Now I wish to talk rather seriously to all of you. First, everything pseudo, everything pretended, everything false, is of no use in the Work. To reach anywhere, to get anything, you must be sincere with yourself. You must have inner sincerity and that means that at least you must be able to detect by self-observation when you are not genuine, as far as you can at your level.

Your inner relation to the Work, whereby it will nourish you, depends on two things. One is your own perception of the truths it teaches. The second thing that determines your inner relation to the Work is doing the Work.

Both the teaching of Christ and the teaching of the Work are about the Third or Neutralizing Force, which renders Personality passive and Essence active. They are descriptions and instructions concerning it.

Now for the Essence, or inner, part of us to grow and become gradually active, you must be able to be utterly sincere with yourself when the occasion arises. Essence cannot grow from anything false.

If we were all more in Essence than we are at present everything would become much more real, much more genuine, much more simple, much more true, and much more good.

But as the feeling of 'I' is drawn out of the active one so does the passive one become strengthened until the time comes when the passive one becomes active and the active one passive. That is, a reversal takes place and the inner controls the outer, not the outer the inner.

When you see you are in the wrong—that is, when you get a little behind False Personality with all its Vanities and Prides—you take force backwards or interiorly into yourself and these moments of confession or separation from what is false will cause Essence to grow because you give it energy that would otherwise have gone into self-justifying.

As long as impressions fall on Personality they will always produce the same effects mechanically. But when they begin to fall on Essence everything is always new and far richer and more varied. In fact, everything is wonderful. Instead of having the feeling that everything is repeating itself, everything is the same, one begins to feel that nothing is ever the same.