A Meeting-House of ‘I’s

We will now speak of the observation of connections between centers in the form of ‘I’s. As you know, this Work begins with self-observation because the subject of it is this invisible thing called ‘oneself’ which we usually take for granted and which can only be observed by each person individually. The first thing is to realize that you are not one and the same person either at different moments or at the same moment. In the first practice of self-observation you are told to observe that you have quite different centers or minds in you which work simultaneously.

You have thoughts, emotions and movements, taking only these three centers, namely, the Intellectual Center, the Emotional Center and the Moving Center. They are three utterly different things. Now every person is a meeting-house of ‘I’s. The different ‘I’s in you have their representation in all these three centers in more or less degree. That is, every ‘I’ in you has its representation in these three different minds or centers, and so appears quite differently in each center—in fact, so differently that it takes a long time before we can trace the manifestation of an ‘I’ in all these three forms of it. Full observation of an ‘I’ is the observation of it in all the three centers of its origin simultaneously.

Maurice Nicoll, “Psychological Talk” in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 1, p. 134-135).

Today, when a recognizable ‘I’ appears, try to see its thought, its feeling, and its bodily expression together rather than taking any one of them as the whole of yourself.

Observe one ‘I’ as it shows itself across the Intellectual, Emotional, and Moving Centers.

• The thought that accompanies the ‘I’.

• The emotion that belongs with it.

• The posture, gesture, tension, or movement that appears with it.

• How quickly one part seems to speak for the whole of you.

• Whether the three manifestations can be seen at the same moment.

Choose one recurring ‘I’ when it appears naturally today.

Without changing it, observe what it is thinking, what it is feeling, and what the body is doing.

For a moment, try to hold all three in attention at once.

Try to see the whole ‘I’, not merely the part of it that speaks loudest.

“I will observe irritation in my body before it enters my voice.”

The Weekly Aim