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.

When people say to me that they do not know what to observe in themselves, one answer is: "Can you observe your negative states? Can you observe that you are negative?" Remember, as I said, if you are negative it is always your fault. Self-justifying has such sway over us however that it takes us years before we can realize what this means.

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.

Now if you fundamentally disbelieve this Work and the ideas in the Gospels, but do not observe you do, you will be indignant with those who seem to disbelieve it. This is simply due to seeing what is really in you as if it were outside you in others. This is a common enough occurrence. It is necessary therefore to bring your own disbelief into your consciousness so that you can face it yourself.

But this Work tells you to observe yourself in the light of what the Work teaches, so that you can change yourself. That is, it starts inside you, like a spy, inside your heavily guarded fortifications. Yes, Observing 'I' is a spy.