Life is real only then, when ‘I am’ p136

For an all-round assimilation of both these "assisting" or as might otherwise be called "helping" exercises for the mastering of the chief exercise, I now, at the very beginning of the formation of this new group composed of various persons pursuing one and the same aim, find it necessary to warn you of an indispensable condition for the successful attainment of this common aim, and that is in your mutual relations to be sincere.
The unconditional requirement of such sincerity among all kinds of other conditions existed, as it happened to become known to me from various authentic sources, among people of all past times and of every degree of intellectuality, whenever they gathered together for the collective attainment of some common aim.
In my opinion, it is only by fulfilling this condition for the given proposed collective work that it is possible to attain a real result in this aim which one has set oneself, and which has already become for contemporary people almost impossible.
Each of you having become an equal-rights participant in this group newly formed for the attainment of one and the same so to say "ideal" must always struggle with such impulses, inevitably arising in you and unworthy of man, as "self-love," "pride," "conceit" and so on, and not be ashamed to be sincere in your answers concerning your observations and constatations on the exercises recommended by me.
Any information expressed by any of you relating to the elucidation of the various details of this first exercise which is for all of you at the present moment the center of gravity, can be, in the collective work, of great value in helping one another.
In the present case, you must not be afraid of being sincere among yourselves.
Being occupied with the solution of questions concerning this common great aim, each of you must always cognize and instinctively feel that you are all in a certain respect similar to each other, and that the well-being of one of you depends on the well-being of the others.
No one of you separately is capable of doing anything real at all; therefore, even for the sake of only an egoistic aim, help one another in this newly formed group which might also be called a brotherhood. The more sincere you are with one another, the more useful you will be to one another.
Of course, be sincere only here in the group, and in questions concerning the common aim.
Sincerity with everyone in general is weakness, slavery and even a sign of hysteria.
Although the normal man must be able to be sincere, yet he must also know when, where and for what purpose it is necessary to be sincere.
And in the present case, to be sincere is desirable. Therefore, without restraint, speak of all the results attained by you from doing this kind of exercise.


from Ouspensky's "The Fourth Way," pp. 159-60

Q. How can one learn to be sincere with oneself?
A. Only by trying to see oneself. Just think about yourself, not in emotional moments, but in quiet moments, and do not justify yourself because generally we justify and explain everything by saying that it was inevitable, or that it was somebody else's fault, and so on.
Q. I have been trying to be sincere, but I see now that I do not really know what to be sincere means.
A. In order to be sincere it is not enough only to wish it. In many cases we do not wish to be sincere; but even if we wished we could not be. This must be understood. Being able to be sincere is a science. And even deciding to be sincere is very difficult, for we have many reservations.
Only sincerity and complete recognition of the fact that we are slaves to mechanicalness and its inevitable results can help us to find and destroy buffers with the help of which we deceive ourselves. We can understand what mechanicalness is and all the horror of mechanicalness only when we do something horrible and fully realize that it was mechanicalness in us that made us do it. It is necessary to be very sincere with oneself to be able to see it. If we try to cover it, to find excuses and explanations, we will never realize it. It may hurt dreadfully, but we must bear it and try to understand that only by fully confessing it to ourselves can we avoid repeating it again and again. We can even change results by full and complete understanding and by not trying to hide it.
We can escape from the tentacles of mechanicalness and break its force by big suffering. If we try to avoid suffering, if we are afraid of it, if we try to persuade ourselves that nothing bad really happened, that, after all, it is unimportant and that things can go on just as they were going before, not only shall we never escape, but we shall become more and more mechanical, and shall very soon come to a state when there will be no possibility for us and no chance.

from Ouspensky's "In Search of the Miraculous," p. 230

Gurdjieff:
"As I have said already, one of the first demands is sincerity. But there are different kinds of sincerity. There is clever sincerity and there is stupid sincerity, just as there is clever insincerity and stupid insincerity. Both stupid sincerity and stupid insincerity are equally mechanical. But if a man wishes to learn to be cleverly sincere, he must be sincere first of all with his teacher and with people who are senior to him in the work. This will be 'clever sincerity.' But here it is necessary to note that sincerity must not become 'lack of considering.' Lack of considering in relation to the teacher or in relation to those whom the teacher has appointed, as I have said already, destroys all possibility of any work. If he wishes to learn to be cleverly insincere he must be insincere about the work and he must learn to be silent when he ought to be silent with people outside it, who can neither understand nor appreciate it. But sincerity in the group is an absolute demand, because, if a man continues to lie in the group in the same way as he lies to himself and to others in life, he will never learn to distinguish the truth from a lie."

from Ouspensky's "In Search of the Miraculous," p. 249

"You do not understand what it means to be sincere," said G. "You are so used to lying both to yourselves and to others that you can find neither words nor thoughts when you wish to speak the truth. To tell the complete truth about oneself is very difficult. But before telling it one must know it. And you do not even know what the truth about yourselves consists of. Some day I will tell every one of you his chief feature or chief fault. We shall then see whether you will understand me or not."

from Ouspensky's "In Search of the Miraculous," p. 153

G:
"Very often a man desires sincerely to express or somehow or other show to another man what he really thinks of him or feels about him. And if he is a weak man he will of course give way to this desire and afterwards justify himself and say that he did not want to lie, did not want to pretend, he wanted to be sincere. Then he convinces himself that it was the other man's fault. He really wanted to consider him, even to give way to him, not to quarrel, and so on. But the other man did not at all want to consider him so that nothing could be done with him. It very often happens that a man begins with a blessing and ends with a curse. He begins by deciding not to consider and afterwards blames other people for not considering him. This is an example of how external considering passes into internal considering. But if a man really remembers himself he understands that another man is a machine just as he is himself. And then he will enter into his position, he will put himself in his place, and he will be really able to understand and feel what another man thinks and feels. If he can do this his work becomes easier for him. But if he approaches a man with his own requirements nothing except new internal considering can ever be obtained from it."

from G Views, p241

"First you must decide: is the Way necessary for you or not? How are you to begin to find this out? If you are serious, you must change your point of view, you must think in a new way, you must find your possible aim. This you cannot do alone, you must call on a friend who can help you—everyone can help—but especially two friends can help each other to revalue the values.
It is very difficult to be sincere all at once, but, if you try, you will improve gradually. When you can be sincere, I can show you, or help you to see, the things you are afraid of, and you will find what is necessary and useful for yourself."