If you are in a bad state you remember yourself in one way, and when in a good state you have to remember yourself in another way and it is often more difficult.

A moment of Self-Remembering, the whole idea of Self-Remembering, is to draw into oneself all these scattered elements that have been glued to events. One definition of Self-Remembering was given in ancient days that runs as follows: "I come out of everything else into myself."

Try to get out of your own way. Try to let something get in that cannot because you are in the way. Can you stop the noise of yourself for even a moment? Can you get out of the ordinary feeling of yourself? Can you become no one for a moment to yourself?

We notice what was and is no longer useful and invent some other way. Everyone should above all things think of and study and try to self-remember each day. There are many ways of Self-Remembering. But they all depend on the feeling that there is something else, that this life on this extremely bad planet is not explicable in terms of itself. There is something else.

Self-Remembering from one aspect is the practice of a certain relation of consciousness to one's body and through it to the world as rendered by our senses. If we take it like that, then there are three things (1) consciousness, (2) the body with its external senses, (3) the external world of things and people.

There can be no progress unless and until you remember yourself. Unless you can lift yourself up by Self-Remembering you do not receive help, and that unless you receive help you cannot reach a different level of being. But at the same time unless you prepare yourself by means of Self-Observation and trying to separate from what the Work teaches are wrong functions, you cannot receive the influences coming from Higher Centers.

The act of trying to remember myself is to endeavour by trial and failure to reach some new state of oneself called the State of Self-Remembering. If already I know how to reach this state then the act or effort that I make will put me into this state. But I cannot expect at first by performing the act of Self-Remembering to reach the State. It will only be by long work, by innumerable acts, that I gain any success in reaching the state that I aim at reaching.

In the practice of Inner Stop, you stand motionless in your mind. Thoughts pass you, speak to you, ask you what you are up to and so on, but you pay no attention to them. You will see at once that Inner Stop is connected with a form of Self-Remembering.

People keep on thinking of self-remembering, but they do not do it. It is necessary to stop the chain of automatic associations every day. This can be done by inner stop—that is, stopping everything, all thoughts, etc. This is the beginning of self-remembering.

It was said that a person in the Work should practice Self-Remembering at least once a day and that if they cannot do that they must practice it three times a day —that is, they must make still greater efforts. All Self-Remembering is to lift you out of the whirlpool and uproar and dreariness going on in yourself and caused by life acting on you mechanically and by your looking to life as your only nourisher, your only source of happiness.

Bear in mind that the Work says that one cannot remember oneself unless there is an element of acknowledgement of the existence of Greater Mind during the act. Also remember that the most important thing in the Work is remembering oneself especially when things are difficult.

If you feel the extraordinariness of your own existence, if you feel the miracle of your body, of your consciousness, of the world that surrounds you, if you begin to wonder who you are, then you are in the state necessary for Self-Remembering.

As long as there is no change in the level of being, your personal history remains the same. Everything repeats itself in your own life: you say the same things, you do the same things, you regret the same things, you commit the same things. And all this belongs to this immensely deep idea that the level of being attracts your life.

To do this Work requires effort. Effort in the Work is psychological. It is all about not identifying and Self-Remembering. Effort in the Work is all about observing oneself—observing 'I's in oneself and not going with them.

It is only by means of observing myself uncritically and over a considerable period that I begin to understand that I do not remember myself.

The increasing feeling of the Work as stronger than life and all its ups and downs and swinging to and fro between the opposites brings about a state of Self-Remembering that is not due to chance nor is merely a fleeting experience.

The first stages of the Work are sometimes called "cleaning the machine." The Work tells you more about what not to do than about what to do. Now people often ask: "What am I to do?" On that side the Work says only two definite things: "Remember yourself" and "Observe or notice yourself." That is what you must try to do.

You cannot alter yourself directly. You can only alter by means of certain kinds of effort. These efforts are shown us. There is the great effort of non-identifying—not identifying, with yourself, to begin with. (What a fine fellow I am!). There is the great effort of Self-Remembering. This is the first effort of all, but very difficult.

As long as there is no change in your level of being, your personal history remains the same. Everything repeats itself in your own life: you say the same things, you do the same things, you regret the same things, you commit the same things. And all this belongs to this immensely deep idea that the level of being attracts your life.

It is necessary to realize that we do not remember ourselves. Only by sincere self-observation over a time can we begin to acknowledge that we do not remember ourselves. This is the starting point of being able to remember oneself. And this, in turn, is the starting point of being able to do.