Gurdjieff - how to undertake a voluntary aim

from the book "Views from the Real World" by G.I. Gurdjieff

Question: I frequently remember my aim but I have not the energy to do what I feel I should do.

Answer: Man has no energy to fulfill voluntary aims because all his strength, acquired at night during his passive state, is used up in negative manifestations. These are his automatic manifestations, the opposite of his positive, willed manifestations. For those of you who are already able to remember your aim automatically, but have no strength to do it: Sit for a period of at least one hour alone. Make all your muscles relaxed. Allow your associations to proceed but do not be absorbed by them. Say to them: "If you will let me do as I wish now, I shall later grant you your wishes." Look on your associations as though they belonged to someone else, to keep yourself from identifying with them.

At the end of an hour take a piece of paper and write your aim on it. Make this paper your God. Everything else is nothing. Take it out of your pocket and read it constantly, every day. In this way it becomes part of you, at first theoretically, later actually. To gain energy, practice this exercise of sitting still and making your muscles dead. Only when everything in you is quiet after an hour, make your decision about your aim. Don't let associations absorb you. To undertake a voluntary aim, and to achieve it, gives magnetism and the ability to "do."

[nealluczkiewicz]

Amazing how FEW people can know what gold is, and how to find
it.
I feel that just KNOWING this exists is a great blessing, even if I do not use it as well as I "should." Small at
first is good at first. Onr needs to be successful at making and keeping aim - one
needs the experience of it, the "taste" of it - then perhaps one can create one's cosmic menu.

[Yggdra]

You can't be going around dropping bombs like this. You might alarm somebody.