The supreme effort of the Work lies in making effort against your Chief Feature, whether you are digging in a field or listening to a meeting or cooking or travelling by train or are alone with yourself or surrounded by other people.

Unless you have an aim, to make force by working against some mechanical or habitual side of yourself is not enough. One must work on oneself, deny oneself, so that the force goes into one's aim.

If you feel emotional about getting to know your Chief Feature, and really want to know about it, you may catch glimpses. Sometimes you can see Chief Feature in other people. Ask yourselves: "What is it in this person that would make him different if it were changed?" Sometimes it is possible to see this in someone else.

But you cannot come into the inner perception of your Chief Feature until you are ready for it. All your separate observations and aims in regard to your own work on yourself, if done sincerely, will gradually combine and shew you what it is that you have to work against and will give you the reason why you are down here on earth. This is finding one's meaning, or rather, the meaning of one's existence.

You are born into this planet with an inner task and life is so arranged that you cannot find yourself and your meaning through life alone, but only through seeing what this inner task is. The Work says that everyone is born into, and is in, exactly the best circumstances in regard to this task, and that if you meet this Work your conditions are just what is best for the purpose of work. But of course everyone thinks that if only you were in different circumstances everything would be easy. This is not the case.