Here are a few comments that three people in the Monday night Portland group wrote about practical application of the Gurdjieff teaching to themselves:

In this work, the entity that I call myself is understood as having three main centers: intellectual, emotional, moving/instinctive. The activity of this "self" is dynamic, moving from one center to another and in combination as well. This "self" manifests itself in disjointed units that we call "small I"s. Our task is to know these many "I"s through self-observation in real time.

Given these conditions, a practical study requires that we learn to identify these three centers in actual experiences. It is necessary to experimentally manipulate experience in various ways, first, in order to observe how we behave in different circumstances and, second, to exercise the limited degree of self-control that is possible for us now. Again, this kind of Work is done in the midst of life and real experience. Finally, it is through the cultivation of attention that self-development is achieved. Attention changes that which it rests upon.

Caveat: It is not possile to do this kind of Work alone. Subjective illusions cast by the personality influence perception to such an extent that objective intervention is required to achieve a realistic perspective. In other words, we need help.***

To a beginner the foundational concepts of the Gurdjieff system may seem as if they would be easy to put into practice. However, at the core of the system is experience -- your experience. Putting Gurdjieff's ideas -- such as self-remembering, self-observation, and work with attention -- into practice proves to be challenging.

For example, when you attempt to remember yourself, how well are you able to sustain the sense of your body and the feeling of you own Presence? How quickly do you slip back into losing your attention and losing awareness of yourself? The struggle to maintain awareness of the body is a fundamental practice in building something substantial in one's Work for Being.***

Our group is organized around a weekly task. These tasks are carried out in ordinary life. My experience is that ordinary life holds my attention more often than the remembrance of my task. In fact, I have to struggle to maintain my attention on my task. In this struggle I can observe many things about myself -- my automatic attitudes in certain situations, my comfort or discomfort with other people, and furthermore, my body. I have, for example, a pattern of postures and various tones in my voice that all seem to depend on outer conditions. These observations continue as long as I can maintain my struggle. Over time I have seen just how mechanical I am. But this is what I want to know.

I have found group work to be systematic. My participation in this group contributes to my lifetime goal to know myself as fully as possible.***