The Work acts on Being according to our understanding of it—our level. Nothing can take the place of understanding. Being told is not the same as seeing.

Our receptive side is greater than our doing side. We therefore find ourselves in the position in this Work of being able to see better than we can do. In certain situations we have flashes of understanding in which perhaps we see quite clearly what we should do and yet we find it impossible to do what we have seen.

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.

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.

It seems a paradox to say that to become conscious of an unattractive feature operating all through one's life of which one was formerly ignorant gives a sense of liberation; but you can find the reason for yourself.

All real effort—that is, intelligent effort— is about developing the undeveloped sides of ourselves. Each of us has a machine that is only developed to a small extent on one side of itself. All intelligent Work-effort is about developing all the sides of the machine to which we are connected and bringing it to a right state of working.

When you realize beyond any doubt that you have different 'I's in you, when you can hear them speaking or notice them working in your emotions, and yet remain separate from them, you begin to understand the Work on its practical side. You begin to understand the first line of the Work— i.e. on oneself.

Simply to see a bus or a tree requires zero attention. To observe them—their colour, shape, and so on—requires directed attention. You see hundreds of buses and trees every day but do not observe them. It is all a vague, confused picture. In the same way, your inner life is a vague, confused picture. You do not observe it, but you are in general aware of it, as you are of buses and trees.

People even think it is right to worry about everything, about the past and the future, about themselves, about others, and so on. This is simply nothing but a serious negative illness, difficult to cure, for once a person has become nothing but an inverted machine for worrying, all sorts of wrong connections have been established and everything works in the wrong way, and since the only thing we enjoy is worrying, to deprive us of this, were it possible, would be to destroy our chief interest.

In learning how to live from the Work point of view, so that we live more consciously in life, or live in the Work in life and not just in life without anything between us and life, worrying is one of the things that show us something about ourselves if we notice it uncritically and over a long enough period.

Worrying is the wrong work of centers. It is always useless. It is a form of inner considering—i.e. of identifying. It is a continual mixing up of negative imagination with a few facts and so makes only wrong connections in centers.

The supreme effort of the Work lies in making effort against your Chief Feature, whether you are digging in a field or listening to a meeting or cooking or travelling by train or are alone with yourself or surrounded by other people.

You can bring the atmosphere of the Work into everything that you do. But if you identify with everything and make inner accounts, this will be impossible. Life will eat you. Taking things from the Work point of view can alter your Being.

After a time, when the Work is beginning to touch you, you will hate feeling that you are simply doing everything mechanically. Then perhaps you will begin to know what it means to transform the day, to transform the moment, this very moment.

To do what the Work teaches is one thing: to hear what it says is another. The second note in the Work-Octave of personal development is, we are told, to apply what the Work teaches to ourselves.

The Work Octave starts with evaluation as Do, and application of the ideas to yourself as Re. Certainly this is a big step. Remember that you are the subject of the Work, you yourself.

In terms of the Work-Octave we have to return to the note Do and sound it more strongly. Many 'I's attack this note and seek to drain its energy of vibration—mocking 'I's, clownish 'I's, ugly 'I's, cruel 'I's, hard 'I's, arguing 'I's, denying 'I's, mob 'I's. All unpleasandt things in you seek to attack this opening note of the Work.

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.

When you begin to serve this Work really you have to lose these petty, daily, small self-emotions and you can only do so by realizing that the Work is much bigger than you. You have to serve the Work and not yourself. The Work must not be a function of yourself but you must become a function of the Work.