(Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, Vol 3)
One of the many definite things we are told by this Work to observe in ourselves, and specifically to work against, is self-justifying. What does self-justifying mean? It means always putting yourself in the right. To justify one’s action, for example, is to vindicate oneself, to shew to others that whatever one did, it was reasonable, right, proper and just. When you justify yourself, you start from the picture of yourself as always good, honourable, just, upright. To justify oneself is to exonerate oneself, to explain to people how one was not to blame, how one was misunderstood, how one acted from the best motives, and so on. If you have begun to observe self-justifying, you will realize what a prodigious quantity of psychic energy is used every moment by the human race in this useless activity. The man or woman can never be wrong. People feel themselves always right, whatever they do or say. Nothing penetrates them. Nothing can rouse them from the deep sleep in which they prefer to exist. This becomes a serious matter, however, if a person wishes to awaken.
Now it is useless to speak of self-justifying to people unless they have tried to observe it in themselves. Suppose a person is suddenly asked why he is so negative? Probably he will either indignantly deny that he is negative or say that he has good reason to be. In both cases, he justifies himself–that is, he justifies his negative emotions. You can justify yourself by denial, or by finding an excuse such as blaming others. But the root of the matter lies in this picture of always being right and so never being actually in the wrong. Here a very powerful force is at work to keep us asleep in illusions about ourselves. As a consequence, we are then never at peace internally. On the contrary, we are at war–with ourselves. For there is that in us that knows we are in the wrong and that in us that refuses to admit it. Here the two Giants, Pride and Vanity, come in, but it seems to me that it is chiefly Pride. But that is a matter for personal observation. Vanity may make pictures of oneself and Pride defend them. But whatever the case is, the fact remains that some very powerful force lies behind the act of self-justifying and that this force does not give us any inner stability and so no inner peace. A man or woman may, say, not sleep all night simply because of something they will not admit and accept, and instead they justify themselves. Yet one real act of uncritical, sincere self-observation, one search through their inner rooms for the missing piece of silver–that is, the missing truth–will clear everything up. The tension relaxes. A real act of self-observation has been made. Something not admitted and so not properly conscious has been allowed to become fully conscious. All inner strain and tightness suddenly vanishes. Why? Because instead of the crowding voices of self-justifying–and here it is oneself justifying oneself to oneself–observation, acknowledgement and acceptance have been carried out. In other words, an act of real work has been done. The pill has been swallowed.
Let me talk once more of this pill that Sly Man makes and swallows in the 4th Way. Sly Man does not sit on his haunches for years with his arms outstretched. He does not starve for weeks or deep-breathe for days. He observes himself and sees what he has to do with himself now to change his machinery–his present Being. He is clever–like the wise virgins in the parable. (In the Greek the word translated as “wise” means “clever”.) He works on what it is immediately necessary to acknowledge and accept in himself without Pride or Vanity. So he is sly, clever, intelligent. He makes a pill and swallows it. Now if he always justifies himself, how can he make this pill and swallow it? The Sly Man does not strive to keep up with himself as he imagines he is. He notices distinctly that he lies, for example. He observes it over a period and does not seek to disguise it to himself, to justify himself. He notices it, sees it, acknowledges it, accepts it, and so swallows this particular pill. Then he must digest it. It tastes bitter in the mouth. But once digested it becomes sweet.
When we justify ourselves nothing comes home to us. We keep, as it were, a half of ourselves from entering consciousness. We live on one side. This is due to those extraordinarily difficult things to observe called in the Work buffers. The more buffers, the more self-justifying. But once the other side of a buffer is observed, acknowledged and accepted, the buffer can never re-form itself. We lose a particular idea of ourselves. We gain a broadening of consciousness. Thereby we reach a higher level of Being. This seems paradoxical. It seems paradoxical to say that if you will accept what you disapprove of you reach a higher level. People imagine that by increasing their sense of self-merit and virtue, they get higher. On the contrary, they descend. This is worth thinking about.
The last line of this excerpt explains the problem of my life and the world in a nutshell: “People imagine that by increasing their sense of self-merit and virtue, they get higher. On the contrary, they descend.” If I could take this with me throughout my day, I would feel the wrongness of self-justification every time I do it!
“Energy and Light are synonymous. In order for the Inner-Light to shine brightly, we must not waste our energy. How do we waste energy? Through all kinds of negative feelings, negative thoughts and actions. No matter how large or small, they rob us of vital energy. Negativity damages our bodies and our spirits.
“Negative energy can be transformed into useful, healthy energy. Here’s how: The next time irritation or anger tries to get you to do something on it’s behalf — don’t do it. Simply refuse to go along with it. Say to yourself, ‘Not this time. I’m not wasting my health that way anymore.’ Don’t argue with the accompanying negative thoughts. Don’t resist the feelings or the thoughts – stay above them and just observe. They are not you! Remember, this applies to all negativity including depression, feeling sorry for yourself, guilt, etc. Besides the obvious physical energy level change, think of how much better you’ll feel psychologically.”
“19. Comfort: Human beings are driven by the desire for comfort. Always remember when you’re dealing with anyone, if you say or do anything that threatens their sense of comfort you’ll have a fight on your hands. Don’t push people psychologically. They’ll resist and push back. Use tact, slow down, take your time and introduce new ideas to them gradually, so they’ll feel at ease with you.”
“24. Environment: Correctly so, people are concerned with the health of our natural environment. However, what could be more important than our psychological/spiritual environment? Yet, few are concerned. There is never a right, healthy time to feel bad. Cheerfulness is a nice, healthy environment. People who spread pollution with their gloomy spirit should be avoided. They will pollute your spirit.”
“33. Questions: Maybe you have already noticed that people will ask questions, but almost never listen to the answers. Why? They are only interested in answers that confirm them and their way of looking at things. If the answer challenges anything about them, the wall goes up instantly. Of course, they will swear they really want to learn and are all ears. They most likely will be able to quote word for word what was said to them, but they never really heard a thing.”
Be Interested in Your Life in a New Way
“Let’s suppose somebody walks in and gives you more work than you can do. Does it make sense to get up from wherever it is that you are, and go over and stick your finger in the wall socket and shock yourself? Does that make any sense? Of course not. But that’s what we do! That’s what we do inwardly to ourselves. If something we call ‘bad’ happens, if we don’t get our own way, if someone doesn’t treat us the way we think they should, we immediately adopt the strange procedure of putting our finger in the wall socket – psychologically speaking. Somehow we feel that if we get hurt, if we hurt ourselves, then that validates our self-picture of being right. We think it proves ‘I’m right!’ No, all it proves is that we hurt ourselves, unnecessarily. That’s what it validates.
“It was not the incident or the other person or the amount of work we had to do or anything else outside of us. It was how we reacted to the outer event. Blaming anything else just avoids the problem and keeps the whole painful thing going.”
“47. Knowing what you want and expecting it ruins relationships and life. When we resist any event we are getting in our own way. Remember, Life is the Teacher and we are the students.”
“62. Never blame any unhappiness you feel on anything but your own lack of Higher-Understanding. This is the beginning of Higher-Understanding.”
“66. There is nothing more beautiful than one’s naturalness fully developed. There is nothing uglier than unnaturalness fully developed.”
11. The Demander:
“Description: You owe me — I was there when you needed me, now I need you. You owe me. Sound familiar? Isn’t it strange we think of ourselves as kind, caring, giving people – but at the same time we feel you owe me for my ‘kindness’? The fact is we want to build up a credit balance for future use — we’re trading –we’re exploiting one another. That is neither nice nor kind.”
“Response: Never play trading games with people. If you really want to do something for someone — do it! — no strings attached. If you don’t — don’t! No one owes you and you owe no one. Clear cut, pure and nice!”
“The fact is that we are both the source of the problem and the victim. Our unawareness of our inner-world makes it a perfect breeding ground for problems of all types. Because we are sure the source of our problems is outside of us, they easily ambush us from within. If we get our feelings hurt, get angry, get depressed, etc, — it’s an inside job. Nothing outside of us is hurting us. We hurt ourselves because we are frozen in our beliefs. If we will allow the Truth to thaw us, then we can catch ourselves in the act. Catching yourself in the act is the beginning of the end of hurting yourself. And in a relationship, if both people are catching themselves, the two of them can breathe new life constantly into the relationship. In life, everything is either getting worse or getting better. Working on oneself ensures that your life does not go downhill, but to the contrary, goes delightfully uphill to the beautiful mountaintop.”
“It is strange how human beings miss the most obvious facts about their negativities toward others. A hateful man seldom reasons, ‘Hatred toward others makes me miserable, so in the name of common sense I’d better abandon it.’ Rarely does a resentful person think, ‘Resentment of other people drains my strength and destroys my mental powers, so I’d better clear it from my life.’ Negative feelings so cloud a man with darkness that he cannot see what he is doing to himself.”
“There may be times when a problem in finances or human relations seems like a mountain in comparison to the particle of truth you presently possess. Don’t believe it; not for one second. Behind that particle is the Whole Truth, which does not give power to a problem, as unalert minds do. Open yourself to the vastness of the Whole Truth. Start by refusing to listen to the noise of a problem, for this enables you to hear an instructive message originating in a silent place above the problem.”
“‘You say we must react rightly to suffering. What is a wrong reaction?’ ‘When you resist it, hate it, fight it, try to escape it with some frantic exterior activity.’ ‘Why are those reactions wrong?’ ‘Because they prevent you from understanding the whole process. And that is why you suffer over and over again. If your car breaks down, do you walk away and pretend there’s nothing wrong, or do you work at understanding the mechanical failure in order to repair it? Why not face the inner breakdown and correct it?'”
The last line of this excerpt explains the problem of my life and the world in a nutshell: “People imagine that by increasing their sense of self-merit and virtue, they get higher. On the contrary, they descend.” If I could take this with me throughout my day, I would feel the wrongness of self-justification every time I do it!