Without stating goals for your work, it’s impossible to measure your progress. Goals enable you to keep your direction strongly in mind and reveal those parts of your being that are in opposition to transformation.

A long term goal may be something big like being free from expressing negative emotions. A short term goal focuses on your immediate concerns, such as refraining from getting identified with traffic on the way to work.

It’s good to set goals high enough to cause an amount of Stretching, setting the goal to make you work beyond your normal capacity, to excel beyond your normal limit. This is an excellent way to assure you’re making big efforts and going forward.

Gurdjieff had a habit of setting people to tasks entirely against their nature, such as getting intellectuals to dig ditches. It will help your work to sometimes get way outside your normal comfort zone, to do things you usually wouldn’t do. For example, Martha, a chef, considered herself a cold person. She took a temporary job as a nursing assistant because it was so unlike her usual inclinations. The occupation caused her to really stretch herself and she also gained a lot of insights about her weaknesses from it. Surprisingly, she found she was not only good at the job, but liked it, and later went on to nursing school, finding herself much happier than when she had been a chef. Some people say the more you go against your own nature, the more you can get out of it.

Make an Intention in the morning, clearly stating your goal or goals for the day. In the evening review your memories of the day and honestly Evaluate how well you’ve met your goals. If you are not satisfied with your efforts, come up with at least one new way that might help you do better. Sandwiching your day with intention and review is a very effective way to stay on track.

Staying on track is important because with every effort there is a counter effort to deviate from the original goal and intention. Gurdjieff described a goal and its accomplishment from start to completion as an “Octave,” and he wrote there are slow downs at certain points. In everyday language this can be described as a lack of initial energy near the beginning and a lack of momentum near the end of a goal. The original intention must be strong enough, then it must be held in mind firmly enough to keep up the force of the intention.

This is easier said than done because it is here, in the attempt to accomplish a stated goal, that the lack of Unity in a person’s everyday consciousness becomes evident with self observation. Unity of being would be having a continuous state of consciousness and will so that when a person used the word “I” it would always represent the entire being and will. It would mean having only one “I.”

For example, Sarah states in her journal “I will not bite my nails today.” Her intention must be strong because later quite different and opposing feelings and thoughts will emerge and call themselves “I.” That afternoon, faced with a confusing work problem, a different I starts Sarah biting her nails. “I need to bite my nails so I can think better and deal with this mess” the different I thinks. Later in the evening, realizing how far she strayed from her goal, yet another I thinks, “ I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. Trying to stick to something like that is just being too rigid.” These are entirely different “I’s” than the I that wants to be conscious and stated the goal.

An intention has to be made with all of oneself. When attention is dropped and you observe yourself drifting away from the goal, you need to pull yourself right back and remind yourself how important it was to you when you stated the goal and made the intention and why it is so important. You have to face the fact that this will have to be done over and over again if you are to accomplish the goal.

Bailing out on goals frequently comes as rationalization, that it was genuinely necessary to express that negative emotion, that there were too many important work tasks to take time to self observe, that the goal isn’t that hard and can be attained some other, more ideal time. What is essential is to grasp is the fact that the I setting the goal is completely distinct from the I’s breaking away from the goal.

Lying to yourself is an enormous obstacle with meeting goals. The I that wants to be conscious states the goal. While deviating completely from the original intention, the I’s who are identified pretend to still be following the goal when they are not, or they will make arguments that the goal is really not that important.

 For example, Fred makes a long term goal to lose ten pounds. His intention for the day is to eat only proteins and stay away from junk food. Later, one of his other I’s argues, “I need the potato chips to calm myself down so I feel good enough to work.” This can be repeated day after day. Eventually Fred thinks of himself as dieting when he is actually overeating.

Stating goals, then observing entirely different I’s deviate from the goals and argue they aren’t important in the first place, or pretend they are following the goal when they are not reveals that a person is not whole and lacks unity. It reveals that most of the time when a person uses the word “I,” he is lying. Only the I who wants to be conscious, who sets and meets goals, is the real I.

In a person who is always self remembering, there is only one I represents the whole of the person. Nothing is hidden from the person about herself. There is no subconscious because all is conscious. When she says the word I it represents her entire self.  

Unity of being is having only one I, the I who wants to be conscious.

In the course of observing yourself, you will discover you have great difficulty finishing an octave, carrying a goal successfully to its end. Finishing octaves is a sign of a more unified consciousness and will.

To be able to go forward by accomplishing goals, you need to consider the momentum it takes at the beginning of an octave and state your intention with all of yourself. When you stray from your stated path at the slow down near the end of the octave, you have to re-focus and apply extra effort to reach completion.

It will gradually become obvious that some mechanical manifestations and states of identification are clustered into groups completely opposing the observing I’s goals. You will find yourself divided between I and other, the other populated by a number of dissenting forces, or False Personalities.

A false personality is an unconscious and mechanical cluster of emotions, movements, and thoughts that calls itself I.

It’s interesting that the word personality comes from the Greek word persona, for the mask worn by a character on stage in theater. Personality as it’s traditionally understood is a type of theater used to maintain accepted social interaction. When this is done with awareness it is a type of conscious theater. False personality, however, is always unconscious.

A false personality does not want to be conscious and resists goals by refusal, rationalization, or distraction. The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a dramatic portrayal of this fact. Hyde was always horrified at the actions of Jekyll. Everyone suffers from multiple personality disorder. Eventually you will find at least several distinctly different types have hold and subvert your intentions.

Efforts to recognize and get free of false personalities are a deeper level of work than striving to get free of individual mechanical manifestations, negative emotions, or imbalances in the fields of activity. False personalities use a much deeper level of identification, are defended by a stronger denial system, and involve multiple fields of activity. This kind of work can only be done after a certain amount of progress. It takes a strong degree of commitment and focus. Because it is a more advanced kind of work, it yields vast results and progress.

The resistance and opposition encountered with working on false personalities may at first seem insurmountable, but they have certain distinct weaknesses that make them easy to overcome if you are aware of them. A false personality has a very limited Script, a quite defined repertoire, talking and moving in the same way every time it appears. This way you can recognize it. It also has distinct Cycles, showing up again and again with regularity. Knowing these things will make it way easier for you to recognize it and break free of it.

Journaling can help one become aware of these features, noting times of prolonged and deep identification and analyzing exactly what you were doing at those times. For instance, you might notice every time you are in a certain place or with certain people you act differently than other times, and recognize you follow a defined script when that occurs. With time, patterns will emerge and the false personality will become more easily spotted. In some operas a character might be announced throughout by a leitmotif, a musical theme that is played every time the character appears. Over time you will become familiar with a false personality’s leitmotif of speech and movement.

Your success with this kind of work will depend on your efforts and progress like your previous work. At first you will only be able to recognize these manifestations after you have been completely identified with them, later, while you are identified, and still later, you will be free of them, not getting identified in the first place.

One way to more readily recognize and eventually cease to identify with a false personality is to name it. Try to find a name that captures its general features. It may act out as a tramp, lunatic, drama queen, hysterical, con artist, or control freak. For instance, Sylvia observed in herself a very narcissistic and attention seeking false personality desperate to get others to see her as glamorous. By naming it Marilyn (for Marilyn Monroe) she was able to spot it better and quicker, and eventually to get free of it. The other advantage of naming false personalities is it can inject a bit of humor into your work, always a positive thing.

Ultimately you will understand that the I that wants to be conscious is the only useful and genuine one. Everything that helps accomplish the goal is worth keeping, anything that hinders the goal has no worth. The struggle is between the genuine I versus Other, multiple false I’s versus the authentic I. A person who is truly conscious has only one I, there are no false personalities, and absolutely nothing is hidden. A permanent center of gravity is when the desire to be conscious is above all. The word I means unity and will, otherwise it’s a lie every time you say the word. Learn only to use the word I for the I that wants to be conscious, and to see everything else as other.

Goals and Unity Main Points

Without stating goals for your work, it’s impossible to measure your progress.

Having a primary vehicle for your consciousness work, a project, job, or task, is conducive to goal setting for self observation.

Setting goals to make you work beyond your normal capacity helps you move forward.

Sandwiching your day with intention and review is a very effective way to stay focused on your goal.

The I that wants to be conscious sets the goal, then different I’s break away from the goal.

Unity of being means having only one I, the I that wants to be conscious.

A false personality is an unconscious and mechanical cluster of emotions, movements, and thoughts that calls itself I.

Features that can help you can recognize a false personality are that it has a very limited script and appears in cycles with regularity.

One way to more readily recognize and eventually cease to identify with a false personality is to name it.

A permanent center of gravity is when the desire to be conscious is above all.

The word I means unity and will, otherwise it’s a lie every time you say the word.

Goals and Unity Exercises

Make an intention in the morning, clearly stating your goal or goals for the day. In the evening honestly evaluate how well you’ve met your goals. If you are not satisfied with your efforts, come up with at least one new way that might help you to do better.

Set a goal that will cause you to stretch.

State a pastime or project that would go outside your normal comfort zone.

Find examples in the past when you have failed to meet goals because a different I sabotaged your efforts.

Find examples of slow downs in an octave.

Identify one of your false personalities.

List its way of talking and moving.

Describe its cycle of appearance.

Name the false personality based on its main feature.

Use the word I only for the I that wants to be conscious, and view everything else as other.

Goals and Unity Glossary of Terms

Cycles – A negative emotion’s or false personality’s regular intervals of appearance

Evaluation – Honest assessment of how well  Intention was met

False Personality – An unconscious and mechanical cluster of emotions, movements, and thoughts that calls itself “I”

Goal – Short term or long term plan for consciousness work

Intention – Goal for consciousness work for a defined period of time

Octave – Completion of a goal from start to finish. Has two main points of resistance and slow down, at the beginning and near the end.

Script – The limited repertoire of a false personality, causing it to use the same speech and movements every time

Stretching – Setting a goal that causes you to work beyond your normal capacity

Unity – Having only one I, the I who wants to be conscious

IX. Higher Emotional Center