If there were no Neutralizing or connecting force, Active and Passive Forces would stand in opposition to one another and nothing could happen. Now if the connecting force alters, the other two forces alter. We have to think of Neutralizing Force as something capable of tilting the balance between Active and Passive Force in such a way that active can become passive, and passive become active.

If you deal cleverly with this 2nd force it will give you results and, instead of being simply a blind, opposing force, will become gradually what you want. You do not instantly become negative when opposed. You try this way and that, and gradually this formidable opposition yields and becomes what you want—or, let us say, rather, what is possible in your wanting.

Second Force is in the nature of things, and is not an evil god but an aspect of God in which you have to fight with Him in order to develop. Perhaps you will understand that without Second Force no one could grow internally.

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.

If you let yourselves take in numbers of negative impressions from your own thoughts and memories you will increase 2nd Force in yourselves in connection with the 1st Force of trying to awaken and live in the life of the Work to some extent during the day.

To see 2nd Force in ourselves we must become conscious in 1st Force. What I wish to point out is simply that with a wrong 1st Force the whole inner state may be rendered ineffective and even dangerous— that is, one has a very bad relationship to oneself.

Always expecting to be different is wishing. It is a kind of continual, vague 1st Force. It will summon a continual, vague 2nd Force which will appear as something lying in outer circumstances. But the 2nd Force is not in outer circumstances, but in oneself.

We really do not know what we want—that is, we are not conscious in 1st Force in us. If we take what we want, desire, wish for, expect, hope for, as 1st Force, then, whatever the nature of our wish, it will arouse a specific and definite 2nd Force that opposes the wish.

To be conscious in First Force is to know what one wants; to be conscious in Second Force is to know what difficulties stand in the way; and to be conscious in Third Force at the same time is to be conscious of how what one wants and what opposes it can eventually reach some solution.

When the Work says that you must come to realize your own nothingness before you can be re-born, it does not mean that you must humble yourself and so on, but that you must by long self-observation actually begin to realize that you are nothing and that there is no such person as self. The object of this is to get into a position, psychologically speaking, between the opposites.

Different 'I's, ranged along the orbit of the swing, wish to say now this and now that, as the light of consciousness touches them, and wakes them to momentary life. To a limited extent one may permit them to speak, provided one has a distinct idea that neither side is right.

The Work teaches that there are three forces in every manifestation. We see only two—if we see as far as that. Third Force lies between the opposites and so we can picture it as the mid-point of the pendulum-swing.

Try sometimes to see the opposite point of view to that which you hold. If the opposite is genuinely and with effort included in consciousness the sphere of consciousness is greatly increased and a number of unpleasant features in us disappear.

An increase in consciousness in regard to our emotional life through the making of the opposites conscious by following the swing in Time, and so seeing how they are connected, shifts consciousness gradually towards the middle zone of the pendulum, to a third place lying between the opposites which becomes receptive of new emotions not on the pendulum. We acquire a middle.

The feeling of I can be squandered in infinite ways. We have to draw the feeling of I out of the opposites. That means one attempts to withdraw the feeling of I from the feeling that one is good or the feeling that one is bad.

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.

Our whole lives, ordinarily, are governed by the Law of the Pendulum. We all swing to and fro. When you are in one opposite you are unconscious of the other, and vice versa. You may have idle dreams of rising and rising, of progressing and progressing, of getting better and better, but all these are indeed idle dreams.

Our moods are all hung on to pendulums. We should not trust them. Unfortunately we identify with them. We take them as ourselves. We say: "I feel", "I think", and so on.

I see someone teaching or drilling some recruits. That is all. At first sight there seems nothing marvellous. He smiles. He indicates somehow that he does not necessarily expect to get any results from what he is doing. He does not seem to mind. He does not show any signs of impatience when they are rude to him. The lesson is nearly over, but this will not make any difference to him. It is as if he said, "Well, this has to be done. One cannot expect much. One must give them help, though they don't want it." It is his invulnerability that strikes me. He is not hurt or angered by their sneers or lack of discipline. He has some curious power but hardly uses it.

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.