“What can we do to increase the reserve of energy needed for self-remembering and how do we use impressions?”
First Conscious Shock – Being Present to Incoming Impressions
Self-remembering needs emotional energy, hydrogen 12. According to Ouspensky, the first conscious shock involves bringing this energy of the emotional center to the point of incoming impressions. It sounds rather clinical. In simple language, we must become more emotional. The emotion needed for the work is a specific emotion, that of the intellectual part of the emotional center.
We do not notice the present moment because we are too dull. This is partly the result of the various energy leaks in the machine. Basically, we must plug these leaks. Leaks include the expression of negative emotions, and wrong work of centers. Wrong work includes a center using a different energy than what it is designed for. Other examples of wrong work include identification and imagination.
Developing the Emotional Center
We must also develop the intellectual part of the emotional center. This organ of perception can bring the right emotional focus to the moment for self-remembering. We develop this by reducing energy leaks and by transforming suffering. Also, working in a group or school is very helpful to develop this part of oneself.
This is called in other traditions “emptying the heart.” If the emotional center is emptied of this wrong work, it becomes like a mirror. Receptive and expansive, it can contain everything in its emptiness.
True, the emotional center can also be developed through exposure to the fine arts–ballet, classical music, painting, sculpture, architecture. These arts require focused emotional attention in order to appreciate them. Of course, this is only practice for the heart.
The first prehistoric men who awakened did not have any of this. They had to learn simply to see what was in front of them. In the end, the intellectual part of the emotional center must be trained to act on whatever is in the present moment.
So if we follow these practices, hydrogen 12 accumulates and self-remembering becomes much more possible.
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