Remember that there are no final solutions to anything. To try to find final solutions to things is like trying to do away with the waves of the storms of the sea. You have to have a good ship, a good rudder and a good compass. The solution to things lies in seamanship. Or, to change the metaphor—it is said in this Work that it sells leather from which you can make good shoes. You cannot clear away all the mud and stones and pebbles, but you can construct good shoes to walk over them.

If the Work is thus formed in you, you have a new thing, a new organized instrument, in you. Even a single part of the Work, if taken in with valuation and understanding, will begin to work a change in you because it will transmit new influences. But the whole of the Work must be formed in you. This can be thought of as another body—another organized thing in you—if you live the Work. Then it will control the person you were.

You may be sure that once your evaluation of the Work is strong enough and you hear it enough and reflect upon it enough, you will see gradually unfolding the mystery of your own development. This mystery is different in each person. That is why it is so important not to compare yourself with other people. A great deal of negative emotion arises from comparison. Remember always that the Work is equally difficult for everyone and that it does not become easier. It is always difficult. And yet it is not too difficult if one will remember enough and maintain a certain inner strength of will in regard to it.

The increasing feeling of the Work as stronger than life and all its ups and downs and swinging to and fro between the opposites brings about a state of Self-Remembering that is not due to chance nor is merely a fleeting experience.

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.

The idea of this Work is to enlarge consciousness. We have, we are told, to become far more conscious to ourselves through direct self-observation, so that all sorts of narrow pictures that we have of ourselves are destroyed and we begin to live in a larger edition of ourselves. We can take it as a general rule in the Work that when we are up against someone else we may be sure that that is the very thing we have to work on in ourselves. This gives us an entirely different orientation and in my opinion it is the beginning of real work.

The first stages of the Work are sometimes called "cleaning the machine." The Work tells you more about what not to do than about what to do. Now people often ask: "What am I to do?" On that side the Work says only two definite things: "Remember yourself" and "Observe or notice yourself." That is what you must try to do.

You cannot alter yourself directly. You can only alter by means of certain kinds of effort. These efforts are shown us. There is the great effort of non-identifying—not identifying, with yourself, to begin with. (What a fine fellow I am!). There is the great effort of Self-Remembering. This is the first effort of all, but very difficult.

As long as there is no change in your level of being, your personal history remains the same. Everything repeats itself in your own life: you say the same things, you do the same things, you regret the same things, you commit the same things. And all this belongs to this immensely deep idea that the level of being attracts your life.

It is necessary to realize that we do not remember ourselves. Only by sincere self-observation over a time can we begin to acknowledge that we do not remember ourselves. This is the starting point of being able to remember oneself. And this, in turn, is the starting point of being able to do.

It has been said that Self-Remembering gives a shock to the whole Being and actually provides better food for the cells of the body. But we do not give this shock to ourselves ordinarily and for that reason it is called the First Conscious Shock, because it has to be done deliberately.

The most important thing is self-remembering. You must try to remember yourselves at least once a day, and you must do it willingly, from yourselves. All other work on oneself ultimately depends on self- remembering. Only half a minute is necessary, and even if it consists in nothing else than stopping your thoughts and trying to relax everything, it is better than nothing. Don't think about self-remembering, but do it.

Very often we forget to remember ourselves. We wonder what to do, but forget to remember ourselves. Perhaps we think of it but we do not try to do it. We are always thinking of but not doing the Work. When we make no attempt to self-remember, our inner continuity with the Work is broken. The Work moves away from us and we pass into life. When this happens it is necessary to self-remember. This opens us again to the influences of the Work.

Another form of self-remembering is called making "inner stop" in oneself. This is done in connection with self-observation. For example, you observe that you are beginning to talk in a certain mechanical way, or that you are getting annoyed with somebody, etc. You then make "inner stop", as it is called, but this must be made completely, as if something were cut off. It does not matter if later on the things you are trying to stop come back.

It is necessary to work on yourself today. Each day is an epitome of your life. A day in your life is a small replica of your life. If you do not work on a day in your life, you cannot change your life, and if you say that you wish to work on your life and change it, and do not work on a day in your life, your work on yourself remains purely imaginary. You solace yourself with the imagination that you are going to work on your life and actually never begin to work on a single day of your life.