Spiritual Forums - How do you lift the amnesia? How do you 'awaken from your sleep'?

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How do you lift the amnesia? How do you 'awaken from your sleep'?

Good question, eh? :tongue:
Me? Asking....sitting in silence, otherwise called deep, long meditation.
(Also, ACIM, A Course in Miracles).
Ultimately ---it happens because of Grace ----from my experience!

(ACIM would call that the intervention of the Holy Spirit helping with a mind shift.)

~J? You pretty much already answered!

Hello Miss H.

Realizing I wasn't asleep or didn't have amnesia to start with...I only thought that I was/did, but I was mistaken.

Realizing that others can be just as mistaken as I am.

Knowing that the Tao which can be spoken isn't the Tao unless it isn't being spoken because the one who speaks isn't the speaker.

...and Grace, of course which I should really stop taking for granted.

Aum Shanti

Quote:

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

Good question, eh? :tongue:
Me? Asking....sitting in silence, otherwise called deep, long meditation.
(Also, ACIM, A Course in Miracles).
Ultimately ---it happens because of Grace ----from my experience!

(ACIM would call that the intervention of the Holy Spirit helping with a mind shift.)

~J? You pretty much already answered!

You're on a roll ... :smile:

It's like watching a movie (reading a book, playing a video game, ...). We get engrossed in the plot, forget who we are, then live vicariously through the movie's characters.

If somebody turns on the light we pop out of trance, remember who we are, and why we are watching this movie (a.k.a. get enlightened).

Our subconscious can turn on the light, so we should nicely ask it to do that.

It works with phone ringing too ... :smile:

Pretty much as you wrote in your opening post.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn

Never thought about it.

How do we awaken from our sleep?

This was a central theme of Gurdjieff:

Man is immersed in dreams... He lives in sleep… He is a machine. He cannot stop the flow of his thoughts, he cannot control his imagination, his emotions, his attention... He does not see the real world. The real world is hidden from him by the wall of imagination.

In order to awaken, first of all one must realize that one is in a state of sleep. And in order to realize that one is indeed in a state of sleep, one must recognize and fully understand the nature of the forces which operate to keep one in the state of sleep, or hypnosis. It is absurd to think that this can be done by seeking information from the very source which induces the hypnosis.
....One thing alone is certain, that man's slavery grows and increases. Man is becoming a willing slave. He no longer needs chains. He begins to grow fond of his slavery, to be proud of it. And this is the most terrible thing that can happen to a man.

Awakening is possible only for those who seek it and want it, for those who are ready to struggle with themselves and work on themselves for a very long time and very persistently in order to attain it.

So how do we wake up? From beingpresent.org

Self-remembering is the central idea of the Fourth Way. In Gurdjieff’s cosmology, the birthright of a human being is to be awake but the psychological condition of sleep prevents it. Because of this condition, humanity is uninterested in awakening, and if a human-being discovers they are ‘asleep’, they will find an excuse to forget or deny it. So Gurdjieff taught self-remembering as an experiment to demonstrate its value and as a way of life. He taught his students the difference between being ‘asleep’ and being ‘awake’. He taught self-remembering as a continual, practical effort, bringing one’s attention to one’s Self at the same time as the activity that one is engaged in.

Peace

Wow, I forgot I started this thread...thank you thank you for all your posts!!!!! :hug:

If you are awakened, go to God.
If you are asleep and dreaming, ask God to wake you up.

~ J

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jyotir

If you are awakened, go to God.
If you are asleep and dreaming, ask God to wake you up.

~ J

Not sure what "go to God" means ... it sounds a little ominous, like in "die".

Just getting in contact with your subconscious suffices. And it helps to put aside your beliefs and expectations when you do that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by inavalan

Not sure what "go to God" means ... it sounds a little ominous, like in "die".

Apologies for what is perhaps a poor choice of words given the euphemism for dying.
And we don’t need to get into any philosophical discussion about how spiritual life is a kind of death of worldly life.
So rather…
invoke God/Highest-Self/Supreme Being would be the appropriate response.
And that leads to the following:

Quote:

Just getting in contact with your subconscious suffices.

One would think that accessing the super-conscious would be superior to the subconscious as a primary resource for obvious reasons. I’m always mystified that, given the choice (as both are fully available and accessible), people who are awakening would choose the subconscious as the most effective means, which doesn’t make too much sense.

The reason being that the subconscious is the repository of all the residuals of previous earthly experience: thoughts, emotions, attachments, desires, reactions, weakness, and imperfection; all of the darkness, falsehood, obscurity, and confusion of long past accumulated experience - all of which are constantly arising and seeking expression in the being from the subconscious.

This is why old bad habits are hard to break (another kind of cessation or death), and why it is difficult to form new, better, or superior ones…which gets into why discipline is key in any progressive intention, but especially spiritual.

These are the distortions, limited partial expressions, and failed approximations of what is also always seeking expression as the pressure of light descending from higher planes per the divine Will/Vision for the evolution of Life in the physical, from the super-conscious but poorly received and expressed due to that intrinsic conditional obscure resistance (ignorance/darkness) of the physical plane.

It goes without saying that God/Highest Self/Supreme Being would be represented (obviously) by what is super-conscient in contradistinction to sub-conscient. Both may be SUBLIMINAL in the being as in, not consciously aware of - but they are significantly different, coming from different ‘directions’ so-to-speak, which represents a valuable distinction to be discerned and utilized in spiritual practice.

This is why spiritual progression is a more difficult, arduous, tedious, and confusing proposition for many who don’t have, admit, or allow that ideal form or means of invocation due to their constructs and beliefs that limit those possibilities inherently, and are typically anti-spiritual, confused (“we need to express our dark side” etc.), some atheists (‘no God’ because rejecting historical connotations which are part of the same subconscious phenomenon but collective), intellectuals who think (per the dynamic circularity of mind) that the answer is “eliminating all belief” (which is a belief!) - the list goes on.

Suffice it to say that a devotion to the Ideal - and the conscious deliberate regular sincere invocation of it - is the most expedient form of progression which does not exclude other means, but rather enhances them.

Quote:

And it helps to put aside your beliefs and expectations [...]

As to putting aside expectation, yes. Expectation is inherently a falsehood, an attachment to desire that must lead to disappointment and frustration.

As to putting aside beliefs: then you are dead. Beliefs are simply mental/intellectual constructs of (for spiritual practice) higher ideals or faith, ineffable in their native experience, but expressible in some form, even though a limited or distorted approximation in and through the mind which is itself limited. In other words, it is the mind's inherent limitations that are problematic in describing or expressing ideals - not necessarily any intrinsic deficiency of the ideal or real-idea itself, notably and importantly, if that ideal is Supreme Being. This is similar and related to the sub/superconscious distinction, and just as important.

It is belief that allows human beings to practice and test in-and-through direct experience, what can only be theoretical otherwise, which is why so many proponents of various intellectual exclusions always seem confused: they never resolve anything except their own adamant disbelief, which typically manifests as incessant doubt, suspicion, skepticism, and even cynicism.

jmo-fwiw

~ J