Essence is the truth in man; personality is the false. - George Gurdjieff

"I have already said before that sacrifice is necessary. Without sacrifice, nothing can be attained. But if there is anything in the world that people do not understand it is the idea of sacrifice. They think they have to sacrifice something that they have. For example, I once said that they must sacrifice "faith", "tranquility", or "health." All these words must be taken in quotation marks. In actual fact, they have to sacrifice only what they imagine they have, and which in reality they do not have. They must sacrifice their fantasies. This is difficult for them, very difficult. It is much easier to sacrifice real things.
Another thing that people must give up is their suffering. It is very difficult also to sacrifice one's suffering. A man will renounce any pleasure you like but he will not give up his suffering. Man is made in such a way that he is never so attached to anything as he is to his suffering. And it is necessary to be free from suffering. No one who is not free from suffering, who has not sacrificed his suffering, can work. Nothing can be attained without suffering but at the same time, one must begin by sacrificing suffering. Now, decipher what this means."

From the moment that my essence began to perceive impressions directly and to constate independently that, from what was proceeding, there was being entirely destroyed, as it were, in my common presence, firstly, the parts of my planetary body, and then, little by little, also the localizations of the ‘second’ and ‘third’ being-centers.

At the same time, a constatation was definitely made that the functioning of these latter centers passed gradually to my ‘thinking-center’ and became proper to it, with the consequence that the ‘thinking-center,’ with the increasing intensity of its functioning, became the ‘unique-powerful-perceiver’ of everything actualized outside of itself, and the autonomous initiator of the constating of everything proceeding in the whole of my presence as well as outside of it.

Sunday “Well then, as I have just told you, they devoted each day of the week to productions in one or another special branch of knowledge — either works of their hands, or some other form of consciously designed being-manifestation “Thus, Monday was devoted to the first group, and this day was called the ‘day of religious and civil ceremonies’, “Tuesday was allotted to the second group, and was called the ‘day of architecture’, “Wednesday was called the ‘day of painting’, “Thursday, the ‘day of religious and popular dances’, “Friday, the ‘day of sculpture’, “Saturday, the ‘day of the mysteries’ or, as it was also called, the ‘day of the theater’, “Sunday, the ‘day of music and song