The Work has three lines of work in it, work on yourself, work in connection with other people in the Work, and work in connection with the Work itself. Unless these three lines are satisfied, at least provisionally, your aim will lead nowhere. There are three aspects to all Work aims.

Your aim then must be to work against the predominance of one center in you, which causes you to be lop-sided and prevents the other centers from developing. But if you have understood what has been said so far, you will see that in such a case it is only by seeing yourself and estimating your inner state in the light of the Work that you will become dissatisfied with yourself. Viewing yourself from life, there is no reason why you should attempt to be different from what you are.

To become No. 5 or 6 or 7 Man or Woman, you must first become No. 4 Man or Woman—that is, Balanced Man or Woman, one in whom all your centers work rightly—Intellectual, Emotional, Instinctive-Moving. Now to become balanced you must begin to notice what center in you predominates and interferes with the proper development of your other centers.

As regards yourself, you no longer see yourself as good and others who do not agree as bad. You no longer see and value yourself, as you once did, but see yourself from many sides and accept your contradictions.

It seems a paradox to say that to become conscious of an unattractive feature operating all through one's life of which one was formerly ignorant gives a sense of liberation; but you can find the reason for yourself.

All real effort—that is, intelligent effort— is about developing the undeveloped sides of ourselves. Each of us has a machine that is only developed to a small extent on one side of itself. All intelligent Work-effort is about developing all the sides of the machine to which we are connected and bringing it to a right state of working.

The original idea of prayer was to put us in a state of Self-Remembering, to let go our troubles, or, as it were, to ask for help and acknowledge our powerlessness to do. But prayer, in this sense, is very difficult.