If you want to remember yourself, the best thing is not to think about yourself. As long as you think about yourself, you will not remember yourself.
P.D. OuspenskyRead
I've found that the chief difficulty for most people was to realize that they had really heard new things: that is things that they had never heard before. They kept translating what they heard into their habitual language. They had ceased to hope and believe there might be anything new.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the challenge of recognizing new ideas due to preconceived notions and habitual thinking.
P.D. Ouspensky expresses the important realization that many individuals struggle to perceive truly novel concepts because they unconsciously filter new information through their existing beliefs and language patterns. This tendency to revert to familiar interpretations limits their capacity to embrace change and innovation, thereby stifling personal growth and understanding.
In practice
This quote could be used in a workshop on creativity to encourage participants to open their minds to new possibilities.
If you want to remember yourself, the best thing is not to think about yourself. As long as you think about yourself, you will not remember yourself.
I have become so accustomed to think "scientifically" that I am afraid even to imagine that there may be something else beyond the outer covering of life. I feel like a man condemned to death, whose companions have been hanged and who has already become reconciled to the thought that the same fate awaits him.
Can one alter one´s chief feature?" asked someone else. First it is necessary to know it. If you know it, much will depend on the quality of your knowing. If you know it well, then it is possible to change it.
People live in sleep, do everything in sleep, and do not know they are asleep.
We often think we express negative emotions, not because we cannot help it, but because we should express them.
You can understand other people only as much as you understand yourself and only on the level of your own being. This means you can judge other people's knowledge but you cannot judge their being. You can see in them only as much as you have in yourself. But people always make the mistake of thinking they can judge other people's being. In reality, if they wish to meet and understand people of a higher development than themselves they must work with the aim of changing their being.
Attitude lies somewhere between emotion and logic. It's that curious mix of optimism and determination that enables you to maintain a positive outlook and to continue plodding in the face of the most adverse circumstances.
One might equate growing up with a mistrust of words. A mature person trusts his eyes more than his ears. Irrationality often manifests itself in upholding the word against the evidence of the eyes. Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.
Read a little. Meditate more. Think of God all the time.
Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.
If you determine your course With force or speed, You miss the way of the dharma. Quietly consider What is right and what is wrong. Receiving all opinions equally, Without haste, wisely, Observe the dharma.
Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.
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