Self-remembering?

M

Marie

Guest
Hi everyone

So basically, I am still in "preparation" mode when it comes to the Path, and I know I'm not very advanced or anything, but just a short while ago today something happened that I have tentatively, and possibly wrongly, called "self-remembering", but whatever it was it was certainly very peculiar.

It's pretty hard to describe, but I'm gonna do my best. When it started I was thinking about one of Laura's long posts. I was basically on the whole "removing programs" idea, and I've been working on that for a while, and I was wondering how I was long ago, before I got all those programs. And for some reason, it happened. It was like if you were in a hot, stuffy, smoky house and you stepped out and there was a breeze and a little bit of fresh rain, or if you had a huge weight on your shoulders and it just disappeared, or like "waking up" in a certain sense. It felt really good, like a huge relief.

The funny thing is how different from my "usual" (fake) self it felt. Usually I'm the tense and nervous type, hypersensitive and wary. But when that happened I felt happy to be alive, and that's very unusual all by itself. I was a lot more relaxed, and thinking about my usual worries and thoughts I felt like laughing, because it just seemed kinda funny that I should spend so much time & energy on things that seemed, at that moment, trivial.

It didn't last very long - say, somewhere between less than a minute and maybe two minutes, but it was enough. As I'm writing it's long gone, but something lingers. After that and up to now I've felt much more calm, and centered, and a lot less confused. To be honest I'm not at all looking forward to being "back to normal".

Now I've felt like that a few times before in my life - usually after a crisis passed or after I took a hard decision. It was just never so clear, and before I never had an idea of what it was - my usual way of putting it would have been something like "I feel SO much better now". Coincidentally I had a mini-crisis this morning, which might have played a role in there.

I am tempted to be a bit suspicious of psychic manipulation, as we all know the Work isn't supposed to feel good, but it felt so true that I kinda think it was real. Now it might not be "self-remembering", I suppose it might be a "tall moment", or even a whole load of nothing, but let me say this: if it was manipulated, it was professional-grade.

Anyway I'm curious: is that what self-remembering is like/supposed to feel like? Did anyone else get something like that before? I welcome all thoughts/ ideas/ suggestions.

Marie-Ange
 
Marie,
I'm a novice of the Work as well so cannot give you an answer as thorough as some of the other forum members can. :)

Just a couple thoughts on what you have described:

"Shocks" whether from external sources or from a sudden internal understanding of an idea of particular importance to a person can trigger self-remembering. So, if you were thinking about the ideas of the Work and came to a point of greater understanding of how particular concepts are represented in your life, this could indeed have caused a "shock" and moment of self-remembering.

As far as how self-remembering normally feels, I think this depends on an individual's progress in the Work in addition to variations in each person. It may also depend on what triggered the self-remembering, and vary under different circumstances. I have at times, while intentionally trying to self-remember and through minor "shocks", experienced emotions similar to what you have described. However, that is rather rare for me. So based on my experience, self-remembering "feels" a bit different each time it happens.
 
In this world we are forced into a position where are kinda trapped into being who we are to other people, often at the cost of who we are to ourselves. I think you described the experience perfectly - self-remembering. The work itself is not supposed to feel good or bad, it's just difficult and frustating (IMO), but acting from your real-self and truely connecting with that who you are on your deepest levels - well how can that not feel good? I wish the best of luck not going back to normal, but being weird has a price too -> dealing with all the folk who think you've just lost it, or who want you to go back to being the image of who they thought you were (because they don't want to deal with reality).
As one weirdo to another waking up - let me offer you a good morning ...
 
Marie said:
Hi everyone


It's pretty hard to describe, but I'm gonna do my best. When it started I was thinking about one of Laura's long posts. I was basically on the whole "removing programs" idea, and I've been working on that for a while, and I was wondering how I was long ago, before I got all those programs. And for some reason, it happened. It was like if you were in a hot, stuffy, smoky house and you stepped out and there was a breeze and a little bit of fresh rain, or if you had a huge weight on your shoulders and it just disappeared, or like "waking up" in a certain sense. It felt really good, like a huge relief.

Marie-Ange
Hi Marie,
I have noticed this same effect before while attempting to self-remember and self-observe. I don't know WHY it happens yet though. If I can speculate maybe it is because for a very brief moment the centers begin to work differently?

Ousepnsky mentions that he would oftewn feel "strange" while engaged in self-remembering.

Maybe someone who knows more about this can elaborate?

Don
 
One of the fundamental things we gain through the work is the ability to tell the difference between the true and the false. This takes time and experience, and often amounts to trial and error testing. Just as we can be fooled into taking a false experience for true, we can also be fooled (or rather fool ourselves) into taking a true experience for false, especially in the beginning when such experiences are intermittent.

A pitfall is making generalizations about what a true experience should be. In my view, if I must generalize to a degree, I would say that the experience of the essence of true self is a positive one. It feels good, but it also feels right. The experiences leading to and following that experience can easily, however, be negative and not feel good. And I know of no negative experience that feels right, unless one looks back through hindsight at the lessons involved.

So it can be misleading to say that if something feels good it is wrong. The problem is that what constitutes "good feeling" encompasses quite a wide spectrum of subjective experience.

Marie said:
It was like if you were in a hot, stuffy, smoky house and you stepped out and there was a breeze and a little bit of fresh rain, or if you had a huge weight on your shoulders and it just disappeared, or like "waking up" in a certain sense. It felt really good, like a huge relief.
When in such an experience it is most constructive to get into it with as much of our being as possible. This activates memory at the level of mind, emotions and body, especially the last. By emotions, I do not mean emotional reactions, which in my view can occur, and which should not be suppressed, but what amounts to a feeling response of the emotional body. This is invariably linked to the body's natural response rather than to a conditioned formation in the mind.

If I must generalize again, I would say false emotions try to push us to act. Real emotions are what we feel without needing to dramatize. Conversly, true emotions originate in the body as a way of elaborating on its internal experience. The body registers sensation, and speaks through emotion. False or conditioned emotion, on the other hand, tends to begin in the mind and tries to affect the body and its chemistry from there.

Let me put it this way: our false selves exist within a certain biochemical internal environment. When a true self experience comes on, that environment shifts to one compatible with the real self, the self for which the body was designed. We are healthier when free of mental parasites, and the body has its own awareness and response to that fact, and emotions represent the bridge with the mind.

The false self tends to own the pathways from mind to body and back again. It's cycle begins in the mind, and establishes conditions in the body to perpetuate itself through cycles of reinforcement. True emotions or feelings can over-ride this cycle at times, when the body can reflect its real-time biochemical state through those emotions rather than be pushed by mental formations to invalidate its natural response.

An example is the mind trying to present a "happy face" when we are under conditions where others are trying to manipulate us. Our biochemistry registers this, but our mind can generate guilt at our biopsychic response.

An experience of true self can especially speak to the body from the higher mind and emotions, and set in new potential pathways of response. Ones corresponding to one's true nature.

However, for a while we are still conditioned by false programming, and this tries to reassert itself, imposing the old biochemical environment, and the subsequent emotive responses. When we experience true self, on the other hand, what remains is a memory imprint of the experience, or rather an imprint of the new pathway potential between our centers. We can compare future experiences to that, and even hold it in the back of our minds while observing.

That also gives the body-intelligence something of a reference so the biochemical environment is not so rigidly tied to old programming. In that case, the organic intelligence, so to speak, does not consider such shifts as a threat, (which is how the old programming tends to present them). When it does, we tend to shift through crises because we identify with the response to the shift to true self as a threat at the biochemical level.

Hence, initial experiences can "surprize" the programming, but later events can revolve around more resistence because intertia has been established in the form of a tolerance effect, similar to what one experiences with some drugs.

One way around this is to be as clear as possible in remembering the experience at the sensate/biochemical level. Marie's descriptions involved "feeling good". That's fine, but its not useful because feeling good can be many things. What are more constructive are the other descriptions, given in specific detail, and involving metaphor and imagery.

I think this was a valid experience. The experience of relief is common because the inadvertant shift to true self shifts the body to align with it in an immediate manner reflecting the novelty of the experience. The programming, in other words, has not yet developed reactionary responses to true self because true self was never present in such a deliberate manner. You can call this a beginners' success experience.

Problems arise if one assumes its all easy street from that point. On the contrary, that's when one must begin facing all the deliberate defense mechanisms of the false self. The first experience from deliberate focus is a thumbs up that one is on the right track. It is also a call to remember the experience, and simply keep that memory in the back of one's mind without trying to force the experience again. Just let it always be there, even if it cannot generate any positive feelings or sensations. Just know it is there.

It's hard to describe these things because ANYTHING can be taken the wrong way. And mistakes will be made because one is not only learning something new (although it is learning to be natural), but within that learning there are internal counter-forces that will amaze the observer with their seeming ultra clever and deliberate nature.

These are not the real self, but they are identified as self. Unfortunately, just claiming they are "other" or "attacks" can also be misleading because it takes a lot of work to reach the point where the presence of true self is consistent enough that the false self can be realistically considered as "other". Until then, it is safer to view it as "my conditioning".

Regarding Don's observation above, the experience of self-remembering is far more than the experience of an "idea" or a mental complex. It is a profound neurological focus that alters not only the biochemistry of the nervous system, but also has epigenetic effects on our whole organic make-up.

These adapt our circuitry to the presence of true self each time we approach it, or rather they untangle the misadaptations to false programming. If you consider how long you were living with false programming, you can understand that it cannot be reversed in a day. Once initial experiences are recorded, the long haul of reversing conditioning is undergone, and that often includes forms of biochemical withdrawl with respect to our maladapted state.

When our mental/emotive habits change, our biochemical responses change, and the energy field (or tangible energetic presence) of our body and psychic patterning changes. This is sensed by those around us. Others can, moreover, react to supress our change because our presence induces a stress upon them that challenges their own habitual nature by inductive proximity. This is why unless one can associate with like minded others, the work can be lonely indeed for a long time.

Regarding Ouspensky's description of feeling "strange", I think that assessment came from his programming. The truth makes us feel natural and free unless there is inertial resistance from the old self. This can color the perception of the experience. Something in us can prompt perceptions of "weirdness" regarding self-remembering. This "twist" of observation is really not self remembering, but trying to self remember, and moving to penetrate the haze of false self without actually having reached the other side yet.

What is "strange" is then the reaction of false self, by which the real self has been labelled the foreigner of its own abode. In that sense also, self-remembering is not yet self-BEing, which is a state where the true self can still be among the false fragments but as a clearly distinct and "solid" presence, and in ever increasing self-identification.

At first one must shut off distractions while self-remembering (and in that sense it can be like meditation), but eventually it can be incorporated into the daily life so one's day to day activities are linked to the reception of true self as one's identity. It pays to be patient, and identify any judgment of the experience as part of our conditioning to judge, while taking response-ability for it so it is not pushed away into hiding.

That distinction between judgment and being response-able is also important, and amounts to accepting the nature of the process of change, and all it entails, as a process rather than an indicator of how "good" or "bad", capable or incapable one is. Those labels are beside the point when one is sincere.

And one can be sincere and still be fooled, since sincerity is a prerequisite of true learning, not a result of it. I am referring to basic sincerity regarding our intent to BE here, not the transcendence of all our inner blind spots and weaknesses, that sometimes make us look like liars to self and others.
 
Marie said:
It was like if you were in a hot, stuffy, smoky house and you stepped out and there was a breeze and a little bit of fresh rain, or if you had a huge weight on your shoulders and it just disappeared, or like "waking up" in a certain sense. It felt really good, like a huge relief.
EQ said:
I think this was a valid experience. The experience of relief is common because the inadvertant shift to true self shifts the body to align with it in an immediate manner because the experience is new. The programming, in other words, has not developed reactionary responses to true self because true self was never present in such a deliberate manner. You can call this a beginners' success experience.
I agree. For me, the key descriptive word was "relief." Maybe a small clue in the following:

Q: (L) ... I have been seeing things so completely differently lately. I even see that you have given all sorts of clues about this that just went over my head...

A: Laura, please learn just to trust your expanding insights. They will bring you to ever increasing knowledge and
ability. But, you want us to lead you by the hand. All this can do is ultimately lead this channel and conduit
into an STS vehicle!

Q: (L) That is not what I am trying to do here! I am trying to expand on a learning experience to help other people.

A: You have the ability to do that all on your own!! Cannot you see this yet?

Q: (L) I am still in the process of making major changes in my life based on such insights...

A: And, how do you feel when you make a decision to make one of these changes?

Q: (L) It hurts to make some decisions, even if I feel that it is the right thing to do. It can be painful and scary.

A: Relief?

Q: (L) Definitely relief!

...
Q: (L) This recent 'awakening' or period of seeing things with such clarity, as they really were, and the whole
picture of the interactions between people and how truly ugly it can be. I plunged into a terrible depression. I
needed to get my balance from seeing so much all at once. Can you explain to me what was going on?

A: Growth.

Q: (L) I tried to share this perception with other people, and almost without exception, when I said to people that I
was finally seeing things in their true state and it was NOT a pretty picture, they all said "well, you are
obviously seeing this through the eyes of some major spirit possession!" Why would they say this?

A: First of all, it is not correct to perceive "everything in such darkness and gloom, etc." That is merely the result
of a cocoon of falsehood being removed. Celebrate the balance. Don't mourn the death of an illusion of an
imbalance.

Q: (L) Where do I go from here? Where do we all go?

A: Everywhere.
So, as you see, the struggle, the WORK is worth it. I wish I could convey that to all the "love and light bombers" who think that you don't have to work or struggle for anything. I've watched them for years and they never change. Sure, they might figure out how to meditate and relieve their stress, but nothing about their lives every seems to change (unless they decide to rip other people off teaching them their "ascension" techniques that don't work). In such cases, they may get rich, but then they start a downhill slide. Look at Elizabeth Clare Prophet and her decline into Alzheimer's.

Anyway, as I said, I wish I could convey to people what it feels like to be on the other side of that initiation and I guess the best word is "relief." That doesn't mean that there isn't more, and that the "more" is not difficult also. But once you've had a good taste of the "bread of life," so to say, you know what you are working for and nothing else ever satisfies.

As Gurdjieff said: "Life is real only then, when I AM."
 
It's like a blissful emptiness. The "issues" of life have vanished. For a brief moment I am not the everyday me. Of course then some of my "I's" start fretting because I am not worrying like I am supposed to.
 
Thank you all very much for your responses - this is very instructive. Obviously a lot of people here know what I'm talking about. :)

Esoquest, thank you for once more providing us with information and food for thought, all at once. It's also very helpful to know of the pitfalls before walking in one.
 
Prayers for rain said:
I would have many other things to say and ask about all this, cause I wonder about other things that happened recently to him, which make me wonder if he's still on the "right" path... which makes me think ,you're not "safe and alright" until you're completely reunited with your real Self, and that there are many tricks and traps. I'll ask these questions later on another topic.
It is often tempting to see the journey as a series of steps. The danger with this view is that we may end up believing that we are here to learn to take steps rather than complete the journey. Thus, some of us take steps, learn to walk fast an even learn to run. It's exhiliarating!

However, you also get tired very fast. And you stop and look around, and realize that you have missed much scenery and many adventures because you were busy running, high on your own swiftness.

Your friend was given a valuable lesson, IMO, because his sincerity was consistent and strong. It may take awhile for that lesson to sink in, and for a while he may misunderstand what the lesson is.

He was "revved" by the energy of influence C to vibrate at a certain level, because that is what he wanted, and his asking was sincere. He was immersed in the nature of the state, but did not digest the value of the state, at least not while he was in it.

Now here is the misunderstanding, which is a detail with a not so little devil in it. It may be yours, but I also believe it was his:

He lived in that higher state for 3 weeks, completely disconnected from material life.
Notice the paradox: he was one with all nature and life, but completely disconnected from all material life. Sure, he may have been aware of the truth of reality, but was reality aware of its own truth? Imagine being in that state for years on end. After a time you would come to realize you are an island of truth in a sea of falsehood. Sure, you are witness to the true ocean, but is the world aware of itself?

That is the lesson: Once you reach the top of the mountain, and have a clear view of the valley below, you come to realize that even at that great height you are still sitting on a rocky, barren crag, with clear exaulted air and a good view. And even though you are close to the sun itself, and can touch the grace of the clouds carressing your face, you realize that it is in the valley where all the action is, where the fertile soil lies, where the crops bear fruit.

And THEN you realize WHY you must return fortified with the purifying oxygen of the heights and the vision that is forever yours. You realize that the mountain must come down to the people, and the fertile potential of the valley must be blessed with the pure air of the heights.

Your friend underwent a test by the C influence, a test to see if he was ready for the truth he craved, if he could understand its value while still in the heights. And one is only ready when one is ready to understand the true meaning of attaining those heights: to fill the valley with their blessing.
 
EsoQuest said:
Now here is the misunderstanding, which is a detail with a not so little devil in it. It may be yours, but I also believe it was his:

He lived in that higher state for 3 weeks, completely disconnected from material life.
Thank you. You got to the point that's worrying me. But it's subtler than it can seem.
By "disconnected from material life" , I meant that he didn't care for physical needs like eating or sleeping. I mean, he didn't feel the need for those things.

But you're right about me though, I've got a "problem" with material life, and I've just received another lesson : I had written a very long post trying to explain further in details the whole "case" of this person, and I foolishly losed the whole thing because of my lack of sense of practical reality :(
I'll try though to rewrite my post, because it's still important for me to find some valuable answers in order to move on, and I do trust this forum for providing objective answers though it might not be the ones I'm expecting. I realise how subjective and super emotional I can be and it's quite annoying.
Anyways... I'll rewrite to whole damned thing.
 
Back
Top Bottom