BodhiGarbage

Gurdjieff
"You do not realize your own situation. You are in prison. All you can
wish for, if you are a sensible man, is to escape.
"The principal demand made upon a man is the demand for understanding".
"I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for
yourself.""Man is a machine. Out of himself a man cannot produce a
single thought, a single action. Everything he says, does, thinks,
feels - all this happens."

Gautama the Buddha
There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: not going
all the way, and not starting.
Awake. Be the witness of your thoughts. You are what observes, not
what you observe.
...
P.D.Ouspensky.

Ouspensky said,
"The realization of your helplessness and your deep sleep must be
permanent in you."
"You must decide: Do you want to work or not," because "No work can
be done in sleep".
"We must study obstacles to consciousness. We must study them and remove them."
"Real 'I' can only be in the state of self-consciousness, and every
moment in the work of creating self-consciousness means effort.
Nothing can 'happen' by itself. If we change our being, things will be
different, but in this state nothing can be different."
" The first thing is the realization that one cannot be conscious when
one wants to."
"Self-remembering is a moment of consciousness that comes by your own effort."
" Nothing comes in its full state at once. The first step is to be
more conscious. The second step is to be still more conscious."
Q. What creates stimulus for work?

A. Realization of one's present state. When one realizes that one
deceives oneself, that one is asleep and one's house is on fire,
always, permanently on fire, and that it is only by accident that the
fire has not reached one's room at this very moment, when one realizes
this, one will want to make efforts to awake and one will not expect
any special reward. Since we do not realize that our house is on fire
we always expect a special reward. What can one do in sleep? One can
only have different dreams -- bad dreams, good dreams, but in the same
bed. The dreams may be different, but the bed is the same.

One of the first points is: how to remember oneself, how to make
oneself more aware, and then you will find out that negative emotions
are one of the chief factors which make us not remember ourselves. So
one thing cannot go without the other. You cannot struggle with
negative emotions without remembering yourselves more, and you cannot
remember yourself more without struggling with negative emotions.
Q. Why is it that an accident or a violent crisis brings self-remembering?

A. Every kind of emotional moment, emotional shock, makes you realize
'I am'. You realize it without any theory behind it: if you find
yourself in a very unexpected place, you have a feeling of 'I' and
'here'; when you are in unusual circumstances it always reminds you of
your existence. But in customary conditions we always forget.

We try to be aware of ourselves by holding the sensation of 'I am
here'--nothing more. And this is the fact the all Western Psychology,
without the smallest exception, has missed.

Continue to observe and you will find that there is place in you where
you are quiet, calm and nothing can disturb you only it is difficult
to find the way there. But if you do it several times you will be able
to remember some of the steps, and by the same steps you may come
there again. Only you cannot do it after one experience, for you will
not remember the way. This quiet place is not a metaphor it is a very
real thing.
Q. Can one find one's own alarm clocks?

A. One can try, but it is necessary to have constant change and
variation and choose things that will awake one. Otherwise we can wake
for a second, decide to keep awake and imagine we are awake when we
are really doing all this in dream, with dream alarms. This is why
constant control is necessary, and constant verification as to whether
they really awake one or simply create new dream.
"The first thing is the realization that one cannot be conscious when
one wants to."


The mail is quite lengthy but quite inquisitive and quite old too
From Fourth way Gurdjieff Ouspensky School