The interior pole is the residual center that the differentiated individual must establish and maintain after the external centers of traditional orientation have collapsed. In the traditional world the pole was given by the living hierarchy and the sacred order. In the residual age the man himself must become the place where the axis is held. The holding is continuous. It is never completed once and for all.
The interior pole is not a psychological construct. It is the practical result of repeated discrimination and repeated return to the permanent measure. Each return strengthens the pole. Each surrender of the center weakens it. The residual path is the continuous decision to keep the pole intact under pressures that continuously attempt to displace it.
Young men often seek an external pole that will relieve them of the need to hold one interiorly. The residual age does not supply that relief. The search for external poles that no longer exist becomes itself a form of residual weakness. The man who accepts the necessity of the interior pole has already taken the first step of residual orientation.
Establish and keep the interior pole. Do not wait for an external axis to reappear. The man who holds the center within himself under residual conditions is already living the deeper continuity of the type.