It is a remarkable fact that even after many years we do not really observe ourselves. Self-observation is turning the other way round from life. It is the employment of a new sense, an inner sense, called Observing I, which looks inwards at the kind of person one is.

The Observing 'I' in the sense of the Work does not take sides with anything. It merely records what you are doing, what you are saying, at different moments, through the action of different 'I's, and does not say that this is better or this is worse. Observing 'I' is not shocked by anything, it is not a kind of Grandmama or Grandpapa in you, but it is quite pure and simple.

Remember that it is said that self-observation must be uncritical. You do not observe yourself in order to criticize yourself. If you do so it will at once stop self-observation and lead to internal considering.

But this Work tells you to observe yourself in the light of what the Work teaches, so that you can change yourself. That is, it starts inside you, like a spy, inside your heavily guarded fortifications. Yes, Observing 'I' is a spy.

Let me remind you what self-observation is, because without self-observation no sealing can take place. You are composed of many 'I's amongst which sits Observing 'I'. These 'I's are all looking at a play on the stage: the play represents life. This is the situation of yourself asleep.

One of our unused inner senses is the faculty of self-observation. We have to train ourselves to use this internal camera. If used, it eventually presents us with full-length portraits of ourselves entirely different from what we should ever have expected.

To do this Work requires effort. Effort in the Work is psychological. It is all about not identifying and Self-Remembering. Effort in the Work is all about observing oneself—observing 'I's in oneself and not going with them.

To be conscious of a state, to observe it, means you are not that state. This is the secret—the first secret of esotericism.

It is only by means of observing myself uncritically and over a considerable period that I begin to understand that I do not remember myself.

It is well worth while in the great discipline of self-observation to notice very carefully what vexes you, what destroys such happiness as you are capable of experiencing. When you have made a good observation, try to find out whether it is due to a picture of yourself that was not satisfied by the behavior of someone, or a role that you turned on that met with no praise, or an attitude that was completely useless.

The one who has reached a stage in which they have something independent of outer conditions, something which is independent of failure or success, cold or heat, discomfort or comfort, starvation or plenty, such a one has Second Body.

Suppose you are standing on a plank and trying to lift it and struggling as hard as you can to do so. Will you succeed? No, because you yourself are trying to lift yourself and this is impossible. This massive stumbling-block lies across everyone"s path and long, very long overcoming of it is the task of Work on Oneself.

If you observe yourself rightly, you notice these thoughts not as yourself but as coming from a negative ‘I’ in you. As a result what it says does not get power over you, because you are separate from it.

Change of being begins with changing your reactions to actual incidents of the day. This is the beginning of taking your life in a real and practical sense in a new way. If you behave in the same way every day to the same recurring events of the day, how can you believe that you can change?

The idea of this Work is to enlarge consciousness. We have, we are told, to become far more conscious to ourselves through direct self-observation, so that all sorts of narrow pictures that we have of ourselves are destroyed and we begin to live in a larger edition of ourselves. We can take it as a general rule in the Work that when we are up against someone else we may be sure that that is the very thing we have to work on in ourselves. This gives us an entirely different orientation and in my opinion it is the beginning of real work.

The first stages of the Work are sometimes called "cleaning the machine." The Work tells you more about what not to do than about what to do. Now people often ask: "What am I to do?" On that side the Work says only two definite things: "Remember yourself" and "Observe or notice yourself." That is what you must try to do.

You cannot alter yourself directly. You can only alter by means of certain kinds of effort. These efforts are shown us. There is the great effort of non-identifying—not identifying, with yourself, to begin with. (What a fine fellow I am!). There is the great effort of Self-Remembering. This is the first effort of all, but very difficult.

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.

Another form of self-remembering is called making "inner stop" in oneself. This is done in connection with self-observation. For example, you observe that you are beginning to talk in a certain mechanical way, or that you are getting annoyed with somebody, etc. You then make "inner stop", as it is called, but this must be made completely, as if something were cut off. It does not matter if later on the things you are trying to stop come back.

It is necessary to work on yourself today. Each day is an epitome of your life. A day in your life is a small replica of your life. If you do not work on a day in your life, you cannot change your life, and if you say that you wish to work on your life and change it, and do not work on a day in your life, your work on yourself remains purely imaginary. You solace yourself with the imagination that you are going to work on your life and actually never begin to work on a single day of your life.