The Work teaches that there are three forces in every manifestation. We see only two—if we see as far as that. Third Force lies between the opposites and so we can picture it as the mid-point of the pendulum-swing.

Our moods are all hung on to pendulums. We should not trust them. Unfortunately we identify with them. We take them as ourselves. We say: "I feel", "I think", and so on.

But as the feeling of 'I' is drawn out of the active one so does the passive one become strengthened until the time comes when the passive one becomes active and the active one passive. That is, a reversal takes place and the inner controls the outer, not the outer the inner.

Whenever we move inwards meaning increases. Where we saw one thing before, we begin, by self-observation, by inner sincerity, and by much thought, to see a hundred meanings. Internally one feels loosened. How else can anything new enter—and how indeed can Real 'I' enter when one is tightly shut up in one's own narrow ideas which so soon form a grave for so many?

When you see you are in the wrong—that is, when you get a little behind False Personality with all its Vanities and Prides—you take force backwards or interiorly into yourself and these moments of confession or separation from what is false will cause Essence to grow because you give it energy that would otherwise have gone into self-justifying.

You no longer take your being for granted but have become conscious of so many things in your being which were in darkness to you before and which you blamed others for, that you no longer judge from one harsh intractable angle nor are you continually putting people, even those you love, in prison. Everything broadens and becomes much wider, clearer, and so less and less violent in you.

As regards yourself, you no longer see yourself as good and others who do not agree as bad. You no longer see and value yourself, as you once did, but see yourself from many sides and accept your contradictions.

If a person really felt he or she knew nothing, could he or she ever object to anything? But are not all of you continually objecting, finding fault, judging people, condemning people, and so on?

And so you must understand that we have to make something very strong in ourselves by the help of the Work little by little so that we can withstand the shifting scene, moments of happiness followed by moments of depression, moments of hope followed by moments of despair, in order that we may have a center of gravity within ourselves so that we are not shaken because now we feel happy and the next moment we feel unhappy.

Personality, roughly speaking, lives by comparison with others. Real ‘I’ does not exist through comparison. Therefore you will understand that when it is said that personality roughly lives by comparison, you only have to study yourself or others in this light for a short time to see how easily everyone is upset or chagrined, and how brittle this feeling of 'I' is, in which people keep on trying to live—that is, in the feeling of 'I' derived from some aspect of personality.