#I also hate how much of my effort is internal or unobservable so even I’m trying really hard it’ll look like I’m not doing anything

[ko-eko-ev-go-ms]

Smth I think about sometimes is how like, I do so much stuff to overcompensate my struggles with various things, but generally I don’t acknowledge that I’m doing outside things to overcompensate or if I do I don’t get into specifics.

And then because of that like even if I tell people I’m struggling with x thing they just won’t believe me sometimes coz they didn’t see/listen to me doing work on my own time.

Even if I’m already underperforming they won’t understand how much effort it was taking JUST TO UNDERPERFORM.

But then if I make any progress or aren’t the literal worst it’s all swept under the rug as if it’s easy for me and I just wasn’t working hard enough the whole time or something?

[torontohypnotherapist]

NOVEMBER 27 — GEORGE GURDJIEFF QUOTES

I STILL HAD UNPLUMBED PLACES, ALIEN SELVES

[M]y outer-world prospered, proving another of Gurdjieff’s statements — that with "thorns” in the inner world there would always be "roses” in the outer world, in "law-able” compensation. My roses were a raise in pay and promotion to advertising director. I began traveling for the company, visiting for promotional purposes their information offices scattered from coast to coast. Then, in December, my literary agent telephoned that my book had been accepted by Knopf, with an advance royalty payable on publication sometime in early summer of 1938.

I was trembling when I hung up the receiver. My secretary asked me if I had had bad news. "No,” I said, "it’s my book . . . accepted . . . ” I knew then what a flood of feeling, unobserved by me, must have been involved with that manuscript. I had played my role of indifference to writing success so successfully that I had even convinced myself I had no heartstrings attached to it.

‘Know thyself’ . . . Despite all the years of effort, I still had unplumbed places, alien selves. This was as fascinating to ponder as was the fact, signed and sealed by a publication contract, that I could call myself a writer once again. I cabled to Canary that my "exercise in unrolling the reels” had sold as a book.

~ Kathryn Hulme “Undiscovered Country”

LEARNING TO PLAY ROLES

Gurdjieff spoke about learning to play roles, but one should begin with something quite small and simple. He himself was a master of the technique. With officials, for example, he could play the role of a simple man, almost devoid of intelligence, and so disarm them. Once, two psychologists from England came to the Prieuré on their way to a conference in Geneva; presumably to get Gurdjieff’s views on the various schools. They were acquainted with Ouspensky. Gurdjieff gave them a wonderful lunch, but every time they asked him a question he turned it aside with a joke. After lunch he took them for a walk round the grounds and back to the Study House, cracking jokes and behaving like an eccentric. I was standing by the door, and he asked me; ‘What day is today?’ I said: ‘Tuesday.’ He turned to them with a smile; ‘Fancy! He say Tuesday, and all the time, I think it Wednesday.’ And he led them into the Study House. The men were bewildered. When they left his attitude changed. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘they will leave me in peace to pursue my aim.’

Another aspect of Gurdjieff was his ability on the one hand to make himself almost invisible and on the other to make himself appear like one of the Rishis, blazing with energy and radiance. When visitors were being shown round the grounds they would sometimes pass him with only a glance, like an American who was talking to me about what a wonderful man Mr. Gurdjieff must be, and that he would like to meet him. Just then Gurdjieff passed by and went into the house. ‘That is Mr. Gurdjieff,’ I said. ‘Well,’ he replied, ‘isn’t that queer! I spoke to him in the grounds and thought he was the gardener.’

In ordinary life people play roles unconsciously. Gurdjieff played them consciously, and those who worked closely with him usually knew when he was playing a role.

In ‘A Letter to a Dervish’, he wrote: ‘The sign of a perfected man and his particularity in ordinary life must be that in regard to everything happening outside of him, he is able to, and can as a worthy action, perform to perfection externally the part corresponding to the given situation; but at the same time never blend or agree with it. In my youth, I too, as you more or less know, being convinced of the truth of this, worked on myself very much for the purpose of attaining such a blessing as I thought predetermined by Heaven; and after enormous efforts and continuous rejection of nearly everything deserved in ordinary life, I finally reached a state when nothing from the outside could really touch me internally; and, so far as acting was concerned, I brought myself to such perfection as was never dreamed of by the learned people of ancient Babylon for the actors on the stage.’

~ CS Nott “The Teachings of Gurdjieff - A Pupil's Journal” ...

NOTHING REMAINS HALF WAY

Friday, January 1, 1937

GURDJIEFF: Around your today is electrical envelope. On quality, quantity, of this material depend if people like or dislike you. Once I had this so strong I could push ship across ocean—and back again. A scale will always involute back to its beginning ‘do’ unless you continue through to ‘do’ of next scale. Nothing remains half way. This is law. But once you have reached next ‘do,‘ the scale you have gone up is always yours and you can never lose what you have made. If you have gone up scale while transforming your apartment, even if you have no furniture or roof, you have always your doghouse, where you are safe. There are seven times seven scales and formulation for forty-nine is “You-in-yourself.”

Now this morning Sardine come disturb me in cafe. She think because I sit and look out window that nothing I do. But under such lazy exterior is such concentration that no man is capable of. Million things I must think about. There is saying, “Measure a thousand times before you cut cloth.” Another saying. “Before you give teaspoon medicine to your neighbor, test a barrel of it. This is what I do when I sit alone.”

KANARI; Mr. Gurdjieff, you are spoiling us.

GURDJIEFF: Spoil? How can spoil what already is spoiled?

~ "Gurdjieff and the Women of the Rope" ...

"Kundalini at base of spine prevents our seeing things as they are; it is the representative of the moon; it is necessary for life, for if we saw things as they were we’d hang ourselves." ~ George Gurdjieff "Gurdjieff's Early Talks 1914-1931" ...

STOP SAYING THIS WORD ‘REAL’

JK: Several months ago I asked you more or less this question: when I have an impulse of real love towards someone, it seems to me, not only does this establish a relationship between me and this person but it also bears witness to a force higher than me. You replied at that time that I should not think of such things for the moment, that this was psychopathy; that I should do my work as a service. I listened to you and I understand now that you were completely right. I am beginning to be able to separate myself from my body, especially since I have seen the depths of my passivity, and I understand that I must concentrate all my forces, direct all my efforts, toward an inner struggle between something that is, and my habitual nothingness. I now have impulses to become independent.

For example, I have an impulse to succeed in playing my true role in relation to my son or my father. I have the impulse to succeed in becoming a man in relation to the group. But it seems to me that none of these impulses is strong enough yet for the separation to be complete. In one of the better moments of work, I recently saw my entire body - all my emotions, all my feelings, all my habitual desires - as being what I had to kill in myself in order to be born. And I understood that in this way I would succeed in being what I am. So, I’m asking myself, and I’m asking you as well, if I couldn’t be helped in my effort by a relation between what there is of 'I' in me and a higher force? It is not the impulse that is lacking.

Gurdjieff; No, continue. Why do you use the word ‘real’? You cannot yet have ‘real’ love. One aspect of real love must be to hate rightly, hate objectively, not the object but its manifestations. You cannot yet use the word ‘real’. In the meantime, continue to gather material. But stop saying this word ‘real’. You must not give this value to things. You cannot yet love; you cannot do anything. You do not yet have the taste of it and I need you to have it. When you are able to have an impulse, I will be able to help you: how to use it, how to direct it, how to actualize it. I see that the kind of work I’ve given you has helped you, and if it has helped you, it is not necessary to change it.

JK: This work has certainly brought me what nothing else has.

GURDJIEFF: Nothing else matters. As for what you need, there is not yet enough in you for a real impulse.

~ “G. I. GURDJIEFF — PARIS MEETINGS 1943”