“A man must die; that is, he must free himself from a thousand petty attachments and identifications… He is attached to everything in his life, attached to his imagination, attached to his stupidity, attached even to his sufferings, possibly to his sufferings more than to anything else… Attachments to things, identifications with things, keep alive a thousand useless ‘I’s in a man. These ‘I’s must die in order that the big I may be born. But how can they be made to die? They do not want to die. It is at this point that the possibility of awakening comes to the rescue. To awaken means to realize one’s nothingness.”

G. I. Gurdjieff, via Sunbeams (Page 67)