The Magician (Part 2): Transformation of Impressions

Download PDF

Many people enter esoteric studies like this because they are either unhappy with themselves and their state of being, or they are unhappy with their lives and with the circumstances of their life. Some people seek ways to have an escape from life through spirituality, but at the end of the day, the majority of what we experience is just our daily, ordinary, mundane lives. Through these kinds of teachings, we can find a way to take our mundane experience of daily life and to transform it into a spiritual experience of life. There are esoteric secrets and teachings that we can learn through these types of studies to help us to transform ourselves and our lives radically.
 
One such esoteric key for taking control over our destiny is the technique of the transformation of impressions that we are going to discuss today. On an intellectual level, it may seem that the transformation of impressions is just another concept to think about and to consider, but I hope that you will take it further than that, and that you will actually apply this mystical and esoteric technique to yourself in your own daily life in order to transform it.
 
We spoke in a previous lecture about how the Magician changes himself or herself in order to regain control over what circumstances may come. The transformation of impressions is a technique that is very profound and that most people who are not in these types of studies will never learn. Many people who are overcome with the negative circumstances of their lives never learn a technique like this that gives them the power to begin to change things and to change themselves. So we are very fortunate to have this key, and I hope that all of you will appreciate it as much as I have appreciated it for the power it has to really change things for us. 

​The Purpose of the Work

​I believe that this quote from Samael Aun Weor really frames this lecture today. By the end of the lecture we should deeply understand what Samael Aun Weor is saying here in this quote. In The Revolution of the Dialectic he wrote:

To change one’s life is really to change one’s own reactions towards it. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Revolution of the Dialectic

Each of us has things in our lives that we would like to change. Are we able to change our reaction to life instead? Does changing our reaction to life change the conditions of our life?
 
For example, if we are angry at a certain co-worker and then we are able to change the way that we react to that co-worker, will that produce a better, more harmonious relationship with that person? As a result, will that kind of new harmonious relationship produce more happiness for us?
 
On a very basic level, we can see that if we start to take control over how we respond to people or situations, we can produce better future situations. We can produce chains of events and circumstances that will improve, rather than get worse. If you get into a cycle of revenge with someone, you can see how quickly that will produce a lot pain for both of you and will not produce happiness. If you are somehow able to break that cycle of revenge, to respond differently to that person, with some effort on your part in order to do so, you can change that circumstance in your life.
 
So on a basic level, we can see that is part of what Samael Aun Weor is talking about here. But the first step that we have to do in order to change our reactions to life is to become aware of our reactions to life. That is why we have talked before in this course about self-observation. We need to be aware of ourselves throughout the day in order to understand how different events in life are provoking reactions within us. We need to know how we feel about something in a deep and profound way, to understand how our state of being is impacted and changing, in order to be able to apply the technique of transformation of impressions.
 
Awareness of one’s self and one’s states is the beginning of the transformation of impressions. It is a prerequisite for it. It provides us with a lot of data that is needed.
 
So I would like to read an excerpt from a book called Views from the Real World. I am going to read about 2 pages of this book to you, and this was extracted from a lecture given by an esoteric teacher named Gurdjieff. I think that this excerpt should give us a chance to really examine how when we encounter different circumstances throughout our daily life, those circumstances produce reactions within us. So I will go ahead and start reading:

Ask yourselves, “Are you free?“ Many are inclined to answer “yes,” that they are relatively secure in a material sense and do not have to worry about tomorrow, if they depend on no one for their livelihood or in the choice of the conditions of life. But is this freedom? Is it only a question of external conditions? Let us say that you have plenty of money. You live in luxury and enjoy general respect and esteem. The people who run your well-organized business are absolutely honest and devoted to you. In a word, you have a very good life. Perhaps you think so yourself and consider yourself wholly free, for after all, your time is your own. You are a patron on the arts. You settle world problems over a cup of coffee, and you may even be interested in the development of hidden spiritual powers. Problems of the spirit are not foreign to you, and you at home among philosophical ideas. You are educated and well-read. Having some erudition in many fields, you are known as a clever man, for you find your way easily in all sorts of pursuits. You are an example of a cultured man. In short, you are to be envied. In the morning, you wake up under the influence of an unpleasant dream. The slightly depressed mood disappeared but has left its trace in a kind of lassitude and uncertainty of movement. You go to the mirror to brush your hair and by accident drop your hairbrush. You pick it up, and just as you have dusted it off, you drop it again. This time you pick it up with a shade of impatience, and because of that you drop it a third time. You try to drop it in mid-air but instead it flies at the mirror. In vain, you jump to catch it. Smash! A star-shaped cluster of cracks appears in the antique mirror you were so proud of. Hell! The records of discontent begin to turn. You need to venture annoyance on someone. Finding that your server has forgotten to put the newspaper beside your morning coffee, your cup of patience overflows and you decide you can no longer stand the wretched man in the house. Now it is time for you to go out. Taking advantage of the fine day, your destination not being far away, you decide to walk while your car follows slowly behind. The bright sun somewhat nullifies you. Your attention is attracted to a crowd that has gathered around a man lying unconscious on the pavement. With the help of the onlookers the porter puts him into a cab, and he is driven on to the hospital. Notice how the strangely familiar face of the driver is connected in your associations and reminds you of the accident you had last year. You were returning from a gay birthday party. What a delicious cake they had there. This servant of yours who forgot your morning paper ruined your breakfast. Why not make up for it now? After all, cake and coffee are extremely important. Here is the fashionable cafe you sometimes go to with your friends. But why have you remembered about the accident? You had surely almost forgotten about the morning’s unpleasantness. And now do your cake and coffee really taste so good? You see the two ladies at the next table. What a charming blonde! She glances at you and whispers to her companion, “That’s the sort of man I like.” Surely none of your troubles are worth wasting time on or getting upset about. Need one point out how your mood changed from the moment you met the blonde? And how it lasted while you were with her? You return home humming a happy tune, and even the broken mirror only provokes a smile. ―Gurdjieff, Views From the Real World

​So if we reflect on this anecdote, which was actually taken from a real person, one of Gurdjieff’s students, we can see how the different events of the day produced different psychological states in this person.
 
The first thing that I want you to notice is that this person was able to recount in detail so many events throughout his day. He was able to share those with his teacher, and his teacher was able to recount it here. There was much more, but for the sake of time I think we have got the idea from this that each of us should be doing the same process in our daily life.
 
So your homework is tomorrow as you wake up in the morning, set the intention for yourself to collect this kind of data about your daily life. If you spill your morning cup of coffee, if you are running late to work or school, if someone gives you a compliment or insults you, start collecting those different experiences and events that you experience in a day. If you need to take some notes on a notepad, that is fine.
 
Also, collect data about your reaction to those events. As Samael Aun Weor is saying here, our reactions towards life will determine the quality of life. If we have a lot of negative reactions toward everything that happens to us, then overall the quality of our life will be very negative and unhappy. Conversely, if we are generally pleased with the different circumstances that come to meet us each day, then we overall will have a good experience of life.
 
But do we have control over our reactions?
 
Are we really able to create that kind of change?
 
Or are we unfortunately stuck and powerless and always going to be reacting in the same way to the same types of events?
 
Unfortunately, if we are not able to change our reactions to life circumstances, then those circumstances will determine our happiness or unhappiness, and therefore we are not free. Esotericism teaches us techniques in order to develop the freedom to be able to determine our own reaction to life, our own response to life. 

​An Exercise

So let us begin with an exercise. I would like you to look at these two images and reflect on the effect that these images produce on you.
 
On the left, we see a flower. What kind of reaction do you have emotionally when you see that flower?
 
What kind of intellectual reaction do you have?
 
Does it remind you of anything?
 
Does it produce certain thoughts?
 
Does your body respond in any way upon seeing this image?
 
When we look at the other image of an abandoned bathroom with a lot of grime and graffiti, does it produce a different effect on us?
 
Do we feel emotional disgust?
 
Do we feel fear?
 
Does the body tense up?
 
Does this remind you of other thoughts?
 
Each image is an impression. If you think of an impression as an image making a stamp onto a piece of paper, like your mind is the piece of paper, and the flower here is the stamp, what kind of imprint is left on your mind after you observe this? Not just your mind, but also your heart and your body are affected by an impression.
 
I mentioned that the first step we need to do is be aware how the different things we experience affect us. Using an exercise like this can give us a sense how we can take an event in our life, like an encounter with another person, some kind of sight or sound that we experience, and then reflect: how does this affect me in the three brains, in the intellect, in the emotions, in the motor-instinctive-sexual center?
 
Another thing that is important to realize is that the same event can impact people in different ways. Someone who sees this flower may feel happy, may be reminded of beauty and nature. Another person may see it and be a little anxious because they have an allergy. A third person could see this flower, and they might feel sad because it triggers a memory of a flower that they left on the casket of someone that they loved at their funeral.
 
So is it the flower that produces our experience of life, or is it a combination of the flower and our mind, our state of being, which produces our experience of life? It is the latter.
 
With the other image, someone may see this and feel fear and want to run away. Someone may see it and they feel disgust or an urge to start cleaning. A third person may be an entrepreneur type and think that this look like a good investment, to flip the house and make a big profit.
 
Our reactions to life are going to dictate our happiness, and that is why Samael Aun Weor says that when we change our reactions towards life, our experience of life will be changed.
 
We know of many people who had very difficult childhoods, and because of the way that they were able to transform that experience from their youth, they went on to be great successes. But we know other people who experience the same hardships in childhood and ended up addicted to drugs or in prison or depressed, many other bad kind of outcomes. It is not the circumstances themselves but our reactions towards it, and so we need to learn how to change our reactions. ​

​Mechanisms of Apprehension

All day we are receiving impressions, constantly. They are coming to us from the external world through sound, sight, scent, taste, even physical touch. They also come to us internally in our own imagination.
 
If I close my eyes and I remember a happy memory from childhood, that impression in my imagination will produce changes in my three brains. As each of these impressions enters us through the senses or arises in the imagination, they produce an effect on our intellect, on our emotional center, on our motor-instinctual-sexual center.
 
Unfortunately, we are not very good at receiving these impressions in a conscious way, and so most of the time they just come in, and we are too identified with what is happening. We are not very aware of our reactions. We are just living those reactions. We are responding instantly to whatever we sense, whether that is disgust, or whether that is pleasure. We just respond without much thought. We do not have any control over that.
 
But if we have done the exercise of going through our day and collecting that kind of data of the different events and impressions that came in throughout our day, and the effects that those impressions made upon us, then we can sit later on in the evening and do some reflection on our day. We call it retrospective meditation in this tradition: the ability to sit there and recall an event and consider in a deep and profound way, the effect that that event produced on you, and also to try to comprehend the reason why it produced that effect on you.
 
Samael Aun Weor wrote in The Revolution of the Dialectic, “In order to be able to better transform our impressions, we need to reconstruct the scene just as it happened to find out what hurt us the most.” So firstly, we need to be observing throughout the day, to collect the data of all these different scenes of life. Secondly, we need to sit in a meditative, reflective state and reconstruct the scene just as it happened, and then reflect: what about that scene hurt me the most? We may not be able to have the time to reflect on every scene we have experienced today, but we do need to reflect on some of the most significant scenes of our day. ​

​Three Types of Nourishment

Part of the reason we need to do that process is because impressions are a type nourishment for our spiritual life.
 
In the esoteric teachings, we learn of three types of nourishment. We all know that physical food nourishes our body and that we digest that food with our stomach. Additionally, our body needs air. We need oxygen. People who have been in esoteric studies before may be aware that air is also containing prana, a type of energy that is very nourishing for our spiritual life and our physical organism, and especially nourishing for our heart. But are we aware that the mind also needs a type of food, impressions?
 
As I said, these impressions may come from the external world, or they may be produced by our imagination. But our mind is constantly experiencing impressions. The energy from the external world that enters us through the senses is always entering into our mind, and the energy of our mind is reacting with those impressions.
 
Unfortunately, we often do this in an unconscious way. But if we are conscious and we digest these impressions using the mind in a conscious way in order to learn from impressions, learn from the experiences of each day and extract a type of spiritual knowledge and a type of spiritual nourishment from those impressions, then we are able to develop our soul. That is why this is an esoteric teaching, because there is no need in the mundane world to transform impressions. We can all keep going along mechanically, just following the same routines and patterns of behavior without any real reflection on it, and many people are doing that. But if we want to transform our experience of life and develop our own mastery on a spiritual level, we need to learn how to work with this nourishment for our mind.
 
The soul does not develop without new impressions and without being able to understand and gain knowledge from impressions. Impressions can bring us gnosis, if we keep the consciousness awake. ​

​Psychological Indigestion and Unconscious Creation of Egos

Unfortunately for us, our mind is not very well developed as an organ to digest impressions. Food is digested in our stomach, and air is processed by our lungs. But impressions enter our mind, a sort of mental apparatus, which is very disorganized, and those impressions get processed in a very mechanical way, and unfortunately, rather than nourishing us and providing us with spiritual wisdom, those impressions end up getting stored up in different places and clogging up the machine of the mind.
 
We usually take in these impressions and they get stuck in our unconscious, subconscious, or infraconscious mind, and as they are stuck there, they clog us up. They control how we are going to act and respond in future situations. We are not even aware of it, but things that happened to us in the past that we were not very conscious of as they happened to us are now dictating our response to future events. Even if we were able to recall some of those events, we may not be aware of the tremendous impressions that they made on us and therefore we may not be able to change our response.
 
If someone was bitten by a dog as a child, then now they may have an extreme fear of dogs, and so we can see how the transformation of the impression of being bitten by a dog was not fully processed. Unfortunately as a result, that impression created a part of the psyche that has a tremendous fear of dogs, and that will always cause that person to respond in a negative state of being when the see the impression of a dog.
 
So when we receive impressions in an unconscious way, the way that most people do, it creates egos. We talk about egos as elements deep within our psyche that control us. Egos can be gluttony, lust, pride, anger, vanity, greed. There are many. If we are not able to take in life consciously, we will continue to degenerate and to become people who are in negative states of being for most of the time.
 
We say that currently people are 97% ego and only 3% free consciousness. It is the free consciousness that can experience life in a new way. Each moment is new. Each moment is fresh. But for us because we have so much ego, because we have so many impressions within us that have never been digested, we experience life through the filter of those egos. If I am angry, everything that happens to me in that day will be experienced through the filter of anger. Unfortunately, that means that all of those new impressions that come in will go to strengthen my sense of anger. We are not able to experience life as it truly is. We are only experiencing life through the filter of these egos, most of the time. That means that we are always experiencing life, unfortunately, in a negative way.
 
Samael Aun Weor says that we need to develop a mental stomach, which is an ability to take in impressions consciously and digest them, to sort them into the correct sense of spiritual understanding of what that circumstance meant. What is the kind of wisdom or comprehension that we can extract from that event?
 
For many of us, we have extreme gluttony when it comes to impressions. We want more and more and more of certain types of impressions. We do not know how to receive the impressions of life, to take the spiritual nourishment that those impressions bring us, and then to let them go.
 
Samael Aun Weor said that the quality of a mental stomach is to have the virtue of temperance. We think of temperance in association with food and alcohol, that a person takes food and alcohol in moderation, or that they eat only as much food as they need, whereas a glutton would be eating way more food than they need. But with us, we are addicted to certain kinds of impressions. Some people are addicted to romance. They just cannot get enough of that sensation of romance. So they will watch a lot of romance movies or go on a lot of dates or read a lot of books. Other people are addicted to strong intense impressions like horror films, violent and gory movies and television shows. When we take in that kind of impression, it is going to strengthen our addiction to those types of impressions, and then we develop the vice of gluttony, rather than the virtue of temperance. ​

How to Digest Impressions

​So how do we escape from that? How do we change so that today we start taking in impressions in a new way in which we are able to digest them?
 
We need consciousness. We need awareness of ourselves and awareness of what we are experiencing from the external world or from our own imagination, and a reflection on what process is happening within us as we experience it.
 
Samael Aun Weor wrote:

If we interpose between the impressions and the mind, that which is called consciousness, then the impressions can be digested. ―Samael Aun Weor, “Three Types of Food, Impressions, and How Egos Are Made and Destroyed”

​For most of us, we are constantly putting all of our attention out into the external world. We need to interpose consciousness between that impression of the external world and our mind. Rather than focusing intensely on the football game that we are watching and becoming very identified with it, we can pull our attention back somewhat, be aware of our state of being: how do I feel in my body? How do I feel in my heart? How do I feel in my mind? Be conscious of that, and also aware of the football game that is going on, and the consciousness. The consciousness can become a mediating force there, in which we are able to observe the impression coming from the external world, but also observe the states that it produces within us. That is how we begin to digest that impression, to understand the effect that it has on us.
 
By comprehending the effect that different impressions produce uniquely within me, I can begin to digest them. This is a process that is called the conscious shock in esotericism. The first conscious shock is an esoteric process in which we begin to wake up. We begin to initiate a new kind of life, spiritual life, a conscious life. We also begin to change as a result of waking up and being more aware of what is going on in our life.
 
So Samael Aun Weor gives us some guidance is this regard. He wrote:

Our task consists of transforming the impressions of life in such a manner that they do not provoke this type of negative response. However, in order to achieve this it is necessary to observe one’s self from instant to instant, from moment to moment. Therefore, it is urgent to study one’s own impressions. If we start having such control we will begin a new life. We will begin to live more consciously. The first conscious shock consists in transforming the impressions that reach us. If one manages to transform the impressions that reach one’s mind at the moment of entry, then one obtains marvelous results that benefit one’s existence. ―Samael Aun Weor

So, if I have an experience where someone places a piece of chocolate cake in front of me, perhaps I am going to have a negative response. That negative response may be gluttony, really wanting to eat tons of chocolate cake. The negative response may be disgust. Maybe I do not like chocolate cake. Or maybe the negative response is fear because I am on a diet, and I am afraid it will make me fat. I may have many different kinds of negative responses. But if I transforming that impression I am going to be observing myself. I am going to see there the cake in front of me, and I am going to say, “What effect does this produce on my heart, on my emotions, on my mind? What kinds of thoughts does it produce on my body? Do I start salivating because I really want to eat it?”
 
In becoming aware of myself, I gain self knowledge in that moment. Through that self-knowledge, I do not just have to just follow the automatic negative response, a negative reaction that may come up in me. I do not just have to devour the piece of cake just because I am craving it. Or I do not just have to run away from the piece of cake because I am afraid of it, right? I now have the power to say, “Whoa! This is the state of being that I am in response to this impression. What do I understand about myself from this?” And then, “How do I want to consciously respond to it?”
 
We want to be able to be free, free of conditioning. We want to be able to become a new person. Unfortunately, we have a lot of previous conditioning and so this does require a lot of self-observation and a lot of evening retrospection meditation, to be able to start digesting and start changing. But this is a very powerful esoteric key to transform your life and to transform yourself. That is why he says, “We will begin to have a new life,” and that the results of this practice will really benefit one’s existence.
 
If I am a person who is a rage-a-holic, and everyone around me to knows that I have a very quick temper, and they are very cautious around me because they do not want to provoke my anger, but I am able to reflect on all of the experiences over time that trigger my anger, then I am able to understand some kind of root of where those experiences come from, maybe something in childhood, sometimes even in past lives. Through understanding myself better, I not only gain self-knowledge and awareness that, “Oh! When this event happens, this response is triggered,” but through that consciousness, I have a bit of a distance between me and the impression. That conscious awareness gives me the power to respond in new ways.
 
Everyone knew that I am an angry type of person, that maybe after a year of really working on my anger, everyone knows that I am a patient and sweet person. It is as if I have obtained a new kind of identity. That is why this conscious shock is really initiating a new change in our life, not only a spiritual way of experiencing life in a conscious manner, but also a spiritual power to transform ourselves. When we transform ourselves, our reactions to life, we transform the whole experience of our existence. Since desire is suffering, the ability to respond to life without those intense kinds of desires is what gives us freedom, freedom to be a person who is self-possessed rather than a person who is completely controlled by external circumstances. ​

​Unconscious Reactions and Conscious Responses

​So to recap, I will share a few more quotes of Samael Aun Weor just in summary. The first is that:

The mind lives reacting against the impacts that come from the exterior world. ―Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose

This is our life. Our experience of life is just a succession of receiving impacts and impressions from the exterior world and reacting to them. So if we can change those reactions to life and make them more positive reactions to life, if we can receive a painful situation but remain in harmony and in peace, then we would have a different experience of life all together.
 
How do we do this?
 
Well, one must control these reactions of the mind by means of willpower. We use willpower to continue to observe ourselves throughout the day. That requires effort. Most of the time our mind just wants to go back to sleep, to just be hypnotized by everything that is coming at us and to just react mechanically. Our mind does not want to stay awake by itself, and that is why we need a conscious shock of our own willpower in order to keep ourselves observing through the day and aware.
 
What is happening outside of me?
 
What is happening as a reaction within me?
 
We need willpower to remain serene. In the example of the person who is triggered and angry all the time, they need to be able to observe all that anger that is happening in them and to still be able to respond in a serene way.
 
Now, very carefully we need to clarify that this is not to repress. This is not that I pretend that I am not angry, and I try to force myself to be happy, but rather that through my state of awareness of my anger, I am also aware that I have the power to respond in a different way. I am also aware that if I act on this anger, it will produce future problems for me.
 
That state of awareness gives me some control. I can control the reaction in the moment, and then later on I can go home and I can reflect on that reaction. Through that meditation practice I will be able to comprehend a little more about myself, and that might change my reaction in a future situation.
 
Samael Aun Weor also wrote that on the path of the transformation of impressions, we have to be sincere with ourselves. We do not have to persuade ourselves. So, in that moment, willpower allows us to be sincere. This is actually what I am experiencing. We do not have to persuade ourselves in that moment to feel something we do not feel. We do need to be sincere with ourselves about what we are actually experiencing.
 
He goes on to say that justification appears within us in the beginning and that we need a study of justification as the fruit of self-esteem. We have a lot of pride, and so many of us justify our reactions to life, “Anyone would feel sad if this x-y-z circumstance happened to them. Anyone would agree with me that this guy was the bad guy and that I deserve to be angry at him, that I am right in being angry.”
 
Unfortunately, if we justify our current reactions to life, we are not going to change. If we believe that our reactions to life are justified and we defend that self that responds to life in that negative way, then we are losing the opportunity to become someone new, someone who responds to life in a virtuous way, someone who responds to life with a more positive state of being.
 
So we have to make a difficult choice. Do I want to stay the person that I am because I am attached to justifying that my reactions are right and everybody else is wrong? Or are we willing to let go of the person that we currently are, to sacrifice that person in order to give birth to a more virtuous person, a person that is on the path to spiritual development and spiritual mastery?

​Serenity, Clarity, and Indifference

​I will conclude with one more quote by Samael Aun Weor:

We must subdue the senses and command the mind with a mighty whip of willpower. Our mind lives reacting against the impacts of the exterior world. The incessant reactions of the mind deliver pleasure and pain to us. Likes and dislikes are nothing more than the result of the reactions of the subjective mind. It is necessary to control these reactions of the subjective mind in order to pass beyond pleasure and pain. We must become serene and indifferent before praise and slander, and before triumph and failure. ―Samael Aun Weor, Igneous Rose

What Samael Aun Weor is referencing with the subjective mind is an unconscious mind, a mind that is subject to the external conditions of the world. In one sense, it means that we do not have the ability see life as it is from an objective state of being, but rather that we are always just reacting in an unconscious way to life.
 
So all of the things that we like, and all of the things that we dislike are unfortunately just the result of being unconscious and receiving many impressions of life through an unconscious way. Our attachments to what we like and what we dislike create this person that we believe that we are: “I am someone who likes this type of music. I am someone who dislikes these types of places,” and as I mentioned before, if we continue to justify that subjective mind, its likes and its dislikes, then unfortunately we are never going to become anybody else. We are going to just keep strengthening the person we already are, and unfortunately in many ways our lives will continue to get worse and more unconscious. We will be more powerless to change it.
 
So if we want to become someone who is, as he says here, “serene and indifferent before praise and slander, before triumph and failure,” we begin with self-observation and comprehending why we are the person we are today, and we take in each impression of the day, moving forward from today, and we process it in a conscious way. We understand it in a conscious way. The state that he is describing of someone who is serene even in the face of slander and failure, is the state of a master, a spiritual master like Moses, Jesus, Krishna, Buddha. These people have this level of being that even the experiences of the external world do not dictate their state of being, but they have a profound peace in which they can observe what is happening, understand it, take in those impressions, but also to remain as they are, virtuous, peaceful, awake and conscious, not indifferent in the sense that they are dead inside, but rather completely self-possessed, in control of their own experience of life.
 
Currently, we can not do this. Currently, even small impressions will overwhelm us, even small things like breaking a dish will make us upset. But as we progress, as we apply this technique over time, we will see that more and more intense impressions can be transformed, and that something that once made us very upset or sad or angry, we can encounter the same type of impression and experience it in a new way. We will be shocked to see that it no longer upsets us, and that we can experience as a new kind of person, unencumbered by the past, but able to enter life with a clear consciousness that is receptive and that can understand the significance of each event.