The highest that a man can attain is to be able to do.—Aphorisms
Gurdjieff:
“(M)an’s chief delusion is his conviction that he can do. All people think that they can do, all people want to do, and the first question all people ask is what they are to do. But actually nobody does anything, and nobody can do anything. This is the first thing that must be understood. Everything happens. All that befalls a man, all that is done by him, all that comes from him—all this happens. And it happens in exactly the same way as rain falls as a result of a change in the temperature in the higher regions of the atmosphere… as snow melts under the rays of the sun, as dust rises with the wind.
“Man is a machine. All his deeds, actions, words, thoughts, feelings, convictions, opinions, and habits are the results of external influences, external impressions. Out of himself a man cannot produce a single thought, a single action. Everything he says, does, thinks, feels—all this happens. Man cannot discover anything, invent anything. It all happens….
“With this question of doing yet another thing is connected.It always seems to people that others invariably do things wrongly, not in the way they should be done… They do not understand, and do not want to understand, that what is being done, and particularly what has already been done in one way, cannot be, and could not have been, done in another way…
“Try to understand…everything is going in the only way it can go. If people were different everything would be different. They are what they are, so everything is as it is.”.. —In Search of the Miraculous, Chapter 1
All our actions follow the line of least resistance to the pressure of outside circumstances…
If circumstances are favorable to your decision you may do it, but if they are unfavorable you will do whatever they direct…irrespective of your desires…
(A)s we are now, we cannot even do what we decide to do… —Views From the Real World, London, 1922
Ordinary men do not even understand what “doing” means because, in their own case and in everything around them, everything is always “done” and has always been “done.” And yet man can “do.” — i
P.D. Ouspensky:
From the time we are born to the time we die things happen…and we think we are doing. This is our normal state in life, and even the smallest possibility to do something comes only through the work, and first only in oneself, not externally. Even in oneself ‘doing’ very often begins by not doing. Before you can do something that you cannot do, you must not do many things which you did before. For instance, you cannot awake by just wanting to awake, but you can prevent yourself sleeping too much and too long…
We have to ‘do’ from the very beginning—not much, but very definite things. If you can not identify it is already the beginning of ‘doing’. If you can refrain from talk when you have an inclination to talk, that is already ‘doing’. ‘Doing’ begins with going against the current—first in yourself, in personal things…
Let me repeat. Work on being is always struggle—against what you like doing or dislike doing. Say you like roller-skating and you are told to remember yourself. Then you must struggle against your desire to go roller-skating. What is there more innocent than roller-skating? But you must struggle against it all the same. Every day and every hour there are things we cannot do, but there are also things we can do. So we must look at a day and see what we can do, but do not do. —The Fourth Way, Chapter X
Gurdjieff:
“And above all, in order to do what is difficult, one must first learn to do what is easy. One cannot begin with the most difficult. —In Search of the Miraculous, Chapter 11
There are two kinds of doing—automatic doing, and doing according to aim. Take a small thing which you now are not able to do, and make this your aim, your God. Let nothing interfere. Only aim at this… Now you have an appetite to do things too big for you. This is an abnormal appetite. You can never do these things, and this appetite keeps you from doing the small things you might do. Destroy this appetite, forget big things. Make the breaking of a small habit your aim. —Views From the Real World, New York, December 9, 1930
Mme. de Salzmann:
In taking a decision, we must “take our measure” in order to be able to make a right effort. This means to measure the forces. To conduct a more conscious struggle, I need to know my capacity— what I am able and what I am unable to do— and I need to anticipate the resistance. There are obstacles that I must understand, including both the illusion of my ordinary “I” and the recurring doubts about my capacity. My passivity does not wish to give up and is a very cunning beast. It will tell me that it cannot decide or carry out a decision. This is true— it cannot. But something else can. I need to listen to that, and not to the doubt brought by my passivity. At the same time, I cannot today be present in just any circumstance. It is important to choose an activity that corresponds to my measure, to my capacity to be present… —The Reality of Being, 44. The way down