For the majority of people, the chief obstacle that prevents them achieving the state of self-remembering is in the fact that they think they are already in possession of it. They think that they can remember themselves, be conscious of everything they do and say, and also live in the imagination of being conscious of their inner life and have knowledge and control of the thoughts and emotions that they experience in an uninterrupted current. Due to this, they think that they have a permanent "I" and the capacity to do and to change. But the truth is that they can do nothing because they do not have a true will, but many wills and many contradictory and variable "I´s". Everything happens to them in this way.

   It is evident that a person will not be interested in hearing about a state that he thinks he has, being also the one he has the greater difficulty in understanding the meaning of self-remembering. They do not realize they cannot avoid doing what they do and that none of their actions are not dominated by will. Nevertheless, the ordinary state of a person is opposed to this. He has no perception of himself, he is not conscious of what he does or says, neither does he make the decisions that he imagines he makes, nor is he conscious of his inner life. He is conscious of a very small part of what "he experiences" mechanically.

   The self-remembering state belongs to a human being, in which he has perception of himself and of whatever surrounds him; he perceives everything that he experiences. The reason that this is not so is the identification with which he is not. This state must be explored through self-observation and it is, after a long period of training without critical spirit, that we realize that we do not remember ourselves. We will understand that we forget our aims and ourselves, thus understanding what it means to be awake, up to a point, and what it is to be asleep. Self-observation is not self-remembering, but it allows us to realize that we do not remember ourselves and to our consciousness that we do not have a permanent "I". If we awoke to the consciousness of the real I, the world would be very different. Nothing can be changed in a real way in life unless we awake to this fact.

   It is necessary to understand all this before starting the practice of this work because unless we understand that another state of Being exists, we will not value the work nor will we make a voluntary and continuous effort.

   As a rule, there is no struggle in the inner life of a person due to routine, to the mechanicalness and acquired habits. A struggle only begins when we walk in the opposite direction to our mechanicity. This Work enables us to observe certain peculiar things in ourselves that prevent us from awakening and to create a conscious and voluntary inner struggle between yes and no. One of the most important things is the work with identification, because if you are identified you cannot observe yourself. We identify with images of ourselves, with daydreams, with each small "I" that appears in a momentary way in a scene, with each mood, each emotion, each thought, with suffering, etc.

   All forms of identification must be subjects for self- study through self-observation. When this has been practiced for a certain period of time, we will be more conscious of our inner state and, consequently, we will have little time for choosing. You will be able to see what is going to happen before it takes place. Self-observation clears a space, so that you can be conscious of what enters and what leaves. If we do not put energy in something which wants to enter us through identification, this passes on and a small moment of self-remembering is created. This means that we have taken the Work to the entry point of an impression. The important point of the work with impressions is not to let them enter unconsciously, not to let them fall on the network of associations established a long time ago.

   The problem is that we persist in believing that there is no longer nothing new, not because there are no new impressions but because they always affect the same associations and produce the same reactions. It is necessary to feed off the impressions, which means working on them as they reach us and being able to prevent that some of them fall at the same place as always. Life is entering impressions. Life cannot be changed directly, but we can change the way in which the impressions fall in us and to destroy the possibility of the associations. It is necessary to remember our work's aim and to take it to the place where the impressions enter, which will prevent the reaction to the impressions that are opposite to the Work, to our aim. Mechanical reaction is prevented by conscious action. This action belongs to the First Conscious Shock, It is its beginning. The energy that has gone to a mechanical reaction, through habitual associations, can continue now and transform itself into something subtler. In this way, we will understand or we will see things in a new way.

   The impressions that are received in a state of self-remembering become more interesting and beautiful, reflecting a meaning that we did not perceived before. It is necessary to remember the "I" who knows the aim and be always aware of the different "I´s" that appear. This is a way of self-remembering until we become totally aware of the real I, the state of full self-remembering.