Honoring One Self is Considering Others Externally

This exchange unfolds around a single invisible hinge: the fear of being without justification. K’s hesitation—“What is pertinent?”—is not about relevance but permission. It asks whether existence is allowed without performance. From the outset, the dialogue exposes a life lived under an imagined gaze.

Phenomenologically, what F calls “the mind” appears not as a faculty but as a clouded activity generated by fear. This aligns with Nisargadatta’s insistence that mind is a movement mistaken for an entity, and with Gurdjieff’s description of mechanical thinking sustained by identification. The mind here is not thinking about reality; it is defending against being.

K’s fear of speaking unless she can “entertain” others reveals a conditioned equation: worth equals usefulness. Somatically, this corresponds to a chronic mobilization—an organism poised to appease. Existentially, it is the fear to be. Gurdjieff named this posture internal considering: the self constantly referencing itself through imagined reactions of others. Energy is consumed in self-measurement rather than in presencing the One self.

F’s assertion that others quickly forget us is not dismissal but diagnosis. Everyone is absorbed in the same loop: “How am I being received?” This mutual absorption creates a world of mirrors without contact. Relationship becomes an exchange of anxieties. In Gurdjieff’s terms, personality speaks to personality; essence remains absent.

The dialogue pivots when guilt enters. Guilt appears as moral concern, yet it functions as a refined form of self-punishment. Here, the false conscience "Me-Personality" replaces real conscience. Love is present but disconnected from embodied reality. Buffers (energetic "mufflers") prevent seeing the mechanical nature of this suffering. Guilt tightens the knot—it harms the self and serves no one else.

At this point, F introduces—implicitly but precisely—the distinction between internal and external considering. External considering, as Gurdjieff taught, is not self-sacrifice or pleasing others. It is the capacity to see others as they are, without reference to one’s own imaginary self, and to act appropriately without self-negation.

This becomes explicit in the discussion of family and obligation. Cards, traditions, courtesy—these are described as social lubricants. Outward gestures can be made cleanly, without inward entanglement. This is external considering in its mature form: one responds to the actual needs and forms of others while refusing to consort inwardly with imaginary selves—either theirs or one’s own.

F’s statement that he has “nothing to do with them inwardly” is not withdrawal but alignment. Love becomes impersonal—not cold, but unburdened by demand. It pleases the heart because it is no longer transactional. In Gurdjieff’s language, this is action without identification, a small act of conscious labor.

The recognition that not everyone is here to know themselves further dissolves unnecessary suffering. Expecting self-knowledge from those oriented toward self-avoidance is internal considering disguised as hope. Difference is not the problem; demand is.

What remains at the end is sober and simple: nothing is wrong. Neither K nor her family is deficient. Sanity and insanity are relative; what matters is whether one can honor oneself enough to stop self-abandonment. Love, when no longer filtered through fear and guilt, returns to its natural state: present, embodied, sufficient.

This exchange traces a movement from sleep toward a first moment of awakening—not through exalted insight, but through the practical recognition of mechanical suffering and the decision to no longer feed it.