This teacher of the Fourth Way Tradition shows how self-remembering, similar to Buddhist mindfulness and Orthodox non-attachment, relates to every aspect of the student's life and work. This book gives Burton's students an accurate transmission of his teaching on the core idea of self-remembering. Unique in the spiritual literature, this book is destined to become a classic.
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.
This book is an in-depth examination of the much needed process of “self” study known as self observation. We live in an age where the “attention function” in the brain has been badly damaged by TV and computers-up to 90 percent of the public under age 35 suffers from attention-deficit disorder! This book offers the most direct, non-pharmaceutical means of healing attention dysfunction. The methods presented here are capable of restoring attention to a fully functional and powerful tool for success in life and relationships. This is also an age when humanity has lost its connection with conscience. When humanity has poisoned the Earth’s atmosphere, water, air and soil, when cancer is in epidemic proportions and is mainly an environmental illness, the author asks: What is the root cause? And he boldly answers: Failure to develop conscience! Selfobservation, he asserts, is the most ancient, scientific, and proven means to develop this crucial inner guide to awakening and a moral life. This book is for the lay-reader, both the beginner and the advanced student of self observation. No other book on the market examines this practice in such detail. There are hundreds of books on self-help and meditation, but almost none on self-study via self-observation, and none with the depth of analysis, wealth of explication, and richness of experience which this book offers. Red Hawk, author of 5 collections of poetry, was the Hodder Fellow at Princeton University (1992-93) and is currently a full professor at the University of Arkansas, Monticello. He has practiced self-observation for over 30 years, under the guidance of the Gurdjieff Society of Arkansas, meditation master Osho Rajneesh, and spiritual teacher, Lee Lozowick.
2018 Readers' Favorite Gold Winner 2019 IAN Book of the Year Award 2017 Nautilus Award Gold Winner Feel like you don’t belong? You’re not alone.The world has never been more connected, yet people are lonelier than ever. Whether we feel unworthy, alienated, or anxious about our place in the world — the absence of belonging is the great silent wound of our times. Most people think of belonging as a mythical place, and they spend a lifetime searching for it in vain. But what if belonging isn’t a place at all? What if it’s a skill that has been lost or forgotten? With her signature depth and eloquence, Toko-pa maps a path to Belonging from the inside out. Drawing on myth, stories and dreams, she takes us into the origins of our estrangement, reframing exile as a necessary initiation into authenticity. Then she shares the competencies of belonging: a set of ancestral practices to heal our wounds and restore true belonging to our lives and to the world.
"The Remembering process reveals a breakthrough technique that anyone can use to easily create, produce, innovate, solve, resolve ... and more! Beyond any New Age or self-help teaching, this process proves that it's not only possible to tap into the future, but that it's also accessible to us in every moment. This leading edge book is a mind-stretching exploration in manifesting your goals and desires by 'remembering" how they exist in the future"--Page [2] of cover.
Everybody is aware, all seven billion of us. We are aware of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions. All people share the experience of being aware, but relatively few people are aware that they are aware. Most people’s lives consist of a flow of thoughts, images, ideas, feelings, sensations, sights, sounds, and so on. Very few people ask, 'What is it that knows this flow of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions? With what am I aware of my experience?' The knowing of our being—or rather, awareness’s knowing of its own being in us—is our primary, fundamental and most intimate experience. It is in this experience that the peace, happiness and love for which all people long reside. The happiness we have sought so long outside of ourselves, in situations, objects and relationships, turns out to be always present and available in the simple knowing of our own being as it truly is. The knowing of our own being shines in each of us as the experience ‘I am’ or ‘I am aware’, or simply the knowledge ‘I’. This obvious, familiar and intimate experience has no objective qualities and is, therefore, overlooked or ignored by the majority of people. This overlooking of our own being is the ultimate cause of unhappiness. What is the nature of the experience of being aware or awareness itself? The exploration of this question is the subject matter of this book and the essence of the Direct Path to peace and happiness. * * * The Essence of Meditation Series presents meditations on the essential, non-dual understanding that lies at the heart of all the great religious and spiritual traditions, compiled from contemplations led by Rupert Spira at his meetings and retreats. This simple, contemplative approach, which encourages a clear seeing of one’s experience rather than any kind of effort or discipline, leads the reader to an experiential understanding of their own essential being and the peace and fulfillment that are inherent within it. Being Aware of Being Aware is the first and introductory volume in The Essence of Meditation Series.
We often dismiss history as dull or irrelevant, but our modern disengagement from the past puts us fundamentally out of step with the long witness of the Christian tradition. Yet, says Margaret Bendroth, the past tense is essential to our language of faith, and without it our conversation is limited and thin. This accessible, beautifully written book presents a new argument for honoring the past. The Christian tradition gives us the powerful image of a vast communion of saints, all of God's people, both living and dead, in vital conversation with each other. This kind of connection with our ancestors in the faith, Bendroth maintains, will not happen by wishing or by accident. She argues that remembering must become a regular spiritual practice, part of the rhythm of our daily lives as we recognize our world to be, in many ways, a gift from others who have gone before.
In this unflinchingly honest and hilarious memoir, a woman discovers that her best life is a sober one. For Sarah Hepola, drinking felt like freedom; part of her birthright as a twenty-first-century woman. But there was a price–she often blacked out, having no memory of the lost hours. On the outside, her career was flourishing, but inside, her spirit was diminishing. She could no longer avoid the truth–she needed help. Blackout is the story of a woman stumbling into a new kind of adventure–sobriety. Sarah Hepola's tale will resonate with anyone who has had to face the reality of addiction and the struggle to put down the bottle. At first it seemed like a sacrifice–but in the end, it was all worth it to get her life back.
