When you have this pause in you, this momentary consciousness in a new place—you can begin even to like what you dislike. As was said, if you can stop mechanical disliking— the common source of loss of force and negativeness—by catching the impression of the disliked person before it fully engages the acquired machine you take as yourself—then this work on yourself will lead you to the possibility of sounding the next note in this octave—namely, of beginning to like what hitherto you so easily, so continually, so unchallengeably, so automatically, disliked.

How can we bring the work up to the place of incoming impressions? In brief, by remembering the work emotionally. The more we through right self-observation feel our own helplessness, the more we realize our ignorance, the more we see our mechanicalness and that we are a machine, the more we perceive our own utter nothingness, the more emotional will the work become to us.

You know what it is to do your daily work mechanically and the difference if you do it more consciously. In the one case, you get no impressions: in the other case, you get some impressions.

The point of the Work is to create a conscious place where we can be conscious of the quality of incoming impressions and so detect a typical event, and what would be our mechanical reaction to it before we react mechanically to it.

Now when you take in impressions voluntarily the associative paths they follow are different from the paths followed when you take in impressions involuntarily. In this Work we gradually learn to take in impressions more and more consciously—-that is, to take in impressions voluntarily.

One way to take in more impressions is to try to look at things without associations. This is a very interesting method. Another way is to see everything happening in life in the light of the Work—that is, to bring the Work up to the place of incoming impressions.

The original idea of prayer was to put us in a state of Self-Remembering, to let go our troubles, or, as it were, to ask for help and acknowledge our powerlessness to do. But prayer, in this sense, is very difficult.

Yet Self-Remembering is not going against the flood-stream of inner and outer things. It is raising oneself—not contending. Contending is another kind of effort. Self- Remembering is a non-identifying with oneself—for an instant—as if one were merely acting and had forgotten. When one remembers oneself one forgets oneself.

So when you pray you must remember yourself. You must be conscious of yourself and of what you are praying for. You must feel the meaning of everything you say and feel yourself saying it. You must feel it is really 'I' in you that prays and not a set of frightened little 'I's or a set of mechanical 'I's formed by habit.

This extension or expansion of consciousness to include at the same time all the centers is not supernormal but is actually what a normal person should possess. This is the 3rd state of consciousness—the state of Self-Remembering or Self- Awareness.

To remember oneself is a surrender of oneself. One realizes one's helplessness. It is impossible to self-remember if one does not realize and understand that better influences can reach us.

When we are told to remember ourselves and ask: "Which self?" what answer can we expect after a time almost with certainty? We can expect the answer: "The self that knows its own nothingness." Yes, this would be a full form of Self-Remembering. The result of work is gradually to make us see we cannot do.

The act of Self-Remembering must have a certain emotional quality. It is owing to the emotional quality that one is put at once into higher parts of centers, into bigger 'I's. These can remember the Work, they can understand it. No one can work continuously but only at times.

You must reach the point of discerning your own helplessness. And this, if it is not a negative experience, will bring you into a state of self-remembering. Through seeing your helplessness you attract help.

It is a very marvellous thing to experience a moment of not being identified with oneself, with all this uproar, with all this ever-returning and useless turmoil. And we realize how true it is that help cannot reach us while we are in this ordinary state.

The Work says that a moment of Self-Remembering supplies every cell in the body with food of a kind that it does not ordinarily get. The Work says that when you remember yourself you give a shock to the whole of you.

Impressions that are taken in in a state of Self-Remembering become emotional. Even the simplest thing can become interesting or beautiful and reflect some meaning you had never perceived.

To remember oneself it is necessary to look in and look out. One must see the outer and see oneself in relation to the outer. But actually no one can see in and see out at the same time any more than a person can breathe in and breathe out at the same time. An act of Self-Remembering is a double movement as is an act of breathing.

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?

If you are in a bad state you remember yourself in one way, and when in a good state you have to remember yourself in another way and it is often more difficult.