The First Secret of The Work
To be conscious of a state, to observe it, means you are not that state. This is the secret—the first secret of esotericism.
The Power of One Day: Self-Observation as the Key to Change
Change of being begins with changing your reactions to actual incidents of the day. This is the beginning of taking your life in a real and practical sense in a new way. If you behave in the same way every day to the same recurring events of the day, how can you believe that you can change?