Finding Aim Through Inner Work

You can never make aim unless you see what the Work is about—namely, about yourself and your relationship to Higher Centers or Real Conscience. All aim in the Work must be connected with the Work —work on yourself first of all, work with others, and with the whole meaning of esotericism, i.e. the Work itself. You should start with the first line of Work in connection with aim.

Let me ask you this question: Where do you think you should work on yourself in connection with the ideas of the Work? Have you yet got some fairly clear conception of your life and what you should try to change in your life in view of what you have been taught? Unless you start here at this place you will never have an aim of any practical use in regard to yourself. What is it that you think you ought to change in yourself?

Maurice Nicoll, “Commentary on the Meaning of Aim in the Work" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 2, p. 627)