Now in the Fourth Way we are none of us protected lambs, spoon-fed children, and we have to undergo all the temptations of Yes or No individually in connection with esoteric teaching and all the ideas behind it, otherwise we have no real point in the Work.

You remember the parable about catching hold of the rope. If you find this rope in your own way, which everyone in this Work must do, then you will be held by something quite distinct from life and its vicissitudes. This is really called having a point in the Work. Other people may fail you, disappoint you, and so on. Outer life may assume very unpleasant forms. Yet you are held by something beyond life— that is, by a new force.

When the Work forms an emotional point in a person—it actually opens a part of a center—then that person begins to touch new influences. It is quite easy to know when this has happened. But to keep this point, you must follow and keep to the "truth" of the Work. You must apply it to yourself: and if you lose this point, for a time, you must seek for it again.

Remember that you have to do this Work fresh every day. Every day it is necessary to make yourself conscious of the Work internally, to be aware of it, to think of it, to try to remember any small aim you have and to try to get what the day will teach. You will remember that the Children of Israel were fed by manna from heaven and were told not to keep it to the next day, so do not think that because you understood something yesterday you will always remember it. Everything is changing but the Work remains the same.

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.