violent and amoral 'methods'.

Lessening of False Personality -

Lessening of Judgement of Self and Others -

Levels of Men - Man 1 is centered in the Moving Center. Man 2 is centered in the Emotional Center. Man 3 is centerd in the Intellectual center. Man 4 is able to use all centers rightly.

Liberation from Unnecessary Laws - - requires understanding of Laws

Limbic System, Old Mammalian Brain Layer - Emotional, Feeling

Love & Compassion for One's Self and Others -

Lying -

Lying - Lying, in the work sense, is slightly different from lying as the word is usually used, a little more subtle perhaps. Perhaps we might think it is less damaging than what we normally consider as lying, but it is actually more damaging to one personally, as that without working to eliminate it, one can not expect one's personal work on oneself to go far.

We lie in many unconscious ways. We lie to ourselves. We lie to others. We lie everyday to get what we want.

Magnetic Centre -

Making efforts to get to know others in the work. - Try to see their personalities, attitudes, postures, roles, reactions, etc.

Maya / Devil / Father of Lies / Spirit of the Lie -
Full Definition: The overseerer of the treadmill/machine of life. Has a good many tricks at his disposal and knows the inner weaknesses of humans well by now.

Mechanical Suffering (Automatic) - Everyone suffers mechanically. What is mechanical suffering? It is something quite different from conscious suffering. It is something so intricate, so devious, so apparently contradictory, so various, so subtle, so historically long-standing--in short, a habit--that we do not observe it. We do not see its continual, inner, private, petrifying action, like that steady drip of calcium-charged water that builds up those strange pillars in deep caves between floor and roof. The Work teaches that we all, inevitably, have mechanical suffering and that this is the only thing we have to offer as sacrifice. In order to change, one must sacrifice something. Understand clearly and ask yourself--if it ever does occur to you to ask yourself a question, which means that you will have actually to think for yourself of the answer--I say, ask yourself this question: "Can I possibly imagine that I can change if I do not give up, sacrifice, something?" This means simply that you cannot change if you wish to continue as the same person. To change is to become different. If I want to go to London, I must give up being at Amwell. -Psychological Commentaries, Volume 4‎ - Page 1239, Maurice Nicoll

The feeling of being owed or mistreated is useless suffering.

Mechanicalness -

Motor Center - Controls motor functions. The acts of walking, the physical aspects of talking, as well as even functions that are considered "reflexive," are all part of this sub-center.

Movements, The - The movements are poses and dances incorporating them.
Full Definition: Different poses are said to represent letters, such that a dance may spell out the amorphorisms of the teacher. The different poses have also been said to be able to elicit emotional states that one might not otherwise experience. The poses were also said to have been to force different postures and with them new associations and new attitudes.

Moving Center - This brain is located in the spinal column. This brain makes beings capable of physical actions, and can be further divided into three distinct sub-centers (motor, instictive, sexual). Seat of Attention.
Full Definition: Develop by work, labor, sitting quietly,

Lifting a chair and placing it softly and making sure it's straight requires more attention than dragging it noisily across the floor, perhaps banging it into other furniture.

Working on handwriting. I especially work on dotting my i's above the i instead of half way a long the word and trying to make the distinction between my n's and u's clearer.

Embarking on a DIY (do-it-yourself) task, consider which tools you are likely to need and lay them out and arrange them in the best way to do the job. This requires visualising what you intend to do, rather than hastily starting and discovering you haven't got the right tools, or that you have to interrupt the job to fetch different things as you need them. This saves both time and energy.

Think about how you can apply this to other moving-centred tasks.
- consists of Motor Center
- consists of Instinctive Center
- consists of Sexual Center

The moving center is responsible for the body's perception of motion and for control of all impulses of movement. The functions of the moving center are learned through imitation and through early experimentation and adaptation.

Negative Emotions - Negative emotions are an example of the wrong work of the emotional centre. They are unnecessary, and an important part of awakening is to free ourselves from their grip.

Negative emotions are things like fear, anger, envy, greed, sloth, and also pleasant things like enthusiasms, passions, and certain forms of love. They are based on identification and imagination---they keep us asleep.

The pleasant type are characterised by a tendency to turn into their opposites---for example when we end up hating people we were formerly `in love' with. Real emotions do not turn into their opposites. - is part of Dabbel

Negative Emotions are always OUR fault, and OUR choosing. - Our emotional state, poor or otherwise, is never anyone's fault but our own. Even if we are offended in the most heinous way by another individual consciously, how we TAKE the misdead is up to no one but us.

New Functions -

New Language - Normal language can not convey Work principles. A new language msut be learned.

New language msut be relative, since the same words are taken differently by everyone.

New Mammalian Brain Layer / Human Brain Layer - Thought, Neocortex, Latest to develop in evolutionary terms and in life development. Includes Frontal Lobes.

New States of Consciousness -

Non-expression of Negative Emotions -

Non-Identification -

Obligation -
Full Definition: oblige
obligation
obliged
obligate
obligable
obligately
obligator

Observation of Postures - A typical person usually only has 10 or less postures that they continually use out of the hundrends avalable. Many movements, physical exercises, and the Stop Exercise make us more aware of our postures by forcing us to maintain or transition through postures unaccustomed to us and not in our habitual repertoire.

Observation of Speaking from Attitudes -

Observation of the Emotional Center - Observation of right and wrong use of the Emotional Center. - requires understanding of Emotional Center

Observation of Tone of Voice - Usually we change the tone of voice to one charactaristic to our 'active' personality, or 'I'. Listening for it will give the switch away, but usually we are not Self-Observing and have become Identified with the situation.

Observation of Use of Centers - Observation of Moving, Emotional, and Intellectual Centers. - consists of Observation of the Emotional Center

In observing, one attempts to distinguish impressions of the various functions in operation, not through analysis but by taste. Each function has a distinctive signature.

Obstacles to Awakening - These need to be recognized to progress in development and to Awaken. - include Sleep
- include False Personality
- include Negative Emotions
- include Imagination
- include Identification
- include Internal Considering
- include Illusions
- include Buffers
- include Unnecessary Talking
- include Disunity
- include Lying
- include Formatory Mind ( Formatory Apparatus )
- include Chief Feature
- include Daydreams / Fantasies / Phantasies
- include Automatic Associations

Opinions -

Overcoming of Negative Emotions - change posture.
Ask ourselves why we are in a negative state. give up having our own way, will that things be as they are. - requires Observation of the Emotional Center
- requires understanding of Negative Emotions
- requires understanding of Emotional Center

Change Posture, particularly Facial Expressions - Our emotional center is so automatic and reflexive that if we force a change in facial expression from the negative, the negative emotional state also flees.
Don't take emotional states for granted. - Ask why we are in this emotional state?
Don't take Negative Emotions as Right, Justified, or Entitled To. - Distrust Negative Emotions.
2 Sources: Internal ( Habit, Past ) and External.
If you consent to be or to continue to be negative, then temptations suceeds.
Must give up having to have our own way all the time.
There are dangerous places within us that are more dangerous that dark alleys.
We love our suffering. We must give it up and think our way out.
Intend first. Then can do.
Think Truth by an Effort; Persistance in NE drives the Work away from you.
NE's are only supported by lies of the Intellectual Center that we Buffer.
NE's and Persistance of NE's are our own fault. - No matter the cause or injustice, emoutions are always OURS to control.
Don't Argue inside. Perform an Inner Stop on first recognition of.
Levels of Overcoming: 1. Don't Express 2. SEperate From 3. Don't Have
NE's keep us asleep through wrong use of necessary energy.
NE's can only lead to violence and evil.
First, they must be noticed. Only then can they be dealt with.

Payment - - consists of Sacraficing our Suffering

Personality ( True and False ) -
Full Definition: Personality is like a garment surrounding essence.
Personality is acquired through exposure to impressions, education, experiences; fills centres.
Contents of centres belong to personality (rolls, records, tapes, diskettes, RAM, ROM).
Personality contains the Many I's
Usually die with centres full.
Personality dies with the death of the planetary body.
- consists of False Personality
- consists of True Personality
- consists of Work Personality

Pride -

Prison - Gurdjieff likens our position to that of a man who has been imprisoned with no prospect for release. When he looks about him and realizes his position, he sees that his fellow prisoners do not understand that they are in prison and therefore have no inkling that any other possibility exists.

Such a man can wish for nothing else but to escape. But how can this be accomplished? A man must find a way by which escape is possible, and this can be done only with the help of others who have escaped before and know when the guards are not looking and where it is worthwhile digging. He also needs material help from those who have access to tools which are not available within the walls.
Full Definition: Those who are capable of helping others to escape are always deeply engaged in their own work and value their time very much. Therefore, instead of helping one man, they organize schools in which a number of people can be helped to develop the means to escape. When people work together they benefit from contact with one another--because their wish for liberation is strengthened by the exchange of experiences of inner work which takes place in a school, because it is often easier to see unpalatable truths in others than in oneself, and because the development and execution of a viable plan of escape is a large undertaking beyond the power of one man.

The Work is like a tool set smuggled into our prison cell, we must understand the tools not for the sake of understanding the tools, but to use them for our purpose of freeing ourselves.

Reading Gurdjieff - - requires New Language

Tip: When he makes a joke or says he is joking, it's often about something important.
Tip: When he uses quotations, it may highlight an important point.
Instruction: Believe nothing not seen with own eyes. Test Everything, Question Everything! -G
Fact: Current publications are ALTERED. Many old coppies were even rounded up and destroyed. Little origional remains, nothing public.
Tip: There is a visual story of moving pictures behind his words, intended to act upon essence (visual mind).
Fact: Sometime parts of a thought or idea are more than a book apart. (You can't expect the answer to always be next to the question.)
Fact: He teaches by instruction, example, exaguration, lies, and alegory.
Tip: Look for the presence of an absence, an awkward silence, often important.

Real Aim -

Always has to do with the Work sense of Self-Change
Must grow, evolve, and change from self-study, self-observation, and development.

Realizing that others are like us and are not always the same personality. - Seeing that others are a reactionary machine and not in control of themselves.

Remorse - The feeling that we have not made all possible efforts in the presence of someone who has developmed themselves more than us. Important in developing Will and controling the Emotional Center.

Reptilian Brain Layer - - consists of Reticular Formation

Resisting Mechanicalness -

Reticular Formation - Gateway between the incoming sensory information and the brain at large. This is mainly where the shut off of the world is carried out out when we are asleep. Part of the older Reptilian Part of our Brain.

Role Playing, Exterior Theater -

Roles - Essentially, a part that we play, like an actor, to try to maintain some type of image in a particualr situation. We may have one role we play at the dentist, another when pulled over for speeding, and yet another that we play while in an elivator with other people.

Sacraficing our Suffering - - requires understanding of Suffering

Must smash Pride, Vanity, Self-Complacency, Selfishness, Self-Esteem, etc.
Must change to become different, the change is giving up what we all love most: our suffering.
It is Ordinary Mechanical Suffering that must be sacrificed, not Intentional Suffering.
Uless we become conscious of a thing, we can't sacrafice it.
Takes the form of: If only's
Mechanical Suffering is Fraudulant! This is a keynote to what to Sacrafice.
False Suffering closes us. Real Suffering opens us up to higher levels.
Involves destroying the Emotional Center; it's likes and dislikes.
We must begin to Think differently, in different ways.
Sacrafice - means to make Holy (that to which all personal connection has been relinquished) or conscious.
"People imagine they have something to sacrifice. There is only one thing they have to sacrifice and that is their suffering." - G
"A man in this Work must eventually begin to know what Conscious Suffering is compared with Mechanical Suffering." - G
"I have already said before that sacrifice is necessary," said G. "Without sacrifice nothing can be attained. But if there is anything in the world that people do not understand it is the idea of sacrifice. They think they have to sacrifice something that
"Another thing that people must sacrifice is their suffering. It is very difficult also to sacrifice one's suffering. A man will renounce any pleasures you like but he will not give up his suffering. Man is made in such a way that he is never so much atta
We have to feel that Life and Others owe us nothing! - (as we cancel the debts owed to us - Lord's Prayer)
To change oneself one must be free from petty attatchments and forms of imagination about oneself.

School - Schools come into existence in accordance with the aim of the teacher and exist only as long as they serve the purpose for which they are intended. Only the teacher fully understands his aim, but it is an important part of school work for the pupils to try to understand the aim of the teacher and find a way to be useful to him.

In a school, conditions are created in which the work of self-study which leads to inner transformation is facilitated through the presence of energies which awaken the wish of the pupil to realize his own latent possibilities.

These conditions typically include meetings where members of the school exchange ideas and observations regarding their attempts at self-observation, exercises for the attention, work on various projects with others in conditions organized by the teacher, and other forms which place the pupil in front of himself and demand sincere efforts to remain open to what he sees, rather than turning away from himself. - requires Teacher

Second Degree Cosmic Laws -

Seeing others distinctly. - See them differently than in life. Not at face value.

Self-Observation - Observing and becoming aware of our automatic reactions, our false personality, etc. - consists of Observation of Use of Centers
- consists of Observation of Postures
- consists of Observation of Tone of Voice
- consists of Observation of Speaking from Attitudes
- requires Splitting of Attention
- requires Separation
- requires understanding of Lying
- requires understanding of States of Consciousness
- requires understanding of Sin

The object of Self-Observation is to enable us to chage ourselves. - We can not be changed unless we know what kind of person we are.
Must be un-critical.
Begin by watching for and observing something specific.
Self-Observation is to make us more conscious of ourselves, and this is the starting-point of the Work.
We have to obsere what we are saying, thinking, feeling, sensations we are having, how we are moving, etc.

Self-remembering, Remembering Yourself - Remembering that you have a body, feet, toes, emotions, a heart, etc. all the time. Usually people get caught up in emotions, activities, or life and are absorbed in it, not consiously aware at all times that they exist.

Separation - Right observation involves making a separation between what appears in the moment and oneself. Although at first one has very little which can be taken as belonging to oneself--only the experience of ``I am'' in the moment--an effort of separation is possible which, at times, brings new impressions of oneself and eventually leads to the state of self-remembering, in which one is present to oneself in the moment through the force of the effort of separation.

Sex Center -

The energy of the sex center, active in the lower centers, causes whatever work is undertaken to be done with a useless vehemence and intensity. The sex center, robbed of its own energy, is then coarse and sluggish.

Sexual Center - Controls sexual functions. This one is exceeding complex, encompassing conversion of energies within a being. This center is implicated in abnormal human development. The Fourth Way uses the disharmonious functioning of this sub-center to explain a very large array of issues.

sfhksahfasdfs - - requires Observation of the Emotional Center

Shocks - The conditions created in schools include shocks sufficiently strong that a man's contradictions become accessible to observation. Naturally, being shocked is not pleasant, but intensive conditions containing major shocks are only provided to those who want them and whose preparation, in the opinion of the teacher, is sufficient that they can make use of them for inner work.

Sin - In the Bible, if rightly translated, Sin means 'to miss the mark'. In the Work, Sin is anything that prevents us from Awakening.

If we Sin knowingly, we commit a wrong that is difficult to redress. - In developing self-control, to knowingly allow onself to loose control, for whatever reason, is entirly destructive and pushes one back.

Sleep -

The Work says we live in a world of sleeping humanity, and we ourselves are asleep.
Waking up first requires seeing that one is Asleep. - A man who does not know he is in prison will not try to escape!
Help can only reach us once we realize we are Asleep.

Splitting of Attention - Creating an Observer and an Observed within ourselves. Normally people do not observe themselves at all, let alone continually. - requires understanding of Attention

State of Objective Consciousness -

State of Self-Awareness or Self-Consciousness or Self Remembering (First truly waking state) -

States of Consciousness - Gurdjieff taught that four states of consciousness are possible for man: ordinary sleep at night; the habitual hypnotized state in which people live when they get up and go about their daily lives (which Gurdjieff called ``waking sleep''); self-consciousness, in which a man is awake to the whole of himself and sees himself as he is; and objective consciousness, in which he sees the reality behind the way the world appears. - include Sleep
- include Waking State (so-called)
- include State of Self-Awareness or Self-Consciousness or Self Remembering (First truly waking state)
- include State of Objective Consciousness

Stopping Thoughts -

Subconscious Brain Processes - Mentation can be consciously be participated in as when average people work out a long math problem. Subconscious processes produce results that we may have no idea how we arrived at, as in idiot savants cases or in suddenly remembering a thing you were trying to remember yesterday.
Full Definition: We have no true idea or way to measure subconscious processes to the extent or what % of our thinking is conscious vs subconscious.

Suffering - - consists of Mechanical Suffering (Automatic)
- consists of Intentional Suffering (Real)(Contious)

"Like what “it” does not like." -G

Super Ego (Freudian) -

The moral part of us. Concerned with right and wrong. - Formed in us from our caregivers interaction with us.
The Superego becomes an embodiment of parental and societal values.

Teacher - Dependence on the indications of a teacher is a prolonged, but nonetheless temporary, stage in the Work. Sooner or later, through long and painstaking study, one must become able to make use of conscience as an inner guide, in order that one's work may continue after the teacher is gone.

The Great Law of Correspondences - As above, so below.
Full Definition: "The great Law of Correspondences (or Hermetic Axiom)— “As above, so below”—stated in the preamble of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes, indicates that by increasing our knowledge of the world most familiar to us—i.e., ourselves, the lesser world or microcosm—we are better able to infer knowledge of the worlds immediately above and below us—i.e., the greater world or macrocosm in which “we live and move and have our being”; and the microscopic world of organs, cells, atoms and molecules, elements and fundamental particles or quantum events which our being encompasses. The meaning of the ancient admonition “Man, know thyself” becomes evident from consideration of the above idea.

The Will (resolve) to Do -

Thought Flow / Stream - The series of mental associations that occur within centers. - include Associations

Transformation of Negative Emotions -

Transformation of Suffering -

True Personality - I think this is actually your essence (being), no? Your authentic likes and dislikes, actual personality type, etc.

Understanding - - is part of Knowledge and Understanding / Being

Unnecessary Talking - One of the chief obstacles to inner development is talking without aim or attention.
Full Definition: If we want to awaken, we need to reduce unnecessary talking, and if you want to reduce it, you need to know what it is, both in theory and practice.

Talking has many uses. We are the only animal on the planet that has this faculty. We can use it to communicate great ideas, to ask simple questions. To express emotions, in all kinds of forms, from simple greetings, to moving poems. We can use talking to ask someone to `Please pass the salt', to give the instinctive-moving brain what it needs. There's a lot of useful, necessary talking.

On the other hand, there is also talking that has no use, that does not achieve any aim, that is simply talking for talking's sake. You aren't interested whether the other person is interested to hear what you're saying, you probably aren't aware of what's going on, engrossed in the conversation. You might well feel drained afterwards, and have no memory of what you said, it was so trivial.

Talking like this can use a huge amount of energy, and is a sure sign of sleep.

You don't even need to have another person around to be doing unnecessary talking. You can be talking to yourself, going over some old arguments, having an imaginary conversation in your head. You might be making mental notes on everything that you are doing. This should not be mistaken for self-observation---self-observation should involve all centers. If you just say what you are doing to yourself, you are probably missing a huge amount that can not be put into words.

There is no rule to tell you what is necessary and what is unnecessary talking. You have to observe yourself, see if what you are saying is of any use, and how does it make you feel? Some people are more prone to unnecessary talking than others, and will need to work on it more. For some people it may be that they do very little talking at all, and really need to speak up more often.

For myself, I fall into the first group, an endless talker. A little while ago, I went to see Notre Dame in Paris with some friends. We'd read what Ouspensky had written about Notre Dame in A New Model of the Universe, and were interested to try and see what we could see in it ourselves.

My friends stood and looked at the statues on the front, while I went on: `That looks like so and so', `I wonder what that one is supposed to represent?', `They are supposed to be the seven human types with each of the four dominant brains.', `I've heard the original heads are in another museum, maybe these are not accurate copies'; And on and on.

We walked away, on to find somewhere to eat, and one of my friends said how he'd felt quite moved by the figures. I was suddenly taken aback a little, as I'd not felt anything at all. I realised that all I had taken in, I had immediately given out in talking. I had not absorbed or digested the impression. I felt a loss, and a realization about the prison of my mechanics.

Recently I was walking through a park with someone, talking incessantly. The other person tried to tell me to reduce this, but I couldn't. Eventually, we decided an exercise, not to talk at all for the rest of the walk. Gosh, what an interesting walk it became. I started to see what was around me, and have such clear memories of the beautiful trees. The walk only lasted about an hour more, but it felt like a whole day had gone by, time was stretched. Less energy was lost.

This kind of exercise is not useful in other situations, as one does need to talk. But I learnt a lot in just a little time. I would keep finding myself feeling I had something really desperately important to say, and I would just have to break my silence. But counting to ten, and thinking `Well, I can make a mental note of it and say it later'---by the time I had got to ten, generally the thing seemed to have lost all importance, and often, I could not recall at all what this `incredibly important' thing had been!

To work with unnecessary talking, you need to begin with self-observation, to find out if you are a person who suffers from it, and to observe what you lose by indulging in it, and what you gain by refraining.

Vanity - Vanity bows to stronger vanity.

Waking State (so-called) -

Will Everything - Don't fight the way things are. Then, go further than just accepting them as they are, will that they be the way they are. Want nothing more for things to be as they are.

Work Personality -
Full Definition: A potential subset of personality.
is based on magnetic centre.
is acquired in school.
is composed of Work I’'s that want to work.
can make efforts.
can digest impressions.
knows that none of the Many I's are real.
works with ideas to not express negative and unpleasant emotions.
prepares the human machine for awakening.
reminds you to make the efforts to remember yourself always and in everything.

Work, the - The Work of the 4th Way is comprised of 3 lines: on/for one's self, the group, and finally the Work itself. - consists of 1st Line of the Work
- consists of 2nd Line of the Work
- consists of 3rd Line of Work
- include Obligation

"This Work is Esoteric Christianity." - G
The Work begins with seeing what kind of person one is. (self observation)