Self Remembering

I just want to wrap-up-the-thought here and quote from the glossary. It helped me, so it may be useful.
Bold mine.


[quote author=cassiopedia]
Self-Remembering

This is the 4th Way practice of dividing attention. Normally, one is in a state of constantly shifting identification. Self-remembering can be used to break this automation.

In its basic form, the practice involves being aware of one's inner state, including body, emotions and thinking, while also paying attention to an external object or activity. Self-remembering can bring presence of consciousness into human activity which usually is mechanical and simply happens.

Self-remembering is a prerequisite of self-knowledge and work on the self. Self-remembering is not simply analysis of self based on past data. It is by definition an activity that takes place in the present and concerns the present. It is not for example 'recapitulation,' which concerns the past.

A simple exercise of self-remembering is becoming conscious of one's body, emotion and thought and then alternatingly look at objects, while holding all these present to one's attention. One notices that one very easily falls into identification, where attention is drawn to a single object from its divided state.

Self-remembering in the middle of emotional shocks is specially difficult but also very valuable to the Work. Repeated practice of this goes in the direction of forming a constant I which is less and less subject to being captured into identification with passing circumstance. This is essential for forming cohesive being, intent and eventually capacity to 'do' in the 4th Way meaning of the term.

Another aspect of the concept relates to man's physical and psychic metabolism. Man takes in three kinds of 'food:' physical food, air and impressions. These three 'substances,' also known in the Work as 'hydrogens' undergo change and refinement in the human being. This goes in the direction of more refined, less coarse, more vivifying substances, ones more infused with information and intelligence, if one can say so. This process usually happens only very partially and the human 'hydrogen factory' is leaky and inefficient. Self-remembering, specially when done in context of shocks, assists and energizes these processes, so that finer hydrogens can be produced in greater quantity. This may have the effect of connecting one to one's higher centers. In this sense, self-remembering goes beyond a means of intellectually knowing about the self and becomes a tool for transformation and unlocking qualitatively new possibilities.

Intense self-remembering can happen spontaneously in situations of great emotional shock or danger. One observes then an entirely different quality of perception and presence. At such moments, the organism is prompted to work in a different mode, producing a momentary flow of 'higher hydrogens,' which enable a different type of functioning. The Work seeks to make these states available in a predictable and systematic fashion.
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[quote author=cassiopedia]
Identification

This is a nearly constant, universal feature of man's psyche. Identification takes place when some external item catches one's attention and one forgets all else. Identification is the mechanism which makes man a machine reacting to any environmental stimulus that may match his arbitrary fancy.

The 4th Way Work seeks to oppose man's automatic and routine tendency to identify with the practice of self-remembering. It is noteworthy that man loses any semblance of self-consciousness, forgets himself, when in a state of identification.

One can be identified with anything: A thought, an emotion, one's vacation plans, any social activity, the more emotionally involving, the greater the likelihood and extent of identification and self-forgetting will be.

An additional problem is that people often think that good work can only be produced in a state of identification. One 'must give the work of art/science/social situation one's all, be passionate,' and so forth, it is said. As the 4th Way sees it, all these perceived qualities of enthusiasm, spontaneity, passion are overwhelmingly mechanical and strip one of the little free will or being one might otherwise possess.

Good work requires being present in the situation, but one cannot be present in any real sense if one is identified, mechanically pursuing some program or other which the situation happens to have invoked. Presence in a real sense is not possible without 'being' and 'being' is not possible if one is purely reacting and lacks internal cohesion.

The terms fascination and confluence are used to indicate a specially strong state of identification.
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[quote author=cassiopedia]
Higher Centers

[...]
Mouravieff describes the higher emotional and intellectual centers as the 'eyes of the soul.' They both see differently. These centers exist in individually souled humans and are even functioning and awake but are disconnected from the lower centers which constitute the regular consciousness due not to any deficiency of the higher centers but rather due to the lower centers' lack of development and improper and sluggish functioning. The Work takes the form of preparing the lower centers in such a way that they become capable of entering into contact, however briefly, with the higher centers. It would be false pride to claim that human efforts create the higher. The scope of human efforts is limited to training the lower centers, the machine, so as to be a suitable receptacle for the soul. The higher is not the product of man's efforts, which are anyway restricted to the level accessible to man. Yet the efforts are necessary. At best these efforts could be said to provide construction material and receptive capacity for the higher. They do not per se design or cause the higher.

The higher centers need the correct type of fuel in order to function, or it may be more correct to say that the organism must contain the right type of energies in order to connect with these centers. In the system of hydrogens, these energies are H12 for the higher emotional and H6 for the higher intellectual. The only energy of this degree that is produced independently of consciousness is the Si12 of sexual energy. The other energies are Sol12 from the air octave and Mi12 of the impression octave. These may occur in surges from specially intense experience or conscious work. Such processes may help the metabolism produce the right psychic substances by intensifying attention, for example.

The connection to the higher emotional center is linked to the state of objective consciousness of self, or intense self-remembering. This may occur spontaneously in flashes of an entirely different perception but the lower centers cannot typically sustain such contact for long. One problem with this perception is the fact that the lower intellect immediately steps in the way and starts analyzing, which disrupts the immediacy of the contact. The lower intellect substitutes ideas and representations for the thing itself and replaces immediate perception with imagination. The strength of attention is not sufficient for staying with the experience. Both intellect and emotion flee into imagination and making interpretations and judgements, which is their normal automatic functioning.
[...]
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andi said:
cassiopedia] Higher Centers [...] The higher is not the product of man's efforts said:
[quote author=cassiopedia]
Higher Centers

[...]

The higher centers need the correct type of fuel in order to function, or it may be more correct to say that the organism must contain the right type of energies in order to connect with these centers. In the system of hydrogens, these energies are H12 for the higher emotional and H6 for the higher intellectual. The only energy of this degree that is produced independently of consciousness is the Si12 of sexual energy. The other energies are Sol12 from the air octave and Mi12 of the impression octave. These may occur in surges from specially intense experience or conscious work. Such processes may help the metabolism produce the right psychic substances by intensifying attention, for example.

[...]
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Intense experience is related to H12 and conscious work is H6? I don't recall if I have found this answer. Or which refer to which center, I know I have read that somewhere I think.

Thank-you for the posting Andi.
 
While reading Nicoll on self-remembering, i asked myself, how many times may i have remembered myself in life? Then had a strange flashback-type thing, where i was coming up from a deep dark sea of consciousness. I saw my life as a coma-patient may see and also as an outside observer. Coming up from below the waters of amnesia. There was a distinct feeling of coming out of sleep as i walked away from the tram-stop.

My whole life stretched out before my minds eye as a solid dark cloud blanket. 40 years long. On it I saw and recognized with a disturbing feeling, it was like really blinking/opening my eyes for the first time (that i have been opening my eyes for the first time in like 25 years) at this instant, i realized, as if momentarily jumping out from deep sleep, that there were like only 2 or 3 such moments in that entire 40 yrs long stretch of "comatose life cloud", hovering before my minds eye.

It was like Nicoll describing the "Book of Life", opened at the moment of peoples death, felt like i'm standing at my final reckoning/audit and i died of course. It felt very painful, realizing, that i spent my life so carelessly, ignorantly. That dark life-cloud (signifying insufficient awareness) it was filled up with useless daydreaming. I felt the fate of that dark cloud life-blanket quickly turning to dust and only the few awakening-moments remained in existence.

I felt others watching(higher consciousnesses with authority), felt ashamed in their observer eyes, because i neglected great opportunities in this life. All this was so disconcerting, that i quickly slipped into a lower I and dissociated out of this observation. :shock:
 
You're not going to learn self-remembering from a book. Having read several Ouspensky books as well as Views From The Real World many years ago, I imagined I knew what self-remembering and self-observation were. Then I met a man who had known Willem Nyland...

...he told me to forget self-remembering and self-observation. And showed me what Work is. It took some time.
 
Hi larsman,

Welcome :)

We recommend all new members to post an introduction in the Newbies section telling us a bit about themselves, how they found the cass material, and how much of the work here they have read.

You can have a look through that board to see how others have done it.

larsman said:
You're not going to learn self-remembering from a book. Having read several Ouspensky books as well as Views From The Real World many years ago, I imagined I knew what self-remembering and self-observation were. Then I met a man who had known Willem Nyland...

...he told me to forget self-remembering and self-observation. And showed me what Work is. It took some time.
Click to expand...
Maybe you can elaborate more and explain why and how self-remembering and self-observation are unnecessary according to this man and what he proposed.
 
Hi, Ana

Thanks for the invite to post an intro. I'll try to get to that later this week.

When I was told to forget self-remembering and self-observation, what I was really being told was to forget what I thought I knew.

And then, those were not terms we used. As Gurdjieff once stated, an exact language is needed. This is particularly true in groups themselves. In the Nyland school, it is referred to as the ABC's.

So it was an issue of what I imagined myself to know, and one of language, that is all. There are a number of Gurdjieff schools now and they do not all speak the same language. And there are hundreds of Gurdjieff books, as to the scores when I came into this teaching in the 80's.

Books are of limited value. Certainly they reflect a conscious influence, but they are not the thing itself. As C. Daly King once warned, you are not going to learn self-observation from a book.

HTH, Joe
 
You might enjoy the SOTT podcasts on the topic of Gurdjieff.
 
Thanks, I'd read that thread last year, and referred to it several times since. In fact, it's fair to say that thread is what drew me in here. Hoping to avoid a long diatribe about what and who may constitute a Gurdjieff school, this is a good list from which to ascertain the lines of the teaching:

http://gurdjieff.org/pupils.htm

HTH, Joe
 
- I was half-asleep i think and had a highly educative dream-like remembrance, where not so much the visuals, rather the info and very clear emotional charge and content was perceived. Memories from watched movies could have been mixed into the experience.
The ideal scene was a meadowland with a lake, bushes, a flawless spot in nature. My dreamer-self (that sexual man-animal creature free of social constraints of the real world) spotted a group of young women finishing bathing in the lake. They were coming out of the water completely naked, beginning to walk home and not bothering with clothes at all, since they had none. This dream experience was not composed of visuals at all: everything was perceived in a crisp, crystal clear emotional-clairvoyance, where the flora was just there (known but not seen just like when you close your eyes and can see through it).*

Of prime importance was the girls emotional reactions to my thoughts and their message also conveyed telepathically.

The girls looked back and noticed me eyeballing them and surely received my animal emotional thinking, which consisted of measuring them up (impression) and begin of porno-film autoplay in my brain at the sight of them (mechanical old reaction), taking them as potential dream-prey for sex.

Years ago women in my dreams were always a sort of projections of my desires, not possibly real dream-beings, but mere projected-parts of my animal thoughts on automatic in a sexual dream. As my esoteric readings proceeded and their effects took place, these experiences increasingly developed into higher-level emotional encounters. Less and less to satisfy animal desires and a lot more to give piece, satisfy my real need for love, convey you are being loved and not alone from unknown outside sources. The beginning sex-dream environment/stage in these new strange cases was always quickly converted into a place of teaching about real love. The beginning old-sexual set was used only because - it seems now thinking back - i could be reached only this way in those low FRV-states.

Now these girls were not the automatic creations of my old dreaming, lowly animal sex-craving mind, that ruled my dreams until years ago. They were completely self-assertive, very strong willed strangers, possessing infinitely higher development, compared to me(dreaming or awake). The girls were of approx. 18-25 years of age, very mature, coming from totally different world and time, possibly before the time of several cataclysms. I'm sure they were from another time, members of an older, much more mature civilization that ours is. Think of them like members of a society, where esoteric and social development had full success and they have beaten psychopathy and everything went really good as it should. They were unbelievably real, highly developed emotional, mature compassionate beings, possibly esoterically awakened to a much higher degree than the current average in our society is. Again this was not a visual dream, but carrying a lot of higher emotionally clairvoyant content, the "visuals" were also received this way.

*..continued:
- So i looked at them thinking about porn, and they received my thoughts instantly. Now their reaction was not condemnation at all . They displayed no disgust, no acceptance to my animal invitation for sex, basically they did not mechanically react to my thoughts at all. Instead the girls measured me up - this is important. They were not at all blushing or bewildered or showed any discomfort because of their nakedness in any way that i was looking them. On the contrary: they behaved, moved in a completely natural way, walking home naked after a bath being their totally normal activity and must have been normal in their society. So the girls looked at me up and down like i was looking at them, gauging and taking measure. Then they sent the most sobering emotional thought - message that i have received in a dream so far.

They thought that i should get a life, in a most healthy way (i can't emphasize the health and maturity of their thoughts) in this way they didn't understood at all why i was eyeballing their good looking and fit bodies, they could not understand my pathology or at least didn't felt, thought of this and i couldn't see any contempt in their thoughts because of me eyeballing. They sent very sobering emotions and thoughts, a message, [it is hard to summarize because they were thinking so mature so out of my_ordinary that i'm having difficulty summing it up] that i should get mature in sexual regards, respect women in a highly developed way as was used amongst them (in their society).

I should get sober, erase from my mind any pathological associations regarding sex. I should develop a proper, completely healthy thinking on seeing naked women in my dreams and in real life (GF). They showed with their thoughts, conveying their message, soundless, through looking back at me, an unbelievable healthy attitude between man and woman, that was in that dream so alien, they were so alien from my perspective because of their far-higher development in Being.

The girls invited me to live, think, feel, develop emotions like they had. To lead a life, develop a mind that they had.
- Are you coming with us? - Not in person, but implying:
- Are you ready and willing to follow us in emotional and spiritual development?

Their response was a compressed emotional thought-mix, unbelievably sober, they were showing me in a clear and powerful way a new avenue of emotional development, so that even after a month passed since that dream i can remember every detail, how is that?

Because of pathological childhood impressions reaceived from my father and the neighbor's son at the time full in the middle of the imprinting stage the center of gravity of my Work is fighting sexual abuse consequences reaching into adulthood. Everyone knows how hard it is to get clean.

Thank you for reading.
 
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