Now in order to isolate ourselves from life, apart from what has been said above, there are three great Work-practices that aid in this. The first is Self-Remembering, the second is non-identifying, and the third is non-considering in the sense of not making accounts against others.

It is not a question of theoretically believing there is something higher, but of the actual perception of it in oneself, for the subject of this Work is this strange and complex thing called oneself. One can often observe a regular horde of unpleasant mean little 'I's that surround one and wish to drag one down to their level, to their way of taking everything.

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.

A person in the Fourth Way of Work must be able to be quite ordinary in life. There must be no kind of superiority, no hinting, no persuasion, no dark remarks. But if you work on yourself, when the other person is difficult, that will make the other person aware that you are different.

Now suppose you are sufficiently interested and sufficiently conscious to notice how impressions fall on you mechanically, and suppose that you have sufficient valuation of the Work to wish to transform these impressions, which means not letting them simply fall on their usual place, exciting your usual dislikes and hatreds.

When you find a person who obviously dislikes you there is another task for personal work. Notice what that person dislikes in you if you can. Remember that we have to thank those who make it necessary for us to work on ourselves.

The original idea of prayer was to put us in a state of Self-Remembering, to let go our troubles, or, as it were, to ask for help and acknowledge our powerlessness to do. But prayer, in this sense, is very difficult.

Yet Self-Remembering is not going against the flood-stream of inner and outer things. It is raising oneself—not contending. Contending is another kind of effort. Self- Remembering is a non-identifying with oneself—for an instant—as if one were merely acting and had forgotten. When one remembers oneself one forgets oneself.

You must understand that every event is attracted by your being and this is phrased as: "Your being attracts your life." That means that your being attracts events that happen to you because life is simply events of different kinds and on different scales.

In all self-observation, if it is to becomes full self-observation, you must observe IT. That is, you must see all your reactions to life and circumstances as IT in you and not as 'I'. If you say 'I', then nothing can happen.

It is a remarkable fact that even after many years we do not really observe ourselves. Self-observation is turning the other way round from life. It is the employment of a new sense, an inner sense, called Observing I, which looks inwards at the kind of person one is.

The one who has reached a stage in which they have something independent of outer conditions, something which is independent of failure or success, cold or heat, discomfort or comfort, starvation or plenty, such a one has Second Body.