Try to see for yourself by direct observation how a negative state drains force from you and try to see what happens when, having observed your condition, you genuinely try to separate from this state for your own private reasons and not for the sake of being congratulated or to gain merit.

The one thing that can tell us when we ourselves are negative is that faculty that the Work calls inner taste. We can think of this as the beginning of Real Conscience. For a long time people enjoy their negative states, enjoy the taste of them.

It is a good thing to try to make lists of negative emotions for yourselves. The purification of the Emotional Center is especially emphasized in this Work.

Aim must be made consciously, with insight, after long observation, in view of realizing what is putting you to sleep and what helps you to keep awake.

Aim can never become mechanical. Aim must be something that is consciously kept going through new supplies of thought and insight. It is just like building up a barrier near the sea. The sea keeps coming in and washing away parts of this barrier which have to be constantly renewed.

Now unless we have some kind of aim the Work cannot influence our lives for then we are not surrounded by the Work, but remain open to all the influences of life. We can compare aim in the Work with something inside which we stand for the time being.

Aim can come from right or wrong places in us. Aim may be right and come from a wrong place, and aim may be wrong and yet come from a right place. In order to understand what this means, we have to turn back to centers and parts of centers and also speak a little about Attention once more.

Here are some more suggestions about aim: Find out what helps and what hinders you in working and what stops you from working. By keeping to Work aim we create will. You should weigh your aim and see what you are prepared to give up for it. Aim requires effort.

Here are some suggestions of aim: Anything anti-mechanical is a temporary aim and helps us to awaken. All making of effort against mechanicalness is aim. Efforts made when you are tired are useful, if you yourself make them—not otherwise.

If you find you cannot keep your aim as first intended, because it is too difficult, modify your aim, and then you may find that a better aim is suggested to you, especially if you remember your aim whenever you try to remember yourself. Everything taught in this Work on its practical side shows more than one aim to you. You must begin with one thing. But after a time you must include all the rest.

Now as regards the often-asked question: "Can you give me examples of what personal aim means?" On the side of knowledge, personal aim means to become familiar with the ideas of the Work. On the side of Being, personal aim means to observe yourself in the light of the knowledge of the Work and apply it to yourself. Personal work on your own Being begins when you notice something that the Work tells you about in yourself.

Make a clear-cut definite Work-aim of this kind and try to keep consciousness in it for a time. You will then see for yourself the result. But as a rule people never will make a simple clear-cut Work-aim of this kind. They merely worry or vaguely wonder what to do.

In the Work it is said that it is necessary to have aim. Without aim, we in the Work drift. Aim must have a definite formulation. To aim to be better in a vague sense, is not asking. When it is said: "Ask and ye shall receive," it means to ask something real, something you have seen and wish to change.

Today I will speak to you about one method of Self-Remembering in terms of the following Work-phrase: "Try to will what you have to do." I once said by way of commentary that when the telephone rings you must not let it take you to it but go to it. By this I mean, will it. To will what happens to you has a most marvellous issue in your own relationship to Second Force.

If you object to everything you will internally consider all day. You will make internal accounts against everyone. But if you will the existence of someone you object to, everything will change—miraculously. If you will what happens to you, you will gain force. If you object to what happens to you, you will lose force. This Work is about how to gain force.

Now, if I will to do what I have to do, I will not make inner accounts against others. But if I do what I have to do and all the time think that someone else should do it and that it is unfair that I should have to do it, then I am making internal accounts. That is, I am internally considering.

Whatever you have to do, will to do it and you will get through the job without becoming negative and so without being tired and without making internal accounts. This is one of the secrets of right work on oneself. Not only that: it makes force in you

Unless you have an aim, to make force by working against some mechanical or habitual side of yourself is not enough. One must work on oneself, deny oneself, so that the force goes into one's aim.

Now when you make a real effort or a relatively real effort, you never become negative when you fail. This is a sign. Your failure makes you think more and remember more. But when you make an effort in imagination, an imaginary effort, not a real effort, you become negative very quickly and pass into your gallery of self-pity with all its ancestral portraits.

The Work says that you have no real permanent will because you have no real permanent 'I'. But it says that you have a small degree of will, comparable with the degree of freedom of movement a violin has in its case. But it will all depend in what direction you use the small will that youy naturally have.