Knowing Yourself...

The more you know yourself, the more you know your being. If you do not know yourself, you do not know your being. And if you remain on the same level of being you cannot get more knowledge. A big effort depends on circumstances, situation, understanding, on many things. You cannot begin with big efforts. You must begin with small efforts, like, for instance, trying to remember yourself, or trying to stop thoughts three times a day. It is quite a small effort, but if you do it regularly, the need or the possibility of a big effort may come and you will be able to make it at the right moment. It does not necessarily mean that all that is mechanical is evil; but evil cannot be conscious, it can only be mechanical. There is no possibility of remembering what has been found and understood, and later repeating it to oneself. It disappears as a dream disappears. Perhaps it is all nothing but a dream. Suffering is the best possible help for self-remembering if you learn how to use it. By itself it does not help; one can suffer one's whole life and it will not give a grain of result, but if one learns to use suffering, it will become helpful. The moment you suffer, try to remember yourself. The chief obstacle to the attainment of self-consciousness is that we think we have it. One will never get self-consciousness so long as one believes that one has it. There are many other things we think we have, and because of this we cannot have them. There is individuality or oneness —we think we are one, indivisible. We think we have will, or that if we do not have it always, we can have it, and other things. There are many aspects to this, for if we do not have one thing, we cannot have another. We think that we have these things, and this happens because we do not know the meaning of the words we use. Efforts! Efforts! The more efforts you make, the more energy you can get. Without efforts you cannot get energy. Even if it is in you, it may be in the wrong place. Do not think about it theoretically; think simply that you have much energy in you that you never use, and you must make more efforts to use it. It is necessary to put more energy into things—into self study, self-observation, self-remembering and all that. And in order to put more energy into your work it is necessary to find where it is being spent. You awake every morning with a certain amount of energy. It may be spent in many different ways. P.D. Ouspensky