The realization of both the Personal Essence and the Cosmic Consciousness now make it possible to see through the projection of the representational world. The continued experience of the Personal Essence and the Cosmic Consciousness begins to expose a contraction in the psychophysical organism that has been very deeply hidden. One slowly starts realizing that this disharmonious contraction has to do with focus on, or cathexis of, physical reality in general, and not just on one’s own body. Understanding this exposes the self-concept again as an empty shell. However, now the empty shell feels like an individual who is emotionally and mentally trapped by the physical world. Sometimes one feels as if he is fat, or full of fat that covers a deep emptiness. One becomes aware that this sense of being a fat empty shell is coexistent with a state of greed and lust for food and physical comfort and pleasure. One realizes the consequences of the exclusive cathexis of physical reality, which is basically how ego sees the world. One relates to the world as if it can fill one’s emptiness, can satisfy one’s greed for all kinds of physical rewards. One is deeply, though unconsciously, aware of one’s deficient emptiness, and is seeing the world as the source of gratifications. 

Our blessings and realizations are not simply for our enjoyment, but also for our guidance and transformation. And there is no true transformation unless we recognize the limitation of the lollipop stage and have a real motive to go beyond it. The balanced approach to experience is exactly what is needed to actually do the work. The more we have that balanced attitude, the easier the work is, and the more naturally and spontaneously it happens. We need to remember and be aware that it’s not simply the experience that matters, but how we relate to it. If we approach our experience with an attitude of greed, the experience will likely be used to feed an endless emptiness that can never be filled. But if we approach our experience with a balanced attitude, the experience could expose that bottomless chasm without trying to fill it. So our orientation toward experience needs to be one of learning. No matter how painful, pure, or wonderful, all experiences are good when approached with a correct attitude. Approaching an experience with the attitude of learning is an ultimate attunement to reality. Learning this attunement to reality is a challenging process that requires us to approach our difficulties with humility and detachment. 

Gradually, you come to understand that the personality itself, with its characteristics, its tendencies, and its preferences, is the problem. If you relate to essence from the perspective of the personality, of wanting only what makes you feel good and not questioning it, of not wanting what makes you feel bad and not questioning that either, you feed the tendency of the personality for greed; you make your personality more opaque. Lacking some essential quality, not having something like love or value or joy, is not the problem. The continual presence of the personality with its patterns is the problem. And that can change only if you learn from essence, if you allow your personality to be transparent to essence, regardless of what feeling is there.

There is another kind of greed, a greed for variety, of wanting many things, more and more things, all different. “I want this, and this, and that, and that, this one too; how about that one and that one. . . .” We see this quality of greed with children most clearly and straightforwardly. But this characteristic of the personality reflects another characteristic of essence, which is the endlessness of its forms, aspects, characteristics, and dimensions. This is a deep truth of essence; essence has no end. There is no end of learning, no end of expansion. New qualities and aspects, new characteristics and different dimensions keep coming to the correctly oriented individual. The development keeps going; different dimensions, different qualities, different realms. Each one of them, in turn, goes through a development, an expansion. The process is limitless, endless, in all its sides and dimensions. Every time an individual believes he reached the end, a whole new dimension opens up. Dimensions can emerge from unexpected angles; developments can go in any direction. The endlessness of essence is what Gurdjieff is referring to in his major book, All and Everything, when he gives God the title of “his endlessness.” 

It is important to see here that understanding greed is not sanctioning greed. For the work to be done effectively, greed has to be understood instead of being acted out. The individual must observe and understand this characteristic of the personality, until its hole is revealed, which will reveal the ignorance of the essential characteristic of endlessness. This will then bring out the perception and the realization of the infinite richness of essence. Here greed dies. 

Greed is wanting more and more from outside. Also, greed is not the desire for something in particular; it is a characteristic of insatiable desire. So it must be a reflection of a characteristic of Essence per se and not of a particular essential aspect. It must function as an attempt to fill the hole, the deficiency resulting from the loss of this characteristic of Essence. The characteristic of Essence that is connected to greed in the personality has a sense of "more and more," of limitlessness and endlessness. In fact, this quality of endlessness is a profound characteristic of Essence. Each aspect of Essence exists in an unlimited way or extent. The substance of Essence is not limited in extent; it is infinite, limitless. In other words we can say that each aspect of Essence is really a boundless ocean of this quality.

This realization, and many others on this dimension, erode the soul’s attachment to worldly things. For the soul can clearly see that all richness belongs to the divine presence, and all abundance is of the very nature of truth. Attachment is based on the separateness of self, which is one side of a larger illusion, the belief that the world is composed of discrete objects. Not seeing the indivisible boundless ground of everything, the soul sees manifestation as composed of discrete objects. One can then possess or lose one object or another. And since this dismemberment reflects the absence of the unity of Being, with its richness and abundance, it is bound to be colored by a sense of impoverishment. Impoverishment becomes desire and greed, and possessiveness develops into grasping and attachment. Therefore, instead of the soul experiencing herself living in abundance and seeing richness everywhere, she inwardly feels, consciously or unconsciously, that she is deprived and empty. She ends up being ruled by desire, greed, possessiveness, and attachment. Instead of the beautiful and rich display of love, the world of dismembered objects becomes the promise of possessions, power, and objects of gratification. The boundless Good is dismembered into material goods, to be attained, possessed, and hoarded. The natural richness and its associated spontaneous generosity becomes an economy of scarcity, where each is for his own, each is looking out for himself, and each fights and competes with others for as big a piece of the pie as one can get through cunning or brute force.

When most people experience their Essence, however, they treat it like something on the emotional level: a possession, a thing, a goodie. This is the basic make-up of the personality, to relate to things from the perspective of greed. It is this tendency of the personality to grasp for pleasure, even for the deep satisfaction of Essence, which brought about all misery. Unless this tendency dissolves, your attitude towards Essence will be the same as your attitude toward material goods. Your identity still resides in the personality, in greed, in suffering.