Remembering to Remember Oneself

This may seem strange, but when I wake up in the morning and sit up in bed and begin to remember myself, I find that the best attitude I can take is to believe that I can do it. Choosing to believe I can remember myself, without long lapses, for the rest of the day. Sometimes I can convince myself that it is really possible. After all, I know how to remember myself. I have been practicing most of my life. And I have many tools at my disposal. There doesn’t seem to be any good reason why I can’t break through the barrier that is keeping me from a permanent state of effort. This attitude has become such a part of my work that it surprises me to find that I have lost the thread and become identified.

Retrieving the Thread – Believing One Can

Of course, the reality is that I often forget myself. I must continually work to retrieve the necessary focus to make prolonged efforts.  But I hold to this attitude, because it seems to work better than an attitude that represents something closer to reality. I ‘choose to believe’ that I am close to connecting to higher centers in a more permanent way. And I do this because I find that it motivates me to make efforts more consistently than an attitude that represents my limitations.

Choosing to Believe is a Choice of Attitude

What we see we also have to transform and understand, so that it can motivate us to return to ‘the work of seeing.’ It is at this juncture that we may want to choose to believe something that makes no sense to our critical minds. Essentially, choosing to believe is a choice of attitude. It is a way to look at a person or an event. Seeing what is before us, we choose to transform the realizations that are the fruit of the exercise of seeing.

A teacher, for instance, may choose to believe that his students have all the same possibilities he has, even when they give him evidence to the contrary. And he may do this not only because it benefits his students, but also because it gives him the motivation to teach and to consolidate his own inner work.

Choosing One’s Motivation Intentionally

In the Fourth Way, we choose attitudes based not only on whether or not they yield understanding, but also whether or not they induce us to make more effort. In a sense, understanding is our reward for the inner efforts we make. When we understand our situation—that we are asleep, that our actions are mechanical, and that our life here is uncertain—we motivate the return to inner work. 

However, efforts, especially at the beginning, do not always give an immediate connection to higher centers. Sometimes we must work blind. We must make efforts and trust that we will find our way to a state of understanding. Sometimes, when it comes to seeing ourselves and our possibilities, we have to believe that a door is open, even when our minds tell us that it is closed.

–William Page is the author of the blog BePresentFirst. This is an excerpted version of a longer article. Read the full article at http://bepresentfirst.com. Another recent article is https://fourthwaytoday.org/memory-and-higher-states/.