e something more, or
other, than you are now, if you are to achieve this life, dwell in it,
and breathe its air. You have had in your brief spells of
recollection a first quick vision of that plane of being which
Augustine called "the land of peace," the "beauty old and new."
You know for evermore that it exists: that the real thing within
yourself belongs to it, might live in it, is being all the time invited
and enticed to it. You begin, in fact, to feel and know in every
fibre of your being the mystical need of "union with Reality"; and
to realise that the natural scene which you have accepted so
trustfully cannot provide the correspondences toward which you
are stretching out.

Nevertheless, it is to correspondences with this natural order that
you have given for many years your full attention, your desire,
your will. The surface-self, left for so long in undisputed
possession of the conscious field, has grown strong, and
cemented itself like a limpet to the rock of the obvious; gladly
exchanging freedom for apparent security, and building up, from
a selection amongst the more concrete elements offered it by the
rich stream of life, a defensive shell of "fixed ideas." It is useless
to speak kindly to the limpet. You must detach it by main force.
That old comfortable clinging life, protected by its hard shell
from the living waters of the sea, must now come to an end. A
conflict of some kind--a severance of old habits, old notions, old
prejudices--is here inevitable for you; and a decision as to the
form which the new adjustments must take.

Now although in a general way we may regard the practical
man's attitude to existence as a limpet-like adherence to the
unreal; yet, from another point of view, fixity of purpose and
desire is the last thing we can attribute to him. His mind is full of
little whirlpools, twists and currents, conflicting systems,
incompatible desires. One after another, he centres himself on
ambition, love, duty, friendship, social convention, politics,
religion, self-interest in one of its myriad forms; making of each a
core round which whole sections of his life are arranged. One
after another, these things either fail him or enslave him.
Sometimes they become obsessions, distorting his judgment,
narrowing his outlook, colouring his whole existence. Sometimes
they develop inconsistent characters which involve him in public
difficulties, private compromises and self-deceptions of every
kind.