Was my personality asleep?

[abeofarrell]

Hi everyone. Haven't posted here for a while.

I had an experience at work (I am an English teacher) and was hoping for feedback.

I am usually very opinionated, it is one aspect of my chief feature. My Thought Center is over active and it is always creating opinions which my chief feature uses to try and dominate others. So usually whatever the topic I will have something to say and won't shut up. I was therefore really surprised in my lesson.

I had a lesson and we were talking about the problem of bullying in Japanese schools. This is actually a topic I am currently working on a book about right now, and the student is going to translate it into Japanese so I can publish it here in Japan. So "Abe" is usually incredibly full of opinions and quick to respond to the student. However during that lesson I was in a state of self-remembering and focusing particularly on my face, voice and gestures in the role as teacher. Suddenly all thought went out of my head. I stopped thinking about the topic. The student asked me a question and I had absolutely no idea how to respond nor any urge to do so. I smiled and looked at her, then laughed. That continued for about a minute then I went back to normal.

I am wondering if this is similar to the case presented in ISOTM where G puts 2 students' personalities to sleep. I know that I was not myself. It was also not at all unpleasant. Afterwards I was happy about it as I am working so hard on balancing my feelings and thoughts as the Thought center is much stronger.

any thoughts anyone?

Regards

Abe

 

[andi]

However during that lesson I was in a state of self-remembering and focusing particularly on my face, voice and gestures in the role as teacher.

I am wondering if this is similar to the case presented in ISOTM where G puts 2 students' personalities to sleep. I know that I was not myself. It was also not at all unpleasant. Afterwards I was happy about it as I am working so hard on balancing my feelings and thoughts as the Thought center is much stronger.

any thoughts anyone?

Hi abeofarrell, you may want to check this thread - me thinks it specifically answers your question.
http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,8182.msg279437.html#msg279437
http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,8182.msg279443.html#msg279443
http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,8182.msg282218.html#msg282218


edited: there were two identical links

 

[Buddy]

I'm with andi, Abe. Plus, I'd be interested in what you think after you read those. :)

 

[abeofarrell]

Thanks for the links.

It seems like I entered a possible intense form of self-remembering. I am actually starting to think that for a time there I may have touched upon my Higher Emotional Center, although even after looking at those links I cannot say for sure. I am fairly sure that I am correctly self-observing and self-remembering.

In any case, one thing I am certain of is that I was bypassing my lower thought center, which is usually the controlling part of my personality which is definitely a Man II personality. It was a good experience for me. For one, I was listening avidly to her but not to the intellectual content of her message but more to what she was feeling or how she tried to convey her feelings. I usually cannot do that well, at least not at the conscious level.

The links talked about higher level hydrogen processing etc. Maybe I was open to the impression from a higher level?

It is a first for me, so very conjecture. Have any of you had a similar experience when a usually dominant aspect of your personality goes quiet and another more inactive part starts to receive the impressions?

I am wondering if it is reproducible, or rather, as I continue making efforts whether such phenomena will increase. I also wonder whether it is worth paying much attention to.

Regards

Abe

 

[obyvatel]

However during that lesson I was in a state of self-remembering and focusing particularly on my face, voice and gestures in the role as teacher. Suddenly all thought went out of my head. I stopped thinking about the topic. The student asked me a question and I had absolutely no idea how to respond nor any urge to do so. I smiled and looked at her, then laughed. That continued for about a minute then I went back to normal.

Was the smile and laugh appropriate in the context of the question that the student asked? Or was it your reaction to the fact that you were able to temporarily free yourself from what you consider to be your habitual response? If it was the latter, then I think that your initial observation about a dominant component of your personality being temporarily deactivated may be closer to what happened.

[quote author=abeofarrell]
It seems like I entered a possible intense form of self-remembering.
[/quote]

Self-remembering is often referred to as divided attention where one is simultaneously aware of one's own internal state and the external situation. I would think that in a state of self-remembering one would necessarily stop thinking but would be aware of the fact that he is thinking, feeling and sensing. Unless these faculties are working, one cannot respond appropriately to the external situation. From my current understanding, if one is able to self-remember, then he is able to consciously respond to the external situation i.e practice external considering. Did that happen in this situation?

 

[abeofarrell]

Obytel, my happy feeling was irrelevant to the question and I was self-remembering SO I noticed my thought process stop followed by a mixture of perplex over what to do and euphoria over the feeling of freedom from the incessant buzz of my logical mind. I'm betting it was my thought centre switching off and the Emotion centre activating. Maybe thus is normal but I never notice usually?

 

[ana]

I had a lesson and we were talking about the problem of bullying in Japanese schools. This is actually a topic I am currently working on a book about right now, and the student is going to translate it into Japanese so I can publish it here in Japan. So "Abe" is usually incredibly full of opinions and quick to respond to the student. However during that lesson I was in a state of self-remembering and focusing particularly on my face, voice and gestures in the role as teacher. Suddenly all thought went out of my head. I stopped thinking about the topic. The student asked me a question and I had absolutely no idea how to respond nor any urge to do so. I smiled and looked at her, then laughed. That continued for about a minute then I went back to normal.

Apologies If I misunderstood you, Do you mean that when the student asked you a question you didn't know how to respond, you simply smiled and laugh to her?
How do you think your student received that laugh?
I just think it would have been more considerate to tell her that you did not know it but that maybe She can work on it to see what She comes up with while you work on it too.

 

[abeofarrell]

Don't worry Ana, she also is curious about the 4th way as she is a psychologist. We talked about it. Anyway it was only fir about a minute so she thought I was thinking.

Thanks for your concern though.

 

[ana]

Don't worry Ana, she also is curious about the 4th way as she is a psychologist. We talked about it. Anyway it was only fir about a minute so she thought I was thinking.

Thanks for your concern though.

Ok, that doesn't change the fact that maybe you need to dig more here, does it?

You have begun to see how "Abe" is usually incredibly full of opinions and quick to respond to the student":

I am usually very opinionated, it is one aspect of my chief feature. My Thought Center is over active and it is always creating opinions which my chief feature uses to try and dominate others. So usually whatever the topic I will have something to say and won't shut up. I was therefore really surprised in my lesson.

Suddenly all thought went out of my head. I stopped thinking about the topic. The student asked me a question and I had absolutely no idea how to respond nor any urge to do so. I smiled and looked at her, then laughed.

Is it possible that you laughed as a defense mechanism, to avoid stating that you didn't know the answer? That you just changed on program for another?

 

[anart]

I am fairly sure that I am correctly self-observing and self-remembering.

If you ask a man whether he can remember himself, he will of course answer that he can. If you tell him that he cannot remember himself, he will either be angry with you, or he will think you an utter fool. The whole of life is based on this, the whole of human existence, the whole of human blindness. If a man really knows that he cannot remember himself, he is already near to the understanding of his being.

I would also ask, abeofarrell, how is your diet? Are you eating gluten, dairy, sugar or alcohol? If so, all sorts of biochemical things could be going on that cause these sorts of reactions.

 

[obyvatel]

Obytel, my happy feeling was irrelevant to the question and I was self-remembering SO I noticed my thought process stop followed by a mixture of perplex over what to do and euphoria over the feeling of freedom from the incessant buzz of my logical mind. I'm betting it was my thought centre switching off and the Emotion centre activating. Maybe thus is normal but I never notice usually?

If I am understanding this correctly, you were aware of your own internal state to some extent and were feeling euphoric about it, but temporarily forgot about the external situation or reality in front of you. In general it can perhaps be said that forgetting reality is not self remembering. Also I personally am a little sceptical about euphoria in the context of Work on the self. I could be wrong but my current understanding is that euphoria detracts one in the Work and does not help the practice of self remembering.

My two cents fwiw

 

[kenlee]

However during that lesson I was in a state of self-remembering and focusing particularly on my face, voice and gestures in the role as teacher. Suddenly all thought went out of my head. I stopped thinking about the topic. The student asked me a question and I had absolutely no idea how to respond nor any urge to do so. I smiled and looked at her, then laughed. That continued for about a minute then I went back to normal.

I think you might be assuming it was self remembering here. Self remembering should not interfere with your normal reactions, you should be able to see your reactions as they happen and, at the same time be aware that you are witnessing them. At least that's how I understand this idea (of self remembering) at this time. Also self remembering is just a word (note how Gurdjieff never uses this term in his book 'Beelzebub's Tales', he uses different terminology instead) and you can limit it if you assume you are doing it. Best, IMO, is for us to become more and more aware of how we are not aware of ourselves throughout the day, that is, how we are fast asleep and that we don't 'self remember' rather then assuming we are doing it and are awake.

Possibly your experience began at first as a real moment of awareness but then you might have become dissociated from your normal reaction in that situation, for a moment, and then your attention might have switched its focus from what was going on externally and it got trapped inside your head brain exclusively losing connection with the outside world. I think we can very easily fool ourselves. The head brain thinks it can self remember but it's not really self remembering, its just the head brain thinking thoughts of self remembering.

Abeofarrell, regarding this the EE program should help you immensely. I find it helps if I do the EE program in the morning and not really concern myself with 'self remembering' throughout the rest of the day. It really seems that the development of my awareness just naturally grows from doing the program in the morning. It kinda extends out into the day.

There's some good descriptions of this idea in Ouspensky's book 'In Search Of The Miraculous'. Small excerpt on this idea (below) from the book (emphasis mine):

Excerpt from the book In Search Of The Miraculous by P.D. Ouspensky:

"On one occasion at the beginning of a meeting G. put a question to which all those present had to answer in turn. The question was; “What is the most important thing that we notice during self-observation?”

"Some of those present said that during attempts at self-observation, what they had felt particularly strongly was an incessant flow of thoughts which they had found impossible to stop. Others spoke of the difficulty of distinguishing the work of one center from the work of another. I had evidently not altogether understood the question, or I answered my own thoughts, because I said that what struck me most was the connectedness of one thing with another in the system, the wholeness of the system, as if it were an “organism,” and the entirely new significance of the word to know which included not only the idea of knowing this thing or that, but the connection between this thing and everything else.

"Gurdjieff was obviously dissatisfied with our replies. I had already begun to understand him in such circumstances and I saw that he expected from us indications of something definite that we had either missed or failed to understand.

“Not one of you has noticed the most important thing that I have pointed out to you,” he said. “That is to say, not one of you has noticed that you do not remember yourselves.” (He gave particular emphasis to these words.) “You do not feel yourselves; you are not conscious of yourselves. With you, ‘it observes’ just as ‘it speaks’ ‘it thinks,’ ‘it laughs.’ You do not feel: I observe, I notice, I see. Everything still ‘is noticed,’ ‘is seen.’ … In order really to observe oneself one must first of all remember oneself” (He again emphasized these words.) “

"Try to remember yourselves when you observe yourselves and later on tell me the results. Only those results will have any value that are accompanied by self-remembering. Otherwise you yourselves do not exist in your observations. In which case what are all your observations worth?”

"These words of G.’s made me think a great deal. It seemed to me at once that they were the key to what he had said before about consciousness. But I decided to draw no conclusions whatever, but to try to remember myself while observing myself.

"The very first attempts showed me how difficult it was. Attempts at self remembering failed to give any results except to show me that in actual fact we never remember ourselves.

“What else do you want?” said G. “This is a very important realization. People who know this” (he emphasized these words) “already know a great deal. The whole trouble is that nobody knows it. If you ask a man whether he can remember himself, he will of course answer that he can. If you tell him that he cannot remember himself, he will either be angry with you, or he will think you an utter fool. The whole of life is based on this, the whole of human existence, the whole of human blindness. If a man really knows that he cannot remember himself, he is already near to the understanding of his being.”

 

[cubbex]

However during that lesson I was in a state of self-remembering and focusing particularly on my face, voice and gestures in the role as teacher.

This looks more like self-observation, you know, and then the realization of what you did self-remembering.

 

[abeofarrell]

Although I am grateful for all the feedback, it is so varied it is difficult to assimilate. First of all, I would like to address what I consider some misunderstandings in semantics.

On the forum I see many people saying that self-rememberance is focusing on yourself and on something outside yourself at the same time. I also see people saying it involves remembering things ABOUT yourself, your past, etc. This is not what I see in the literature.

First of all G had his students do observation. This included their feelings, thoughts, and outward behavior particularly relating to the three lower centers and mechanical, habitual behavior in response to various stimuli, for example when they related to each other or received a shock. The next time they came back to him with their experiences he brought to their attention that they had forgot themselves.

"You do not feel yourselves; you are not conscious of yourselves. With you, 'it observes' just as 'it speaks', 'it thinks', 'it laughs'. You do not feel: I observe, I notice, I see . . . in order to really observe yourself one must first of all remember oneself." ISOTM pp 118-119

Later Ouspensky thinks about this and says:

"I saw that the problem consisted in directing attention on oneself without weakening or obliterating the attention directed on something else. Moreover THIS SOMETHING ELSE COULD AS WELL BE WITHIN ME AS OUTSIDE ME".

Self-remembering is therefore the practice of being aware of everything going on within yourself, particularly paying attention to which center different phenomena arise from, and at the same time maintaining the awareness of the observer, YOUR I.

He later goes into more detail, saying that the point is to have an awareness of two people within yourself, one being "Abe" (my name) which is the personality and is made up of everything NOT me. This is the active part, the dominant part. The second person is the real "I", the weak, mostly passive observer who is doing the self-observation. He makes it clear that the struggle is with Abe and thus the importance of realizing your Chief Feature, around which the personality is formed.

When introducing the topic of self-remembering he says that people deny that they do not remember themselves, and respond angrily. He says this as the students had not really started in the Work, and he is also referring to the general population. This is clear as throughout the book he continually makes it clear that without maintaining the state of self-remembering we are not able to gain from the work, through shocks, etc.

Mouravieff also discusses this topic in Gnosis I. He says it is important not to focus on "I", but to focus on "I AM". This means when we are self-remembering we are placing an awareness on our existence, rather than just somebody doing something.

In the lesson I was very much aware of myself as an observer observing my own thoughts and feelings, observing my posture, my tone of voice, my responses to the student. I was also observing her so I could externally consider her rather than just respond to her passively. WHILE I was in this state I observed my train of thought in relation to the topic just STOPPED. The desire to to think about the topic also disappeared. Observing myself I saw my emotional response to her. I felt happiness in the relationship with the student, I felt relaxed (I should say Abe felt happy and relaxed, but please excuse me for explanation's sake). I laughed out loud in response to the happy feeling coming from my emotional center, not a huge laugh but a small one. At that point I was still self-observing so I saw that I was acting mostly from the emotions and that the thought center was not active. The student laughed in response and asked what was funny. I said that I was happy to be there talking about this topic and asked her to give me a minute to think how to respond well to what she said. As I started talking to her in that way my thoughts engaged and the "state" came to an end.

Regarding my use of the word EUPHORIA, actually now I have thought carefully about the actual experience I believe that EUPHORIA was just my interpretation of the laughter and the feelings. No, I do not believe that it was a defense mechanism. I could observe clearly the source of the happiness. It is true that I should not focus on such experiences, and I haven't. It has however been a constructive experience for me as it has shown me how much my personality is controlled by the Thought Center, and how I am usually so blind to my emotions. I posted here not because I want to dwell on things, but just to get some feedback.

Now however I doubt that it is at all related to the even in ISOTM where their personality sleeps. When they reverted to normal they had no memory of what happened, whereas I retain my memories completely, and actually the memories are becoming even clearer as I self-observe and seek to remember the event at the same time.

So I do not see that my personality slept. I also do not accept that I was not self-remembering as according to all I have read, and according to my daily continual efforts I am sure that I was observing and also I was conscious as the observer. I DO think that for some reason my Thought Center became passive whilst the Emotion Center became active. I also think this was a breakthrough for me as I am a Man III, and my logical mind always gets in the way.

What I DO NOT UNDERSTAND is the dynamics of what happened. Thinking back I see no trigger for the change, unless it was just a result of extra efforts to maintain self-remembering that day.

Could I please get some feedback on what the DYNAMICS and underlying CAUSES of the actual event were please? Appreciated.

Abe

 

[abeofarrell]

Obytel, my happy feeling was irrelevant to the question and I was self-remembering SO I noticed my thought process stop followed by a mixture of perplex over what to do and euphoria over the feeling of freedom from the incessant buzz of my logical mind. I'm betting it was my thought centre switching off and the Emotion centre activating. Maybe thus is normal but I never notice usually?

If I am understanding this correctly, you were aware of your own internal state to some extent and were feeling euphoric about it, but temporarily forgot about the external situation or reality in front of you. In general it can perhaps be said that forgetting reality is not self remembering. Also I personally am a little sceptical about euphoria in the context of Work on the self. I could be wrong but my current understanding is that euphoria detracts one in the Work and does not help the practice of self remembering.

My two cents fwiw

Thanks for your ideas, Oby. However I did not forget the external situation or the reality in front of me. Simply, my personality could only respond to things using the Emotion Center and Moving Center. My usual logical self was not active. I was totally aware of what was happening, I just do not know the WHY of the situation, hence my post. I know that euphoria can distract. Particularly if it strengthens the idea that the personality is the real "I". As I just said, euphoria was just my interpretation of the emotion later, and now I do not believe it to be true.