Self Remembering: The Path to Non-Judgmental Love (An Owner's Manual, volume ii)

by Red Hawk

Overview

With hundreds of books on the market today urging readers to develop mindfulness, pointing to the condition of “awakening” that most religious/philosophical traditions aim toward, this new addition by Red Hawk stands head and shoulders above the crowd. It offers detailed practical guidelines that allow one to know with certainty—not from imagination, theory, thought, or lying—when one is Present and Awake; it details the objective feedback mechanisms available to everyone for attaining this certainty: Am I awake now? How do I know? Sincere readers will find that help in answering these two questions is invaluable and life-changing.

Written from the perspective of a practitioner of more than thirty years—one who has studied the significant work of his predecessors, received instruction from two spiritual masters (Osho Rajneesh and Mister Lee Lozowick), and trained rigorously within daily life. This book is the first detailed examination of the Practice-of-Presence (called “self remembering” in the Gurdjieff tradition). The author’s aim is to give general guidelines in this practice, discuss its implications, and then offer specific instruction.

Self Remembering: The Path to Non-Judgmental Love is meant to be a companion piece, volume ii, to the author’s previous book Self Observation: The Awakening of Conscience, which is fast becoming a classic. Taken together, they present the most detailed examination of the practice available in English. He clearly points out that self remembering is only one half of a foundational spiritual practice called “self observation/self remembering.” Where other authors/teachers have gone wrong in the past is to take only one half of this practice and consider it the whole, entire unto itself. Mister Gurdjieff’s student, A.R. Orage (1873-1934), made this mistake with self observation; contemporary teacher Robert Burton made a similar error with his book, also titled Self Remembering. While P.D. Ouspensky speaks of the practice of self remembering in his seminal book In Search of the Miraculous, and Rodney Collin in The Theory of Celestial Influence, there has not been a book-length study on self remembering that examines the practice from the many angles that Red Hawk’s does. His chapters cover such diverse yet integrated topics as The Removal of Self Importance; Kaya Sadhana or the wisdom of the body; and Separation Grief, i.e., addressing the terror of our current situation without denial or dramatics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781935387923
Publisher:	Hohm Press
Publication date:	06/01/2015
Pages:	260
Sales rank:	125,631
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Red Hawk was the Hodder Fellow at Princeton University (1992-93) and currently a full professor at U. of Arkansas, Monticello. Author of 5 collections of poetry, he has been published in The Atlantic, Poetry, and Kenyon Review, and others journals. Red Hawk has given readings with Allen Ginsberg, Rita Dove, Miller Williams, Tess Gallagher, and Coleman Barks, and more than 70 solo-readings in the U.S. He has practiced self-remembering and self-observation for thirty-four years, in Gurdjieff Society Arkansas, meditation master Osho Rajneesh & spiritual teacher L Lozowick

Read an Excerpt

Remember Yourself, Seeker. Self observation is absolutely essential if I wish to “Know Myself” and mature into a Human Being and not remain on the mammal level of existence, an unconscious, habit-driven, mechanical, automatic-pilot slave to my personal history and to unconscious forces derived from that history (see: Red Hawk. Self Observation: The Awakening of Conscience. An Owner’s Manual. Hohm Press, 2010). Self observation and self remembering are not two separate practices; they are essential and bonded steps in the same practice. Self remembering must come first, then self observation may follow, as the seed must come before the plant can grow. Without self remembering, all so-called self observation is in the mind alone and therefore vulnerable to imagination and illusion, a part of the unconscious dreaming mechanism. Observation from the mind alone goes nowhere, produces fantasy and inner division, and may do harm or produce inner pathology. The destination is the present—it must be constantly renewed with every breath or the connection is lost.

Self remembering places the observer in time and space, in the present, in the body, grounds the observation in the body. The present is the destination for Work-on-self. Unless the body is brought into play in self observation, it goes nowhere. At its most fundamental level, 1st stage self remembering is remembering that I have a body and exist for a time in this body: “I-am-here-now.” Self observation from the mind alone can result in harmful pathology. Every spiritual path has a pathology—one pathology associated with self observation is a self-centered self-obsession (which is why the practice of self remembering involves not just self, but the other). I wish to work with the mind, not from the mind. Working from, or in, the mind alone produces a schism, an inner separation whereby I begin to judge and work against what I observe, rather than with what is observed and for my inner Aims. I fight with what is observed, under the delusion that I can change what I see. This fight to change what is observed produces wrong results, often harmful, and leads me in a wrong direction from which I may never recover.

As I come to know myself as a mechanical entity taken constantly in identification with the mechanical habits of the body, I begin to develop a body of Conscious impressions whose accumulation builds both will and Wish in me so that I do not forget my habitual unconsciousness.

Table of Contents

Thema ix

Introduction xi

Prologue: Placing Hope In What Is Permanent xiii

Chapter 1 Self Remembering 1

Chapter 2 Spiritual Surgery: The Removal of Self Importance 15

Chapter 3 Separation Grief: The Terror of the Situation 31

Chapter 4 Kaya Sadhana: Making Friends with the Devil 44

Chapter 5 Shifting the Assemblage Point: The Second Ring of Power 69

Chapter 6 The Sorrow of Judgment 79

Chapter 7 The Seduction of Change 87

Chapter 8 Field Attention: The Objective World 101

Chapter 9 Completing the Inner Triad 111

Chapter 10 The Solar Plexus, Heart Center, Abdomen 141

Chapter 11 The Holy Present and the 1-Percent Edge 172

Chapter 12 The Law of Reciprocal Maintenance: Conscious Management of the Survival Instinct 189

Chapter 13 Self Observation 209

Epilogue: Practice of the Dharma 233

Postlude - Angel of Mercy 237

Coda 240

Glossary 241

References 247

About the Author / About Hohm Press / Contact Information 250