3-in-1 influence-seed to plant in yourself

Obviously (take my word for it) it requires an unusual development to connect in a real way with Work ideas, practices, and goals. Part of this development, not all, but a big part is an engaging of and absorbing of and understanding of a basic level of higher influence. This requires effort and time. Two things the average human being is not willing or desirous to give.

But at a basic level, to connect with the Work in a way you simply can't see now, you need three basic things from higher influence:

• You need a universal, higher, visual language of awakening and inner development.
  

• You need a dose of the universal ethic that underlies and enables a true connection with the High Way of awakening and inner development.
  

• You need a basic level of understanding of the world to get beyond all the stumblingblocks that ignorance-plus-resentment will keep you in (regarding social issues, political issues, family issues, personal social issues, etc.) and keep you away from being able to connect with the High Way of awakening and inner development. The subject for acquiring this is basic history, and the quickest, most basic, most practical, most useful thing you can do is read through a basic, universal history of the world.
  

For the first the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey are supreme. For the second the Essays of Emerson are potent and invigorating. For the third you just have to find a basic history of the world that is not grinding any kind of ax too intensely. Go back in time and read H. G. Wells' Short History of the World or his larger Outline of History, or, for a more current work, read J. M. Robert's Short History of the World, or his unabridged Penguin History of the World.

These are three basic works - Homer, Emerson, a History of the World - that don't take a lifetime to read in full. It takes some time and some effort, but you will be planting in yourself something that will transcend in value anything else you could give an equal amount of time and effort to. Even if you don't connect with each work, or get from each work, what it's possible to get from them you will have planted the seed and started the crucial, necessary process, and given yourself, ultimately what can only connect you in a real way with the High Way and with a real teaching of awakening and inner development.