By watching a germinating wheat seed, we notice that its roots first climb the surface of the soil, then dive and anchor themselves down, pushing the stem upwards in a vertical line with respect to the horizontal plane of the earth. In the same way, when we successfully apply any of the methods for the Awakening of Consxiousness, we promote the artificial weakening of our horizontal Personality, simultaneously favoring the verticalization of Essence.
While for “outer” agriculture the surface is the earth, for “inner” agriculture it is time.
Therefore, the more time we invest in self-observation, in limiting distractions and energy losses, to better cultivate attention and the application of the methods offered by the Work, the faster our internal state progresses and the more our Essence opens to the verticality of Being. On the other hand, the more time we waste in our distractions and idealizations, and in only intermittent practice, the more we allow our ancestral habits to reassert themselves, weakening and repelling our intentions and our progress.
There is an aggressive, sometimes ruthless, competition in the use of our inner time, and, in the initiatory field, it is well known that time is a sacred thing for man.
Thoughts, moods, desires and sensations, poorly governed, compete to dominate our internal landscape, making us waste energy and stealing our sacred time. As long as we are not actively motivated and alert, our aspiration will be disfigured and populated by completely different instincts: survival, preservation and a sense of belonging will distract us from our own being.
In order to dedicate more time to the Inner Work, we must be focused on remembering more and forgetting less; the better we use our “horizontality”, the surface personality, the faster we will see progress in our Life.
How can man be independent of inner influences, outer ones and the great cosmic forces, when he is affected and influenced, forced and subjected to everything that surrounds him? The ordinary man is at the mercy of all the things he does not know about himself and around him. To master the reality of his own inner time, to become free, to renounce slavery, a man should fight for when he has become, even for a little while, consxious of his inner situation.
Without self-knowledge, without understanding the motion and functions of his machine, man cannot be free (the unfree man is only a machine), he cannot govern himself and will always remain a slave, at the mercy of the forces that act upon him. This is why in the ancient teachings, the first request to those who set out on the (initiatory) path of liberation was:
Know thyself.
Georges I. Gurdjieff
