The Supersubstantial Bread

If we carefully observe any day of our life, we will see that we certainly do not know how to live consciously.

Our life seems like a train in motion, moving upon the fixed tracks of the mechanical and rigid habits of a vain and superficial existence.

The intriguing aspect of this matter is that it never occurs to us to modify habits. It seems that we never get weary of always repeating the same thing.

We have become petrified by our habits, nevertheless we think that we are free. We are dreadfully ugly, yet we think of ourselves as Apollo.

We are mechanical people, which is more than enough reason to deprive us of any true sensibility in regard to what we are doing in life.

We move daily in the old lane of our outdated and absurd habits and so it is clear that we do not have a real life; instead of living, we vegetate miserably, and receive no new impressions.

If a person begins his day consciously, then it is evident that such a day would be very different compared to other days.

When the day one is living is taken as the totality of one’s life, when one does not leave for tomorrow what one must do this day, then indeed one gets to know what the work on oneself really means.

A day never lacks importance; therefore, if we really want to transform ourselves radically, we must then see, observe and comprehend ourselves daily.

However, people do not want to see themselves, some wanting to work on themselves, justify their negligence with phrases like the following:

“Work in the office does not allow working on oneself.”

These words are meaningless, hollow, vain, absurd, which only serve to justify indolence, laziness, lack of love for the Great Cause.

Obviously, people like these, although they may have great spiritual longings, will never change.

To observe ourselves is something unavoidable and non-excludable, since intimate self-observation is fundamental for a true change.

What is your psychological state when you get out of bed? What is the level of your emotional mood during breakfast? Were you impatient with the waiter? With your wife? Why were you impatient? What is that which always disturbs you, etc.?

Smoking less or eating less is not a complete change; yet indeed it indicates a certain progress. We know very well that vice and gluttony is inhumane and bestial.

It is not right for someone dedicated to the Secret Path, to have a physical body, excessively fat and with a bulging belly and outside of all eurythmy of perfection. That would indicate gluttony, voracity and even laziness.

The daily life, the profession, the employment, although vital for the existence, constitute the dream of the consciousness.

To know that life is a dream does not mean that we have comprehended it. Comprehension is attained through self-observation and intense work on oneself.

Hence, in order to work on oneself, it is indispensable to work on one’s daily life, this very day. Thus, one will comprehend that phrase from the Prayer of the Lord (Pater Noster) which states:

“Give us this day our daily bread.”

The phrase “daily bread” means the “super substantial bread” in Greek or the “bread from the Highest.”

Gnosis gives us this “bread of life” in a double meaning; this is ideas and strength, which allow us to disintegrate our psychological errors.

We gain psychological experience, we eat the “bread of wisdom,” and we receive new knowledge every time that we reduce to cosmic dust this or that “I.”

Gnosis offers the “super substantial bread,” the “bread of knowledge,” thus indicating to us with precision the new life that begins in oneself, inside oneself, here and now.

Now then, no one can alter his life or change anything related with mechanical reactions unless one can count on the help of new ideas and receive divine help.

Gnosis gives those new ideas and points out the “modus operandi” by which one can be assisted by forces superior to the mind.

We need to prepare the inferior centers of our organism in order to receive the ideas and forces that come from the superior centers.

In the work on oneself there does not exist anything worthless. Any thought, however insignificant it might be deserves to be observed. Any negative emotion, reaction, etc. must be observed.

Samael Aun Weor