We must remember that we can do this Work. What would be the good of teaching a system of Work that no one could do? Gurdjieff once said: "All call out in loud voices and say: I can work." We did this and I think we all got force from it. So every one of you say to yourselves sometimes just this phrase: "I can work," because this is what we can do. I can remember myself according to my own level; I can separate from negative emotions according to my own state and my own level; I can stop making internal accounts; I can practice non-identifying; I can stop fantasies; I can stop self-justifying; and so on.

Now we identify through the unobserved petty feelings of ourselves which cause us to make endless internal accounts and build up endless negative systems in us. These negative systems, once formed, are very difficult to deal with. On this level we do everything in a pseudo way, from our self-love, our self-liking, to advance ourselves in some way, to merit praise, and so we are very easily hurt and dejected. Remove this stimulus and we scarcely exist, and may seem to have no objective. This is being a machine. All this basis of self-feeling does not lead far in the Work eventually.

Notice that to really want is to be independent of local, temporary, outside criticism. False Personality depends on what others think of you—that is, an audience. Real aim needs no audience. It is deeper, more genuine, essential. If you make an aim in the Work—as, for instance, not to feel always this background of tears, discontent, of being not appreciated— which is one form of inner accounting—then, if you really want not to have it, after some time it will be given you not to have it—usually in short flashes.

Let us say that a person makes a small aim to cook an excellent dinner. There are so many ways in which that excellent dinner can be cooked —I mean, psychological ways, not ordinary ways. Now suppose you have made a big and real aim that you are going to try to remember to act in life without identifying and that you are going to try to practice this great Work-exercise at least several times a day.

Suppose what you have seen in yourself is some bad negative emotion, some really evil ill-will. Hitherto you have identified with it and so you have been it and it has been you. You have been for years under its power.

This knowledge must be understood, before we can be what we know. For example, you can ever remember yourself unless you understand, through self-observation, that you are asleep. To try to self-remember without understanding that you are asleep is useless.

Observation and separation are necessary all your life. Yes, but can you BE the Work? In short, can you live the Work, not merely remember it? If you try to live it, it will feed you all your life.

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 let us turn to another thing that we can and must observe— namely, the absence of Self-Remembering in oneself. Do you try to take life from the Work point of view or do you take it from your mechanical reactions to life ? If you bring the Work in between what happens in life and how you react to life, you will already be beginning to remember yourself.

A question was then asked: "What then should I do?" This question always arises in everyone's mind. The Work-answer is about what you should not do. The question should be: "What then should we not do?" It is just here that the Work comes in.

If you begin to live this Work and think about everything from the ideas that it teaches, and struggle to separate yourself from negative emotion and useless ideas that simply drain force from you, and so on, and if you will try to feel yourself walking carefully amidst the events of life as if you had something protecting you on your feet, then you will begin to give yourself the First Conscious Shock.

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.

The object of the Work is to cleanse our lower centers, to clear them out, to open their windows, so that they can begin to transmit these ideas and directions coming from higher centers.

When you begin to serve this Work really you have to lose these petty, daily, small self-emotions and you can only do so by realizing that the Work is much bigger than you. You have to serve the Work and not yourself. The Work must not be a function of yourself but you must become a function of the Work.

There are two ways of taking the events of life. One is that you do not identify with them; the other is to will them. Sometimes we have to use one method, but sometimes to use the other, or both. I will also tell you a secret. We have to will one another: this is the beginning of conscious love.

 You can, and indeed, must, find and invent for yourself ways of circumventing negative emotions. To find something that requires directed attention is one way, if you can bring yourself to do it. Another is to remember and recall and go back in time to similar previous occasions—provided you have got a Work-memory based on genuine self-observation and not merely the usual illusory lying memory.

It is a good thing to try to make lists of negative emotions for yourselves. The purification of the Emotional Center is especially emphasized in this Work.

Aim must be made consciously, with insight, after long observation, in view of realizing what is putting you to sleep and what helps you to keep awake.

Aim can never become mechanical. Aim must be something that is consciously kept going through new supplies of thought and insight. It is just like building up a barrier near the sea. The sea keeps coming in and washing away parts of this barrier which have to be constantly renewed.