For a long time the Work remains external, as something on the blackboard of the memory. But after a time a person may realize it is quite true that he or she is asleep and has negative emotions, etc. Or they may realize some other thing, some other idea that the Work teaches. The Work asks us to think from itself—to have a Work-mind, a mind formed by the ideas of the Work, to see things from what the Work teaches about ourselves, others and life.

If you begin to live this Work and think about everything from the ideas that it teaches, and struggle to separate yourself from negative emotion and useless ideas that simply drain force from you, and so on, and if you will try to feel yourself walking carefully amidst the events of life as if you had something protecting you on your feet, then you will begin to give yourself the First Conscious Shock.

If we begin to obey the ideas of the Work by seeing their truth and eventually realize what good lies in them, then we begin to be more free from the momentary wills of different 'I's —doing what they like.

We are all low down in this total Scale of Being, which means we include very little in our consciousness of what we are like ourselves, projecting on to others all we cannot accept as being in ourselves, so we are very brittle to insult. But as Consciousness increases we include more and more as being in ourselves, with an increasing lack of conceit, until we cannot be insulted.

This Work is Esoteric Christianity. People imagine they have something to sacrifice. There is only one thing they have to sacrifice and that is their suffering. A man or woman in this Work must eventually begin to know what Conscious Suffering is compared with Mechanical Suffering.

Do you know practically what the Work teaches that you have to do? It is a very good thing when a person reaches that stage in the Work when he or she realizes that it is about something absolutely practical and that all these phrases, these formulations, that they have to listen to for so long, are real instructions as to what they have to do to change the level of Being at which they are mechanically.

Can you see your level of Being at all yet? Can you see where you stand in the world of Being yet? Do you understand about levels of Being? How can we change our level of Being? What is it we have to do to change this level of Being that we speak of as all having? The whole Work is about changing our Being and giving us methods as to how to change it.

One must get to know about the ideas of the Work and register them. What I am talking about is the next state—i.e. when these ideas must become emotionally perceived through application of them to yourself, first of all to your thinking and then to your Being. When it is said that this Work is to make you think in a new way it means that the ideas of the Work must begin to change your way of thinking, and you cannot expect this to happen until you have registered the ideas by hearing them many times 50 that you will know them in your memory.

This release from oneself, this release from Imaginary 'I', from the pictures one has had of oneself, from False Personality, is the greatest good one can do to oneself, and it involves the whole of the Work, its ideas, its practical teaching. What, then, is the reward? As I said, the reward is a much deeper understanding of oneself, of life and of other people.

The Work is to integrate us. If we were integrated, understanding would replace our, at present, so unsatisfactory and dull, moody, inner life, which is so contradictory. Moments in which this inner work of connection is going on—because it will begin sooner or later in those whom the Work accepts—are full of very deep satisfaction.

In making decisions in the Work the mind must be free from its bondage to mechanical attitudes. Otherwise you will make decisions always from your Personality, from what you have been taught as being right and wrong. This freeing of the mind only begins when you let the Work enter into your mind and so change your mind.

Your inner relation to the Work, whereby it will nourish you, depends on two things. One is your own perception of the truths it teaches. The second thing that determines your inner relation to the Work is doing the Work.

Now every expansion of consciousness leads to a development of intelligence, leading to more consciousness of ourselves and of other people connected with us. This is a development, a growth of intelligence, and if we practice this long enough and undergo all the temptations, all the attacks of 'I's in us that do not wish the Work and hate it, if we defend the Truth of the Work and are passive to attacks on it, then after a time we will become aware of this Intelligence that I spoke of that is behind everything that you do and is at present an Onlooker, quite uncritical, quite impersonal.

You can never make aim unless you see what the Work is about—namely, about yourself and your relationship to Higher Centers or Real Conscience. All aim in the Work must be connected with the Work —work on yourself first of all, work with others, and with the whole meaning of esotericism, i.e. the Work itself. You should start with the first line of Work in connection with aim.

Both the teaching of Christ and the teaching of the Work are about the Third or Neutralizing Force, which renders Personality passive and Essence active. They are descriptions and instructions concerning it.

Will from the Work point of view refers to something responding, something flexible and intelligent that it is not one-sided but three-sided. Will is of course from Master or Real 'I' in us and this we cannot expect to know directly. But as long as we are one-sided in every sense nothing can come from this upper level from which the influences of Real 'I' come that give us our real meaning and inner peace.

When you live for a time in the consciousness of what you want, you will at the same time see more and more the Second Force that it gives rise to, so the more will you become conscious in two forces simultaneously.

We so often feel we are up against things. People often live in this state all their lives. It is then necessary, as by inner dialogue with oneself, such as: "What is it I am up against?" etc. to find out what it is you are up against, because what you feel you are up against is due to what you want.

The long period of search for the Neutralizing Force of the Work begins when you realize that you are not working in the right way. This realization is a passing feeling, a momentary taste.

It is necessary for us to have the opposites in us before we can think for ourselves and with individual thinking through the power of the Work something comes that unites the opposites.