Suppose you attempt to work from memory of what you know of the Work and without any understanding of it. It is quite possible that you could say to me after a time: "I observe myself three times a day after meals for one minute. I remember myself before breakfast and after dinner for two minutes, if I remember to. I read the Commentaries—two pages a day—before going to bed. But I do not seem to get any result. I have not had any higher emotional experiences."

Start with one single thing that you have noticed and begin to watch it and try to work against it. But start with something you have no doubt about. Start with something clear and distinct and try for a time to observe it and not consent to it internally. Once you start, the way opens out.

All personal aim on a small scale is a means, not an end. It is to make you think and awaken, to keep you awake. Aim is on different scales. Aim on a great scale is to be awakened from sleep, to attain inner liberation. But to say that this is one's aim is not enough.

Suppose, for example, that you hear many times that you must observe your different 'I's and try not to identify with some of them? Well, of course, you can hear this day after day, and year after year, and say that you know all about that, and why is nothing else said. However, you have heard that the Work tells you here to practice a certain definite thing on yourself—now, at this moment—yes, at this very moment.

In the talks about the work itself, the ideas are given in their original form. But the object of the work-ideas is to make people think for themselves by means of them, for none of the ideas of the work can really take hold of a person unless he or she begins to think about them and tries to see what they mean individually, and begins to value them and think about life and its meaning and themselves from the standpoint of these ideas.

Remember that you have to do this Work fresh every day. Every day it is necessary to make yourself conscious of the Work internally, to be aware of it, to think of it, to try to remember any small aim you have and to try to get what the day will teach. You will remember that the Children of Israel were fed by manna from heaven and were told not to keep it to the next day, so do not think that because you understood something yesterday you will always remember it. Everything is changing but the Work remains the same.

It is quite easy to see when a person only has knowledge but not understanding of this Work. If you understand something you can speak of it in different ways; if it is merely knowledge you will speak of it from memory.

In learning how to live from the Work point of view, so that we live more consciously in life, or live in the Work in life and not just in life without anything between us and life, worrying is one of the things that show us something about ourselves if we notice it uncritically and over a long enough period.

It is necessary to say sometimes: "I can work". To say to oneself: "I can work" is a good thing and gives a little shock to oneself. It scatters those stealthy negative 'I's that tend to come in through one's unguarded spots.

To be offended is extremely easy. It is a mechanical reaction. Not to be offended, or to transform being offended, is difficult. It requires conscious effort. It requires a lot of thought, a lot of inner adjustment, a lot of remembering what one is like oneself, and so on, to transform the first impact of being offended.

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.

Now when you make a real effort or a relatively real effort, you never become negative when you fail. This is a sign. Your failure makes you think more and remember more. But when you make an effort in imagination, an imaginary effort, not a real effort, you become negative very quickly and pass into your gallery of self-pity with all its ancestral portraits.