Remember that the Work is not by addition to what you are, but by transformation of what you are. The Work is to change you, not to add something to you as you are, but to change completely what you are now. You cannot do this Work and remain the same. You cannot add the new wine to the old bottle of yourself. Ask yourselves, some of you, have you really changed at all, and do you really wish to change yourself? Or are you full of self-merit? And if you wish to change, what is it you have to change, from what you understand of the teaching of the Work?

This knowledge must be understood, before we can be what we know. For example, you can ever remember yourself unless you understand, through self-observation, that you are asleep. To try to self-remember without understanding that you are asleep is useless.

This is most important— you cannot remember yourself unless you know through sincere observation that you are asleep in some specific sense. Then you must awaken in this part of yourself and try to be what you know. It is necessary to be what you know by working on yourself.

It is only by applying the Work to oneself in one's own particular case that one can realize what Self-Remembering is. If you do not know what it is to observe you are asleep, how can you remember yourself? In this connection I will add something.

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.

Now let us turn to another thing that we can and must observe— namely, the absence of Self-Remembering in oneself. Do you try to take life from the Work point of view or do you take it from your mechanical reactions to life ? If you bring the Work in between what happens in life and how you react to life, you will already be beginning to remember yourself.

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.

Why do we think that things should always go right and why are we upset when they do not go in this way? Why is it we never remember about Second Force? The reason is that only 'I's that are in the Work can remember such things and that there lives in us a vast crowd of 'I's that have never heard of the Work and simply take things in their own way. It may sound very strange that we have in us crowds of 'I's that have never heard of the Work.

Remember that Real Will or Master comes down from a higher level and cannot reach the ordinary so-called waking state of consciousness. Something must be awake in one to have any contact and that means that there must be some state of Self- Remembering present. After a time one can begin to tell when one is asleep inside—i.e. when there is no kind of Self-Remembering taking place.

The Work seeks to make a new arrangement in our minds and it can only do so when it is allowed to enter a person's mind. Nothing will enter anybody's mind unless they feel an affection for it, a desire for it. And this means in so many words that unless one has 'I's in oneself that wish to work, 'I's that have always felt there is something else, 'I's that can hear the Work, not merely through the ears, but through the mind and understanding—unless such 'I's exist, the Work can never enter, but if it does enter then it becomes a matter of choice.

For a long time the Work remains external, as something on the blackboard of the memory. But after a time a person may realize it is quite true that he or she is asleep and has negative emotions, etc. Or they may realize some other thing, some other idea that the Work teaches. The Work asks us to think from itself—to have a Work-mind, a mind formed by the ideas of the Work, to see things from what the Work teaches about ourselves, others and life.

If you begin to live this Work and think about everything from the ideas that it teaches, and struggle to separate yourself from negative emotion and useless ideas that simply drain force from you, and so on, and if you will try to feel yourself walking carefully amidst the events of life as if you had something protecting you on your feet, then you will begin to give yourself the First Conscious Shock.

You should be very careful on getting up in the morning to work carefully on yourselves and, in fact, before getting up. All sorts of unpleasant 'I's may start talking about their troubles and taking a certain view of the day and if you listen to them you will be absorbing negative impressions and so starting the day well-poisoned.

The pendulum is the great thief within. I only remind you that you have to find some method of managing it; or else it will take away anything it gives. It is uncomfortable to see a person totally asleep or unguarded, temporarily at one end of the pendulum, full of excitement, terribly happy, looking forward to a new life and so on. In this state the person is wholly identified with one end of the swing of the emotional pendulum. There is no sign of Self-Remembering. Notice this point.

Easter is not something that comes once a year but something that comes every day: the idea of non-identifying, or dying to some typical mechanical reaction, is a daily possibility, and if it is done in a spirit of a kind of gaiety, it will gradually result in energy being transformed daily and passing upwards to another level which after a time will become a distinct experience to you.

When the Work really strikes home, this house of cards that one takes as oneself begins to fall to bits. You know the Work speaks about the necessity of coming to the point where one realizes one's own utter nothingness.

So you will find that your understanding keeps on changing as the life of the Work grows in you, and yet it is always the same thing. When you begin to get force from the Work through your evaluation of it you must remember that it requires care.

When you remember yourself you lift yourself in the vertical line upwards and taste for a moment a new state. This happens when you no longer merely think about self-remembering, but actually do it—when you no longer try to escape from negative states by thinking yourself out of them, but stop all your thoughts and lift yourself up into self-remembering. And it is only by this inner movement that new influences can reach you.

This system promises nothing. But if you work, you will get something. Let us say, you will receive leather with which to make shoes. But you must make the shoes yourself, so that they fit you. They must be your own shoes—not borrowed shoes.

The object of the Work is to cleanse our lower centers, to clear them out, to open their windows, so that they can begin to transmit these ideas and directions coming from higher centers.