Take the parable of the Ten Virgins. They all had lamps— that is, teaching—but half of them had also oil in their lamps. These latter were accepted and the others were turned out. If you have a real point in the Work and understand it and act from it, this is oil, in what you have been taught, which is a lamp. You have your own oil.

After a time, when you can be alone with yourself and at the same time alone with this Work and its meanings, you begin to realize that you have no right to be negative and that you have no excuse for it. You see you have got to find some way out. You may not be able to prevent negative states from starting but you may be able to stop them. This is one meaning of what is called work on oneself. This can be called living more consciously. It can also be called walking instead of lying down flat.

People even think it is right to worry about everything, about the past and the future, about themselves, about others, and so on. This is simply nothing but a serious negative illness, difficult to cure, for once a person has become nothing but an inverted machine for worrying, all sorts of wrong connections have been established and everything works in the wrong way, and since the only thing we enjoy is worrying, to deprive us of this, were it possible, would be to destroy our chief interest.

In learning how to live from the Work point of view, so that we live more consciously in life, or live in the Work in life and not just in life without anything between us and life, worrying is one of the things that show us something about ourselves if we notice it uncritically and over a long enough period.

Observe yourself from the standpoint of your negative states; be sincere and admit you are in a negative state; then say to yourself: "I have a right not to be negative." Here all your understanding of the Work will come to your aid and maybe the whole negative state will vanish in a moment.

Study your negative states, for this is one of the most important sides of self-study. Observe them, note them down, and above all remember them so that when they come back again, as they always do, you may gradually recognize them before they can exert their full power—namely, before you can identify with them.

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.

Make a clear-cut definite Work-aim of this kind and try to keep consciousness in it for a time. You will then see for yourself the result. But as a rule people never will make a simple clear-cut Work-aim of this kind. They merely worry or vaguely wonder what to do.

Now, if I will to do what I have to do, I will not make inner accounts against others. But if I do what I have to do and all the time think that someone else should do it and that it is unfair that I should have to do it, then I am making internal accounts. That is, I am internally considering.

Whatever you have to do, will to do it and you will get through the job without becoming negative and so without being tired and without making internal accounts. This is one of the secrets of right work on oneself. Not only that: it makes force in you