Self-Remembering-Ouspensky

*note* I'm not a big fan of Ouspensky(Gurdjieff's disciple) but for the sake of the link I'll introduce this post.Be aware he talks from the seekers point of view.
-added by danny-
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Trap: Split Personality. Keeping our spiritual and personal life separate, we fall into a trap. We think that spiritual work is not related to our day-to-day actions and keep the two sides of ourselves, the actual personality and the spiritual ego, separate and unconscious of each other. We are thus capable of being a negative self-serving robot while believing and projecting we are a sincere seeker of Truth.

Tricks: Here are three tricks to bridge the gap between our ego/idea of ourselves and our fact status:

1. Practice a technique for seeing the personality indirectly. In the beginning, we may not be able to see ourselves directly, so the use of techniques such as dream study or journaling can help get us started on the path of self-discovery. Reading back through a journal can be a shock, we may think we are an earnest, positive and altruistic seeker, when the journal notes may show us to be a negative whiner who thinks only of himself.

2. Group Work. Nothing can help with seeing ourselves quite as much as the mirror of a group. To take advantage of the group setting though, one may need to learn to listen. Even in the work place, we may be getting all the information about ourselves we need, but refuse to hear it.

"Try to understand the necessity for introducing the methods and principles of the work in your personal life and first of all the necessity for right thinking on all personal questions and their possible relation to your work. Without this, you will never reach unity. You cannot allow one part of yourself to think wrongly and hope that another part will think rightly."

" Man is a machine, but a very peculiar machine. He is a machine which, in right circumstances, and with right treatment, can know that he is a machine, and, having fully realized this, he may find the ways to cease being a machine.

" Our ancestors were very rich and eminent people, and they left us an enormous inheritance, which we have completely forgotten, especially since the time when we began to consider ourselves the descendants of a monkey.

" If suffering did not exist, it would be necessary to create it, because without it one cannot come to correct self-remembering.

" When a man begins to know himself a little he will see in himself many things that are bound to horrify him. So long as a man is not horrified at himself he knows nothing about himself.

" Think about death. You do not know how much time remains to you. And remember that if you do not become different, everything will be repeated again, all foolish blunders, all silly mistakes, all loss of time and opportunity - everything will be repeated with the exception of the chance you had this time, because chance never comes in the same form.You will have to look for your chance next time. And in order to do this, you will have to remember many things, and how will you remember then if you do not remember anything now? " - P.D. Ouspensky

"Being Politically Correct means always having to say you're sorry." - Charles Osgood

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rich Cook