The side of what we actually are, and the side of what we pretend and imagine we are, are two contradictory sides. These two contradictory sides, however, exist in everyone without exception. The action of the Work, once it is beginning to be wished for, makes us become gradually aware of this contradiction—over many years.

Try to see for yourself by direct observation how a negative state drains force from you and try to see what happens when, having observed your condition, you genuinely try to separate from this state for your own private reasons and not for the sake of being congratulated or to gain merit.

The one thing that can tell us when we ourselves are negative is that faculty that the Work calls inner taste. We can think of this as the beginning of Real Conscience. For a long time people enjoy their negative states, enjoy the taste of them.

It is only through a feeling of something higher that you can separate from something lower, and, after a time, when you have experienced what this means, you will do everything you can to keep the feeling of something higher alive in you at all costs and you will begin to hate those periods in which you are totally identified with external things.