C.S. Nott
Chief Feature in each one of us is a key to our actions and manifestations. It tips the scales. Always the same motive moves Chief Feature… It is something mechanical and imaginary, and is found in the emotional part of essence. It gives the tone pitch to the three centres and forms the pattern of our wishes. It arises from one or more of the seven deadly sins, but chiefly from self-love and vanity. —Further Teachings of Gurdjieff, C.S. Nott —Talks Continued
Gurdjieff
(I)nner slavery come(s) from many varied sources and many independent factors… sometimes it is one thing and sometimes another, for we have many enemies…
There are so many of these enemies that life would not be long enough to struggle with each of them and free ourselves from each…separately. So we must find a method, a line of work, which will enable us simultaneously to destroy the greatest possible number of enemies within us
I said that we have many independent enemies, but the chief and most active are vanity and self-love… —Views From the Real World – Prieuré, February 13, 1923: Liberation leads to liberation
Ouspensky
People’s chief weaknesses are very different… It is interesting that one can hardly ever find one’s own chief feature, because one is in it… But we can find what stands side by side with it…
(W)e must study…all our points of view, habitual emotions, the way we think, what we invent. These are all results of chief feature… Think about false personality; this is quite sufficient for practical purposes. As a theory, false personality in most cases turns round one axle, and that axle is chief feature. (I)f (one) can conquer this feature or weakness he can in one stride achieve many things… But chief feature is not always definable. Sometimes you can put your finger on it, sometimes not; in one person you can see it, in another not. But false personality you can see.
Chief feature…is false personality; it is something on which false personality is based and which enters into everything.
Q. Does chief feature always make decisions at important moments?
A. This is the best definition for it—that it always makes decisions.
You must come near to it yourself. When you feel it yourself, you will know. If you are only told, you may easily forget. When you find many manifestations of your false personality, you may find your feature. —The Fourth Way, Chapter 7
Orage
The chief feature and the essential wish are identical. It is the mainspring of action. Why do you do things? For what do you do them? For example, Gurdjieff, when challenged to tell a distinguished Russian general what his chief feature was, said, ‘Fear.’ The general finally admitted that he did fear to face his wife, unless he had been heroic. This fear in connection with his wife was the motor behind all he did. —Gurdjieff’s Emissary in New York: Talks and Lectures with A.R. Orage 1924-1931, Friday, 20 March 1925
Orage cites (the) experience of discovering chief feature.… as being the opposite of what one likes to pretend is one’s chief characteristic… —Ibid., Monday, 21 December 1925
In each one of us is a “special little quirk”— the last little thing added to the scale. This is what makes you do things as you do them, and not like anyone else.
In bowling balls there is a pellet of lead added, so that it must be thrown with a special quirk to make it go straight. We must learn how to send ourselves off with a certain quirk to make us go straight…
Look for chief feature in 5 things: Greed; Self-pride; Lying; Fear; Sex. Chief feature can often be a combination of one or many of these 5… It is always the last little thing making you act as you do. It is in every situation. Look for it. —Ibid., Beyond Behavior – Kathryn Hulme Papers
Kenneth Walker
Ouspensky… said that…Chief Feature was so carefully protected by buffers that a man was seldom able to discover it by himself…
‘If you can look at the pattern of your whole life,’ (said) Ouspensky, ‘you may be able to see the same sort of problem continually recurring… and ending in the same sort of impasse. If you manage to do this, you are likely to be in the neighborhood of your Chief Feature… an axis in yourself around which a great many other things are revolving, and that explains why the fruits of your chief weakness are continually recurring…’
Someone asked if… one fault in personality…was a greater obstacle to inner development than anything else. Ouspensky replied without hesitation that vanity was an outstanding hindrance… that G. had always laid special emphasis on the importance of vanity (as)… “The fundamental cause of almost all the misunderstandings arising in the inner world of man”…’ —A Study of Gurdjieff’s Teaching, Kenneth Walker, Essence and Personality
Gurdjieff
“Every man’s personal work must consist in struggling against this chief fault…
he struggle against it constitute(s)…each man’s individual path…
“The struggle against the ‘false I,’ against one’s chief feature or chief fault, is the most important part of the work, and it must proceed in deeds, not in words…—In Search of the Miraculous, P.D. Ouspensky, Chapter 11