To become No. 5 or 6 or 7 Man or Woman, you must first become No. 4 Man or Woman—that is, Balanced Man or Woman, one in whom all your centers work rightly—Intellectual, Emotional, Instinctive-Moving. Now to become balanced you must begin to notice what center in you predominates and interferes with the proper development of your other centers.

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.

Do you know practically what the Work teaches that you have to do? It is a very good thing when a person reaches that stage in the Work when he or she realizes that it is about something absolutely practical and that all these phrases, these formulations, that they have to listen to for so long, are real instructions as to what they have to do to change the level of Being at which they are mechanically.

Can you see your level of Being at all yet? Can you see where you stand in the world of Being yet? Do you understand about levels of Being? How can we change our level of Being? What is it we have to do to change this level of Being that we speak of as all having? The whole Work is about changing our Being and giving us methods as to how to change it.

Suppose that you have observed yourself for some considerable time and you begin to see yourself over the period of time acting in a certain way. You see how something starts, leads to something else, and so on. In fact, you see yourself in action, in movement, so to speak, inner and outer, in some typical way of behavior. This is a photograph.

Do you observe when you are full of cares and anxieties and thoroughly identified with life? Has it ever occurred to you that this is one of the things that you have to observe? And has it ever occurred to you that this is a sign of your Being, of what you are—for example, that you are a person whose level or quality of Being is such that he or she is always full of cares and worries?

"Have you yet seen in your Being that which prevents you from further understanding the Work?" What have we all understood as being the center of gravity of this question? What Work-idea is brought in here? The Work-idea is that one's understanding depends on the quality and level of one's Being.

There can be no progress unless and until you remember yourself. Unless you can lift yourself up by Self-Remembering you do not receive help, and that unless you receive help you cannot reach a different level of being. But at the same time unless you prepare yourself by means of Self-Observation and trying to separate from what the Work teaches are wrong functions, you cannot receive the influences coming from Higher Centers.

The Work says very many things about evaluation. For example, it says that the octave of inner development, and so change of level of one's Being, begins with the Note Do, which is termed "Evaluation of the Work". The Note Re is application of the ideas to oneself. The Note Mi is realization of personal difficulties. The Work also says that its ultimate aim is to awaken the Emotional Center.

As long as there is no change in the level of being, your personal history remains the same. Everything repeats itself in your own life: you say the same things, you do the same things, you regret the same things, you commit the same things. And all this belongs to this immensely deep idea that the level of being attracts your life.

At this time of the year the idea of Goodwill is mentioned on Christmas Cards, in religious services, in hymns, and so on. In the Gospels the message from the Angels at the Birth of Christ is said to be: "Peace on earth and goodwill towards men." A strange message if you think.

As long as there is no change in your level of being, your personal history remains the same. Everything repeats itself in your own life: you say the same things, you do the same things, you regret the same things, you commit the same things. And all this belongs to this immensely deep idea that the level of being attracts your life.