Have you ever started learning a new subject and they introduced you to a few simple concepts and right away you got this! You nailed the understanding of those concepts and you can easily apply that understanding at any point.
Great. Stop right there. Don’t introduce anything else, because life is very simple this way. Black and white. Solid and Space. Sound and Silence. And as long as nothing else is introduced it will stay this way.
But of course we can’t leave well enough alone.
We’re going to introduce more. And as we do this, things start to become gray.
So how do we go about making sure we keep the crystal clarity of the first concept we learn or as we learn more clarify it even further?
Well that’s a good thing to ask one self as one starts to learn new concepts. Can you always “Self Remember” or go back to one of the previous concepts you learned and have it clearly in mind all the time?
If you keep asking yourself how to go about doing this you’ll discover tricks for doing it.
Why do you remember something?
For me it usually always has to do with context. I’m using something in a particular context, and therefore I develop a good sense of what it is and how to use it.
You may introduce a new concept and find that after you did that remember the previous concept became trickier. Ask yourself why is that? And in this process you are beginning to wire up a broader “Meta Structure” around what your learning.
It will take you deeper into the subjects you are learning. So while you are doing the learning, your also learning to “Feel out” how your mind works and in the process discovering your meta learning tricks.
Related Concepts
Gurdjieff played the same game, in a different way. He said, “The most important thing is self-remembering. Always, at every moment, be aware of what you’re doing. Watch yourself, constantly, and never, never be absent-minded.” So, all day, you know, when you pick up the piece of paper, you realize, “I am picking up this piece of paper, and I’m opening it inside,” and so on. And I know I’m doing it this way, so I’m not asleep. Ordinary people, you know, pick up a piece of paper and… [laughter]. In this way, we’re really picking up (Text sourced from https://www.organism.earth/library/document/out-of-your-mind-10) the piece of paper. So all these people are doing this, you know, watching all the time. Now, where do they land up?
— Alan Watts
