Evolution of Consciusness(Post 7)-Essence & Choice

Essence and Choice.

In the last post 

We went about Gurdjieff’s  idea of Personality ( Social Construct) and 

Essence-(Innate Inclination,Talent,Strength etc) with an illustration and How 

flowering of essence coupled with balanced personality can bring about 

excellence and beyond.

Now we will see what Essence can do in the beginning leave alone excellence.

We know people get offended at remarks like ‘You are not important or 

relevant’,

Because one always feels that he/she is important and has a place in the 

scheme of things.

To remain relevant or important one has to make right Choice.

‘Out of Place’ choice will make one irrelevant and unimportant.

To make right choice regarding ones’ place, one should know his/her essence, 

that is His/her innate inclination, talent and strength.

(Here ‘Place’ could mean channel of expression, role, carrier etc. )

If essence is not known,

Choice will be made based on the Personality instead of Essence.

What could go wrong?

 Personality can not make right choice, because it is just a package of outer 

social skills and traits, it can be influenced by prevailing ‘popular opinion’ and 

would yield to it irrespective of one’s inner Essence( innate inclination, talent 

and strength).

As the  choice is not supported by Essence, in course of development he/she 

will find themselves inadequate to meet the challenges.

Let us consider a simple example on physical plane,

One is shorter than average height (say 5’5”), swayed by the popular opinion 

chooses to become professional basket ball player. He could master ball skills,

 but bound to feel inadequate because of his height or lack of it.

And in the court he becomes a pushover – unimportant and irrelevant.

He could have excelled in Football or Boxing.

Here, ‘Height’ is obvious, so one could easily calculate the odds before making

 choice.

But when it comes to Essence, it is not so obvious especially among adults.

Precisely because, as one grows up personality gets stronger and stronger 

pushing back the real Self ( Essence) deeper.

In time one is not even aware that there is Essence.

Childhood  memory could give some idea about his/her essence because 

conditioning of the mind is least at that point of time.

To bring it to awareness, one has to look beyond or through the personality.

In other words one should begin to  dismantle the conditioned mind.

Gurdjieff calls this process as ‘Work’ or ‘Work on Oneself’.

More on ‘Work’ later, in the next post we will see what happens if choice is 

based on Essence.