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.

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.

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.

To do a thing willingly from a delight in doing it, will effect a change in you. And when you begin to take up your own "cross"—that is, the burden of some difficult thing in yourself that you have at last come to observe—and do it in such a spirit, then you will get results.

For the Work to enter, you must invite it and agree with it and will it, and treat it internally with the highest consideration and the greatest courtesy and with true delight. I have said to you elsewhere that will is delight.

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.

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.

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.

At this time of the year the idea of Goodwill is mentioned on Christmas Cards, in religious services, in hymns, and so on. In the Gospels the message from the Angels at the Birth of Christ is said to be: "Peace on earth and goodwill towards men." A strange message if you think.

It is necessary to realize that we do not remember ourselves. Only by sincere self-observation over a time can we begin to acknowledge that we do not remember ourselves. This is the starting point of being able to remember oneself. And this, in turn, is the starting point of being able to do.

It has been said that Self-Remembering gives a shock to the whole Being and actually provides better food for the cells of the body. But we do not give this shock to ourselves ordinarily and for that reason it is called the First Conscious Shock, because it has to be done deliberately.