Who We are Not
Our experience is like a ship that carries us over the ocean of life. It is designed to carry us through the waves of life gently and smoothly, but what might happen or end up on the ship’s bottom when it is sailing through the ocean? After some time, barnacles start to stick to the hull and accumulate underneath, slowing the boat down and making it more difficult to go through the water. These barnacles represent the misconceptions we have about the world and ourselves. So we need to scrape off the barnacles so the ship can move through the water more easily. The difficulty is that we believe that these barnacles are the ship’s hull. If you thought they were part of the ship, would you scrape them off? No! These barnacles can keep us stuck and block the flow of energy, causing a lot of misery in our lives. If we want to start flowing through life effortlessly, smoothly and peacefully we need to get rid of them.
“Travelling powerless, like a bucket traveling in a well: First with the thought “I,” misconceiving the self, Then, arising attachment to things with the thought “mine.”
– Buddhism. Candrakirti, Madhyamakavatara 3
The Pluralized “I”
“Individuality, a single and permanent I, consciousness, will, the ability to do, a state of inner freedom, all these are qualities which ordinary man does not possess.”
– G.I. Gurdjieff, In Search of the Miraculous
In our current state, we lack a true center of Being since we are made up of a variety of contradicting components that we refer to as “myself.” Each one is also referred to as an “ego” or an “I,” and if we treat this “I” as a person, we may say that each of us is home to a variety of different people. We must acknowledge and accept that we are fundamentally a collection of conflicting “I’s” that have been shaped by our parent’s, the schooling system, advertising, literature, music, television, and all of the ideas and beliefs we have accumulated about ourselves. We mistakenly believe that we are our name, our occupation, our memories, and this body. We are unaware that we are none of these things. This “I” has given us an illusory sense of continuity by inhabiting the same physical body that is utilized constantly, as well as the same intellectual center and emotional center, which has led us to assume that it is fairly substantial and solid. We have a flawed conception of “I,” and as a result, we reject anything that challenges it. Even the way we build our analyses contributes to this.
“Try to understand that what you usually call “I” is not I; there are many “Is” and each “I” has a different wish. Try to verify this. You wish to change, but which part of you has this wish? Many parts of you want many things, but only one part is real. It will be very useful for you to try to be sincere with yourself. Sincerity is the key which will open the door through which you will see your separate parts, and you will see something quite new. You must go on trying to be sincere. Each day you put on a mask, and you must take it off little by little.”
– G.I. Gurdjieff, Views from the Real World
One of the goals of Fourth Way psychology is to make people realize that the “I” they believe they are is only a construct of their imagination. Once we realize this, our entire attitude toward ourselves and our trading will begin to shift. We begin to see our charts in a more objective light if we have a firm understanding of both who we are and who we are not.
Whatever version of ourselves we are currently experiencing is a result of the dominating belief or attitude that is currently permeating the person we are in that moment. We can be trading one second and arguing about politics with our spouse the next. The “I” in us who engages in a trade is different from the “I” who engages in a discussion about politics, even though both “I’s” reside in the same physical body and communicate through the same mental and emotional processes. We are all similar in this way. We have tens of thousands of these various “I’s,” each of which conveys a different notion, behavior, or viewpoint. While some “I’s” are comparatively weak and susceptible, others are noticeably more strong and long-lasting.
One moment we may be happy and carefree, the next anything may cause us to become quite depressed, and the next moment we may be bored or uninterested. The premise behind it all is the fact that one “I” decided to act because of the current circumstances. We usually find it confusing when people say or act one way, and then utterly contradict themselves the next. This is mainly due to the above. Of course, we believe that we would never behave in such a way and that only others are deeply split, but if we were completely honest with ourselves, we would acknowledge that we act in such a way constantly. It is safe to infer that others view us in the same paradoxical manner if we view other individuals in this way.
“Man is a plural being. When we speak of ourselves ordinarily, we speak of ‘I.’ We say, “‘I’ did this,” ” ‘I’ think this,” ” ‘I’ want to do this”—but this is a mistake.
There is no such ‘I,’ or rather there are hundreds, thousands of little ‘I’s in every one of us. We are divided in ourselves but we cannot recognize the plurality of our being except by observation and study. At one moment it is one ‘I’ that facts, at the next moment it is another ‘I.’ It is because the ‘I’s in ourselves are contradictory that we do not function harmoniously.”
– G.I. Gurdjieff, Views from the Real World
Each “I” struggles for supremacy in order to grab control of one of our three centers. We see how, when a trade is successful, the “I” of satisfaction we feel soon gives way to the “I” of worry in our emotional center as our chart analysis starts to veer off course. Then, in our motor/instinctive/sexual center, we note how an “I” of worry creates muscle tightness, while another “I” of anticipation leads our foot towards tapping repeatedly. The intellectual center perceives the “I” as a self-doubting thought of “should I stay in or get out” one second and an “I” of tremendous assurance and security the next.
“Man has no individual I. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small “I”s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking, ‘I’. And each time his I is different. Just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man’s name is legion.”
– G.I. Gurdjieff, In Search of the Miraculous
- In the ancient Roman army, a legion was a unit of 3,000-6,000 troops. The Bible gives us the impression that man is many.
- When Jesus stepped out off the boat, a man with an impure spirit approached him from the tombs.
He ran and dropped on his knees in front of Jesus when he saw him from afar. “Come out of this man, you impure spirit!” Jesus exclaimed. “What is your name?” Jesus inquired. “For we are many,” he said, “my name is Legion.” – Mark 5:2,6,8,9 in the Bible
Each “I” or ego is a psychological defect that obstructs our perception of Reality and causes us suffering. When all a person knows is fear, greed, doubt, impatience, envy, and pride, they suffer. These factors are the cause of many of our internal and exterior problems, and they are always destructive disturbances. In other words, anytime the ego appears within us, the consciousness within it views the world through that lens. When we become greedy, we view everything through the lens of greed. When fear or doubt grips us, we begin to see the world through a lens of that worry or uncertainty. It is challenging for anyone to see the charts objectively, as they truly are, as long as he feels he is one, therefore the person who wants to have the best edge in the market must Self-observe in order to know his various “I’s,” because they can overcome and be free of fear, greed, uncertainty, impatience, etc. For instance, when conducting our technical analysis, we can come across a few negative reports regarding a specific asset and start to base our trading decisions on fear rather than the findings of our investigation. If the markets are really slow and you are bored, you may attempt to scalp a trade without performing a thorough macroanalysis and end up losing money since your “I’s” of impatience and greed are in play.
When we clothe ourselves in the “I” of pride and declare things like “I am the best trader” or “I am the worst trader ever,” we have decided to invest energy in that pride that sense of self and base our trading judgments on it. At that point, we had opted to go into being hypnotized the ideas of self. Envy is an ideal example of this. We regret not taking a 10x trade that someone else took and prospered from. We’ve invested energy and trapped our consciousness in the “I” of envy, and now envy is going to pursue us with ideas and impulses like “I could have bought that really nice car I wanted!” These kinds of delusions will encourage us to overtrade since we will focus our decisions solely on earning the money necessary to buy the thing we want, rather than whether or not we are receiving the ideal trade setup. This desire is the constant fuel that drives us. We are mistaken since it is the cause of our trading mistakes and losses, despite the fact that we think it will make us content and safe.
“In thinking, “This is I” and “That is mine,” he binds himself with his self, as does a bird with a snare.”
– Maitri Upanishad 3.2
If we are Self-observing before a trade and honest with ourselves, “Am I taking this trade because it falls in line with the Laws of my prediction, am I taking this trade because I am bored, am I taking this trade because I want that new car, or am I taking this trade because I need to catch up with so and so and how much they make, etc.?” If the focus of your trade is on “I” rather than an impartial viewpoint of what is in our anticipated analysis, we will fail.
Although it can be challenging to understand, the idea of many “I’s” should not be laughed at. It is far from absurd, and if understood, the idea might change how we see ourselves and other people, as well as take our trading to new heights. Once we become aware of the situation and start to observe ourselves, it is very simple to spot the many “I’s” at work within ourselves.
“Man such as we know him, the “man-machine,” the man who cannot “do,” and with whom and through whom everything “happens,” cannot have a permanent and single I. His I changes as quickly as his thoughts, feelings and moods, and he makes a profound mistake in considering himself always one and the same person; in reality he is always a different person, not the one he was a moment ago.”
– G.I. Gurdjieff, In Search of the Miraculous
Life in general will become clearer if this so-called perplexing and strange concept of why we behave so differently at various times and under various circumstances is adequately acknowledged. Naturally, a lot of people might never accept this because no one likes to admit his contradictions. It will, however, open the door for the first attempt to fully know and understand oneself and, by extension, the outside world, which is the entire objective of the Fourth Way teaching.
“In right knowledge the study of man must proceed on parallel lines with the study of the world, and the study of the world must run parallel with the study of man.”
– G.I. Gurdjieff, In Search of the Miraculous
Man is a Machine
We are obliged to recognize that man is nothing more than a machine as a result of genuine Self-observation. That hurts our pride to accept it, but we can’t possible succeed in our quest to see things as they are unless we are completely honest with ourselves. We must face the fact that we never take action in response to life’s events, but just react. It may appear like what we are doing is done purposefully, yet it is all a big illusion, much like the imagined “I.”
“The ‘man-machine’ with whom everything depends upon external influences, with whom everything happens, who is now one, the next moment another, and the next moment a third, has no future of any kind; he is buried and that is all. Dust returns to dust. This applies to him. In order to be able to speak of any kind of future life there must be a certain crystallization, a certain fusion of man’s inner qualities, a certain independence of external influences.”
– G.I. Gurdjieff, In Search of the Miraculous
For instance, when we awaken in the morning and the weather is lovely outside, we feel content. When it rains or snows, we are not happy, and we start the day off cranky and moody. When we don’t enjoy our breakfast, we react by getting depressed. We might not think it was such a terrible morning after all if our dinner was nice. Then, if we receive some positive news via email, we begin to think that perhaps life isn’t as bad as it seems. However, if we had been feeling good about ourselves and then received negative news by email, all of our positive emotions would instantly disappear, and we would be saddened. Our entire lives are a series of mechanical reactions to events that are presented to us by our social standing, jobs, numerous activities of interest in life, world events, or anything else that happens in our surroundings. This goes on for the remainder of the day. From morning to night.
“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.”
– G.I. Gurdjieff, In Search of the Miraculous
People differ in terms of their mental, emotional, and physical makeup based on our upbringing, education, familial situations, and other things, thus we all respond to situations differently. Despite the fact that it could seem like we are behaving purposefully, we are actually reacting. Self-observation will show that we merely respond mechanically to any circumstance at any given time and that we see life from the perspective of who we are in that moment rather than from the perspective of what is.
“When self-deceit is destroyed and a man begins to see the difference between the mechanical and the conscious in himself, there begins a struggle for the realization of consciousness in life and for the subordination of the mechanical to the conscious. For this purpose a man begins with endeavors to set a definite decision, coming from conscious motives, against mechanical processes proceeding according to the laws of duality. The creation of a permanent third principle is for man the transformation of the duality into the trinity.”
– G.I. Gurdjieff, In Search of the Miraculous
According to the teachings we’re dealing with, unless man changes from the mechanical creature he is presently in the process of turning into someone who is a conscious Perceiver capable of directing his own existence instead of life leading him, man is born a machine and will remain one till the end of his days. We must first know about ourselves and eliminate the psychological “I” if we are to cease acting like machines, awaken our perception, and achieve true conscious will, individuality, and the capacity to know and do. When the pluralized ego is gone, our true perception is unveiled.
“You can take force from your animal and give it to Being.”
– G.I. Gurdjieff to Kathryn Hulme