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.

You cannot work on nothing. At first all is in darkness and you can see nothing in yourself. Conscious objective self-observation begins to let in a ray of light and you begin to see some things dimly. This light, created by the friction of self-observation, should gradually get stronger by practice until you catch sight of something in you clearly and beyond any doubt.

Many people in the Work find difficulty in understanding what personal aim means, in regard to work on the side of their Being—that is, on the kind of people they mechanically are. Here is a definite stage in the Work. They cannot see what to work on in themselves. One reason is that they do not apply the ideas of the Work to themselves and do not try to do what the Work tells them to do.

"Can you give me examples of what personal aim means?" On the side of knowledge, personal aim means to become familiar with the ideas of the Work. On the side of Being, personal aim means to observe yourself in the light of the knowledge of the Work and apply it to yourself.