Since Essence is innate while personality is formed during childhood, we can understand the state of Essence more clearly by watching young children. To a child, everything seems fresh and curious. Everything they see and experience penetrates them deeply and leaves a lasting impression.
Their intellectual capacity to name what they are experiencing is still undeveloped, so when they see a blade of grass, they do not know how to call it grass. A bird is a miracle of iridescent feathers, spectacular in movement and singing.
As the child progresses into adulthood, seeing is gradually replaced by knowing, and the Essence is covered with an increasingly stiff and thickened cloak of personality. What they experience no longer penetrates them directly as before, but is filtered through association, analysis, comparison and criticism.
Comparing the state of children with adults we see that the Essence receives and absorbs, and the personality reacts and deviates. Understanding this, in turn, instructs the direction of our natural condition.
Therefore, in order to inhibit the personality and nourish the Essence, we will have to receive and absorb more and react and deviate less, and in the act of absorbing pay attention with due discernment.
The Essence is the true reality that we are, the central nucleus of our Being.
