About Self-Remembrance
Self-remembrance, what is that?
Self-remembrance: what is that? A frequently asked question. What is meant by this term, which originates from Ouspensky? What exactly needs to be remembered?
As humans, we are quite capable of recalling things. Thanks to our ability to remember (Citta) we can retrieve everything that previously ‘existed’ in our mind; from recent moments, but also from a very long time ago. We have stored something – at a certain place (though it’s not a place in the usual sense of the word) – that we retrieve back into our minds. It indicates that we bring back something that was not (anymore) present in our minds or was no longer perceived by us. When we talk about self-remembrance, it is the ‘self’ that we bring back into our minds through recollection.
Our primary experience is that of I am or I exist, which comes from our mental instrument that reflects on our thinking, feeling, and actions: the Observer. This reflective observation of I am or I exist makes us what is commonly called ‘a self-aware human.’ It means that we perceive everything in the world from ourselves. However, it happens that we often do not perceive everything correctly and are hardly self-aware. The cause of this includes the many inner obstacles and shadow sides that have nestled in our mental system: conditionings, as well as beliefs about ourselves, which in turn are caused by identification, misinformation, and painful experiences. Our full perception is blocked by this, leading us to act identified, mostly automatic, and mechanically in situations. (Automatism arises due to incomplete perceptions and the incorrect judgments and evaluations that result).
Outside + Inside
From this, we can deduce that in such incomplete perception, we have essentially forgotten ourselves. We no longer perceive our own inner self, and our primary experience of ‘I am / I exist’ is only partial. This experience has been reduced to a fixed ‘I am something,’ and thus, without realizing it, we have stripped ourselves of our greatest human spiritual capability: full self-awareness. Self-remembrance can restore this natural but severely curtailed capability, through a silent action, namely: awakening from the waking sleep! We then become inwardly silent in a full and feeling perception of ‘myself in the situation’.
As humans, we have the ability to perceive in two directions. When we observe externally, we experience the world around us (a landscape, for example, or our social surroundings). When we look inward, we experience our world of thoughts and feelings (during our inner dialogues or when we meditate). Just as we can observe the world outside us clearly and analytically, we can also clearly perceive our inner world, and there’s much to notice here.
Self-remembrance is the convergence of external and internal observations. The two directions of perception integrate. This can only consciously happen in the present moment. We then observe the situation around us with everything that is happening in it, in a feeling perception of ourselves and what’s happening within: a conscious observation of our body and our inner state of mind in the situation we find ourselves in.
In self-remembrance, we are not only aware of how our body feels and the clarity of our mind, but also of our inner attitude. This inner attitude, often mechanically triggered by identifications, entirely determines our external posture, and therefore, it dictates how we position and behave in situations. Self-remembrance thus sheds inner light on identification. It makes it crystal clear whether we identify from conditionings and ideas, or not. In self-remembrance, identifications are no longer fed because we see them as undesirable for our inner freedom. We will eventually dissolve them once we recognize and revalue the underlying causes (as internally limiting). In full self-remembrance, unconscious identification can no longer exist, and we no longer act mechanically!
Monotasking
Self-remembrance in itself is simple, but it doesn’t come automatically. We must exert effort.
We must start (and this is crucial) with single-tasking. Practicing self-remembrance begins with stopping multitasking. We do one thing at a time and fully focus on it. Not doing this and that in between, no music playing, no smartphone distractions, and so on.
Monotasking isn’t unfamiliar to us, for instance, when we lose ourselves in something that captivates us immensely (gamers can attest to this!). It can even become addictive. What we’re doing has indeed captivated us; we’re caught up in it. We no longer oversee our inner state. We lose ourselves. We then operate completely on autopilot. In this state, we can be highly skilled and achieve great feats, but it happens with an unconscious attention, and there’s no Observer overseeing it.
Attention Directs Consciousness
During work, our attention must be entirely focused on what we are doing, and on our inner experience associated with it. Through full attention, our inner light of consciousness shines on the action and on ourselves during that action. This way, we become aware of thoughts and feelings that arise and pass by during this work, as well as our inner attitude.
Emerging feelings tell us a lot about how we approach the work, whether it’s done optimally, and about our (com)passion in/with this work. Emerging thoughts can be functional (stemming from our discerning observation of the action) and promote and optimize the work, but they can also be automatic. In this case, they arise from irrelevant associations (or from reluctance) and pull us back into a waking sleep, back into mechanical action. Our mind loses its inner stillness due to this, and the Self-remembrance disappears.
We must continually redirect our attention back to the action with observation of our inner self, focusing on what appears and moves within. We can practice this ’24/7′ in many daily actions like driving, walking, cleaning, cooking, gardening, shopping, and so on.
If we have social actions, where others are involved, we should pay attention to our consideration. External consideration keeps us with ourselves, therefore in Self-remembrance, and then our mind naturally becomes quieter and more open. Internal consideration puts us back into sleep and mechanical behavior; our mind starts moving again, inner silence disappears, our attention gets scattered, and we again become closed.
Never Learned
As children, we never learned to act in Self-remembrance, or even just to be in Self-remembrance (i.e., in non-action). We haven’t been taught to focus our attention single-pointedly; it often gets scattered. We haven’t learned to continue observing ourselves during an action. We also haven’t truly learned to feel. Essentially, we received little or no instruction about this from our caregivers during our childhood and teenage years.
We can only teach ourselves Self-remembrance now by practicing it consistently by remembering it every time something feels ‘difficult.’ This way, we eventually realize Self-remembrance as a permanent inner state of our mind. This is the state of Self-awareness, and it’s our natural state! It’s an ego-less state. What we commonly call self-awareness is different: it’s ego-consciousness and thus full of ego-matters, being non-alert, and identifications. This is termed the state of waking sleep, in which, unfortunately, we spend most of our day.
What prevents us from this is too little (conscious) attention – in the present moment – to ‘what is’ and our action within it; and too much (mechanically directed) attention arising from identifications that cause and perpetuate our ego. Complete attention (integrated inwards and outwards) in the present moment is the key. That is mindfulness 2.0 because even in this method, Self-remembrance is seldom practiced.
In fact, in self-remembrance, we resolve the division or duality within ourselves. We then experience inner unity or non-duality. This is how the non-duality paradigm becomes realized in ourselves, and it’s a good start for a more complete Self-realization.
Also, read about our natural desire to be in full awareness.
Are you already out of your mind?
At the beginning of the spiritual Work as Gurdjieff and Ouspensky have described it in the System, it is clear that the first early development shows itself in forgetfulness and ambivalence towards the Work. We simply cannot maintain being awake. No problem, every beginning is difficult, as long as there is perseverance to not give up and to come to self-remembering as often as we remember it.
Without coming out of waking sleep, into a state of (hopefully ever-permanent) self-remembering, any other aspect of the Fourth Way philosophy is of secondary importance. Without regular schooling and the practice of exercises, a person has little chance to elevate themselves to Self-Consciousness, let alone to Objective Consciousness. No matter how interesting Fourth Way theories may be, without daily practiced self-remembering, they only have a short-lived satisfying effect on the mind. There will be no real inner development initiated.
In Ouspensky’s time, we are talking about some 100 years ago, the study material was written in a contemporary manner. It was a completely different world. Spirituality was totally subordinate in Western ‘worldly’ people (except for a small elite) and due to the dominance of mainstream religion, people didn’t even know what real spirituality entailed. So many spiritual (and ‘spiritualish’) activities as there are now, including the enormous promotion of them on the internet and media, were completely unthinkable then. And so the ‘language’ of the Fourth Way was mainly one to move people to start looking at themselves and stimulate them to do so through intelligent teachings.
This hundred-year-old pioneering language, which could feel like awakening slaps in the face, is now largely outdated. Theoretical positions are no longer useful to achieve Self-Consciousness if we study them to store them in our mind. They bring us into and not out of our mind. A new mental prison or tunnel vision. We need to get out of our mind!
An example: in our time it is of no importance to delve into what the stages of development (in the development octave) are exactly, especially if this is to assess ‘your own level of development’. For the intellectually satisfying person, this is even counterproductive, as it leads to reinforcing the identifying mind, in other words the ego. The approach of Zelfkennis Nu is primarily aimed at realizing a waking state of mind: learning to be self-reflectively awake as often, as long, and as deeply as possible. Many exercises are available for this, practical short exercises that can be applied many times a day. Below is one of the most important, which should certainly have a place every day at the start of the Work.
Truly Awake Walking in Self-Remembrance
Take a 15-minute walk.
- For the full 15 minutes, realize “I am walking,” or more accurately said: “I observe my walking body.”
- After setting your attention on this, expand this alert observation to notice everything around you and experience it with your five senses. The wind, the smells, the colors and images, the sounds, the touch of your feet on the ground, the pressure of your clothes, the temperature, EVERYTHING. Your external observation is then as complete as possible.
- Extend this alert observation inward. In this full awareness, feel your life flows: your breathing, blood circulation, perspiration, fatigue, muscle pain, fitness, and so on.
- Thoughts will also arise. You observe them as part of your inner observation, nothing more; you don’t engage with any emerging thought.
- Walking with full attention, you may also experience feelings/emotions (and possibly their position in your body). These arise too, whether weak or strong. You observe them, nothing more; you don’t engage with any emotion/feeling by thinking about it.
- In this clear attention to ‘everything’, you also observe your state of mind, which often isn’t as clear or attentive and certainly not always optimal, without any judgment about it.
When external and internal observations coincide as fully as possible, we are ‘walking in an optimal feeling observation of myself in the situation I am in‘. We experience the INSIDE and OUTSIDE of ‘myself’ simultaneously. Internal and external observations integrate. Thus, walking in self-remembrance.
We seldom experience this awake clarity, certainly not for more than a few minutes. You’ll find it’s not easy to sustain this integrated judgment-free observation. We constantly switch our attention between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, so we can’t integrate or unify this observation. This simply requires practice. A few months of such an awake walk every day, and your life will be completely transformed. In regular walking, we constantly get caught up in streams of thoughts or in feelings that trigger thought streams, obstructing or entirely shielding our observation of the present moment. We are constantly chatting with ourselves (or with others, of course). We can also get caught up in something from ‘outside’, usually something disturbing in our environment, a noise or something else that we then latch onto. Then, for example, you might get annoyed because it’s raining or you get disturbed by noise or by other people.
Experience your True Self: walking in awareness of ‘what is’. Initially, it’s challenging because our attention, like a flashlight, moves ‘everywhere’ and isn’t integrated. But seeing and feeling everything in full attention, INSIDE and OUTSIDE yourself, SIMULTANEOUSLY, without any reservation, without any view or opinion on it… in that, the experience of duality dissolves, and we have an experience in advaita, in ‘non-dual Being’. An experience of the Self recognizing itself as Absolute Consciousness in your individual self.
