You have certainly sorry that I sometimes saturating theme Gurdjieff, just saw something similar in the subject and decided to put this one can say lektsiyu.Suschnost and personality
America, 29 March 1929
... You need to understand that each person has two completely separate parts, like two different people - his essence and his personality.
Essence - is "I", our inheritance, our type, nature, nature.
Personality - a random thing: education, education, attitudes, ie everything external. It's like the clothes you wear, your fake mask, the result of your upbringing, your environment influences, opinions, consisting of information and knowledge: such views are changing every day, one of them cancels the other.
Today you believe in one, believe it and want it. Tomorrow, under the influence of some other influence your belief and your desire to become the other. All material constituting your identity can be completely changed by artificial means or by accident, together with the change of the conditions around you and place. This change can happen in a very short time.
The essence does not change. For example, I have dark skin, and I'll stay the way was born. This is my type of accessory.
When we are talking here about development and change, we are talking about an entity. Personality is in bondage, and she can change very quickly, in just over half an hour. For example, through hypnosis, you can change your beliefs. This is possible because they are foreign to you are not your own. And that applies to our being - it is our property.
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We are always creating opinion within the entity. Every effect is mechanical excites an opinion. You can love me mechanically, and thus mechanically register this impression of me. But it's not you. This impression comes not from consciousness, it comes mechanically. Sympathy and antipathy - a matter of matching types, deep down you love me, and even though you know the mind that I - a bad person, that I do not deserve your location, you can not stop loving me. Or again, you can see that I'm a good person, but you do not love me, and so the case remains in the same place.
But you can not create internal opinions. Currently, you can not do it because your nature is a function. The essence is composed of many centers, but the person has only one center - forming apparatus.
The point ... is to restore the lost, not to acquire anything new. It is the goal of development. For this it is necessary to distinguish between essence and personality, to separate them. When you learn this, you'll see how and what to change. In the meantime, you are left with only one option - to learn. You are weak, dependent, in bondage. It is hard to like this, just break the habits that have accumulated over years and years. Later be able to replace some other habit that will also be mechanical. Man is always dependent on external influences, but some of the effects prevent it and some do not.
To begin with, we need to prepare the conditions for the work; many such conditions. Currently, you can only observe and gather material that is useful to work, you will not be able to distinguish where your manifestations come-from the spirit or personality. But if you look carefully, you might then realize it. As long as you collect the stuff you can not see anything: a person is usually only one attention directed at what he does. His mind does not see sense and vice versa.
For more surveillance is needed, and above all honesty with oneself. It is very difficult, much easier to be honest with others. The man is afraid to see something bad, afraid that, by chance looking deep within, he sees his own stuff, his own insignificance. We have a habit banish thoughts of yourself, because we are afraid of remorse. Sincerity may be the key that opens the door, and through it a part of us sees the other. With a sincerity, a person is able to see and something to see. The sincerity with oneself is very difficult, because the essence has acquired a thick crust. Year after year, the person puts on new clothes, a new mask. All this should be gradually removed, we must free ourselves, to reveal. As long as one does not open, he did not see it. There is one exercise that is very useful in the beginning, it helps us to see ourselves, to collect material. This exercise is to get into the position of another person. One should take it as a challenge. Let me explain what I mean. Take a simple fact. I know that by tomorrow, you need a hundred dollars, and you do not got, tried to get it, but failed. You are depressed. Your thoughts and feelings are busy with this problem. In the evening, you sit here, in a lecture, one half of your continuing to think about the money. You are inattentive, nervousness. If I was rude to you at another time, you would not get mad like today. Maybe tomorrow, when you pull out the money, you will laugh at themselves. And now, seeing that you are angry. I know that you are not always so, try to get in your position. I ask myself what I'd do in your place, if someone showed me rude. Often asking yourself this question, I will soon understand that if you angered rudeness or insulted, so in that moment it was available for some reason. I will soon understand that all people are alike, and no one of them is always good or always bad. We are all the same: as I am changing. so too does the other. If you understand it well and remember, if you think about the task at hand and become implement it at the right time, you'll find a lot in themselves and in their environment, a lot of things not seen before. This is the first step.
The second step - the practice in concentration. Through this exercise, you will be able to reach the other. Introspection is very difficult, but can give a lot, great stuff. If you remember how you show yourself as you wish, as adjust as you feel you learn a lot. Sometimes immediately be able to understand what is the idea that it feels that such a body.
Each of our parts are under different influences, and if we get rid of one, we become slaves to the other. For example, I can achieve freedom in the sphere of the mind, but can not change the emanations of his body - the body reacts differently. The man sitting next to me, affects me with his emanations. I know that. I should be polite to him, but feel a dislike to him. Each center has its own emanations, and sometimes there is no escape from them. Very useful to combine the exercise is to put oneself in another's place, with the self-observation.
But we all forget and remember only the "backdating." At the right moment our attention is taken, for example. the fact that we do not like this man, and we feel this is nothing we can do about it. But the facts should not be forgotten: they should be registered in the memory. Taste experiences maintained only for some time. Left unattended, the manifestations disappear. Need to celebrate an event in memory, otherwise you will forget everything. But we want to - do not forget. There are a lot of things that are rarely repeated. By chance you see something, but if you do not fix what they saw in memory, you'll forget it and lose. If you want to "find America", you need to capture it in memory. Sitting in a room, you will not see anything, you need to observe life. In your room you will not be able to master. A man can be strong in the monastery, but weak in life, and we need the strength to live. For example, in the monastery one can a week without food, but in life he can not do without it, and three hours. Which in this case is the use of its exercise?