| It is stated in the Work that people, as they are, are not aware of themselves. We are asleep. How can this be verified? The assertion is based on the view that all our attention is absorbed into whatever we are sensing or perceiving. This can be said to arise from the fact that we are in a constant state of identification with our thoughts, feelings and senses. You are standing or sitting in a chair reading this. Are you aware of the book in your hands, the distance from your eyes to the page, your physical presence? Normally our attention is taken by the words or by outside events or people, but our attention is something with which we can be free. Have you ever experienced a moment of real danger, where your life may have been in jeopardy? At this point perhaps you were aware, not only of what was going on around you, but also of yourself in that position. This would be, in Work terms, more akin to self-awareness than our usual state of identification with everything and everyone.
Actively and impartially using one's attention, rather than passively allowing it to be used from the outside is something of which we are not normally aware. Ordinarily we do not know we are here. Seeing oneself, studying oneself in relation to Gurdjieff's ideas creates a possibility, but for a change to take place a distinct effort is needed
The Gurdjieff Work is a system of ideas and practical indications, which provide a gradual and hard-earned path towards self-development. Gradual because there can, according to this system, be no quick means to ease the grip of that in ourselves which has taken a lifetime to form. Hard-earned, because it is true that we only value that which we have paid for in "hard cash", by the sweat of our own brow. Everything has a price, despite what some of our contemporaries might urge us to think. The Work costs in terms of efforts made repeatedly over a very long period of time. It demands persistent and indefatigable efforts in the midst of other people who are making efforts, working upon themselves, according to the same principles. Gurdjieff once remarked that people are hardly likely to willingly make strenuous efforts over a long period of time in order to get something they already think they have, namely "will" and "individuality"
The Work can lead us to an attitude of impartiality - impartially noting one's being - not what one would like to be or what one would like to think one is at the time - but what one is, without judgement, without thinking good or bad. To become aware of one's manifestations, to pay attention - good attention. We have to learn to look until we have seen the deceptions and when we have seen the deceptions with impartiality, that day in ourselves, the truth will be born. This is extraordinary, we begin to wake up a little and find we are very different from what we suppose - we begin to use attention in this way, and become aware of something quite different, somebody we cannot remember meeting before.
There is in us an awareness of something higher, greater. If we have power over our attention we can, if we wish, make room for something higher. If our attention is not taken by outside events, we can look at what is going on - a picture of ourselves, more than this, we can make room for a higher level. When there is room, light will come - the bud opens on the bough.
Mr Gurdjieff's message is that man's place, if not asleep, is to struggle to hold his attention, to make a place for influences which can help him to be as he ought to be. The system is a practical method of how we can learn to begin to take our place. We can only find it for ourselves, but we cannot work alone, we need the work of others with the same aim around us. Mr Gurdjieff's made it possible for man to discover his real place in the scheme of things in order that he may receive the help a teacher can give him.
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