images sway our emotions more deeply than conceptions. - Alan Watts

They are our beliefs, our cherished preconceptions of the truth, which block the unreserved opening of mind and heart to reality. The legitimate use of images is to express the truth, not to possess it.

This is why G. I. Gurdjieff, that marvelous rascal-sage, wrote in his All and Everything: The sole means now for the saving of the beings of the planet Earth would be to implant again into their presences a new organ … of such properties that every one of these unfortunates during the process of existence should constantly sense and be cognizant of the inevitability of his own death as well as the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests. Only such a sensation and such a cognizance can now destroy the egoism completely crystallized in them.

Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them.