Self-forgetfulness

“ You must follow the truth, and, in that pursuit, the less one thinks about himself, the pursuer, the better. Let him so hunger and thirst after the truth that the dim vision of it occupies all his being, and leaves no time to think of his hunger and his thirst. Self-forgetfulness in the reaching out after that which is essential to us is the healthiest of mental conditions. One has to look to his way, to his deeds, to his conduct—not to himself. ”

“ And therefore time is for that which we call the body, for that which has limits; but for that which has no limits: for the spiritual—there is no time. [157] Therefore you remember only those times in which you lived spiritually. (Unclear, but was clear.)
17) We suffer from ourselves, from the demands of our “self,” and we all know that the only means for not suffering from that “self,” is to forget it. And we seek forgetfulness in distractions, in occupations with art, science, in wine, in smoking—and there is no real forgetfulness. ”

“ Another fruit which God expects in the lives of His people is forgetfulness of self. Have you stayed to calculate how much of your time is occupied in thinking and talking of yourselves? In some houses they line the rooms with looking glasses, so that wherever you turn you see a reflection of yourself. My brethren, some of us pass all our lives in such a room; we are for ever contemplating our own selves. We spend our time in looking into a mirror that we may see our beauty, our cleverness, our fine clothing. One glass reflects our pleasures and amusements, another our sorrows and misfortunes. ”

“ That is the only way you can hope to cure yourself of self-consciousness—forget about yourself! There are so many delightful things you can think of, so many interesting things beyond the selfish little boundaries of your own self. ”

“ I would wait until I got home. Then I would talk and forget myself—only by forgetting myself would I enjoy the present. Only those who forget themselves are happy. The obsession of self is the most oppressive of all burdens. ”

“ It was one of those moments—perfect in themselves—when a man can forget everything that pertains to the outer world, when neither self-interest nor ordinary prudence will count, when he is ready to jeopardize his life, his career, his future, his very soul for the ecstasy which lies in the one heaven-born minute. ”

“ If I remained like an insensible thing and only paid attention when things like what I felt in my own mind were spoken of, 'And is not this desire to listen a form of seeking self-gratification?' When the inferior part of my soul thus beheld itself revealed, and perceived that it could not deny these imperfections, it finally owned itself to be conquered. ”

“ Formerly, in solitude and in silence, he had been used to think clearly and sometimes even profoundly, seeing life outside the flattering optical delusion of everlasting hope, of conventional self-deceptions, of an ever-expected happiness. ”

“ A. You stated a short while ago, that in the former condition it is the presence of the object, and in the latter condition the re-presenting of the object to your mind, which constitutes the true reality of your life, and at present you state that you forget yourself in both. Here, then, we have found the looked for ground of your judgment concerning actuality and non-actuality. The self-forgetting is the characteristic of actuality; and in each condition of life, the focus wherein you throw and forget yourself, and the focus of actuality, are one and the same. ”

“ Only the act of recollection, the constantly renewed retreat to the quiet centre of the spirit, gives that assurance of a Reality, a calmer and more valid life attainable by us, which supports the stress and pain of self-simplification and permits us to hope on, even in the teeth of the world's cruelty, indifference, degeneracy; whilst diligent character-building alone, with its perpetual untiring efforts at self-adjustment, its bracing, purging discipline, checks the human tendency to relapse into and react to the obvious, and makes possible the further development of the contemplative power. ”

“ Forgetfulness, the unhistorical, is as it were the enveloping air, the atmosphere, in which alone life can come into being. In order to understand it, let us imagine a youth who is seized with a passion for a woman, or a man who is swayed by a passion for his work. ”

“ September 12, 1861.—In me an intellect which would fain forget itself in things, is contradicted by a heart which yearns to live in human beings. The uniting link of the two contradictions is the tendency toward self-abandonment, toward ceasing to will and exist for one’s self, toward laying down one’s own personality, and losing—dissolving—one’s self in love and contemplation. What I lack above all things is character, will, individuality. ”

“ You give one with a perpetual and intense freshness feelings and sensations that are as old as the world itself, and you imagine that your enchantment can be broken off anywhere, at any time! But it can't be broken. And forgetfulness, like everything else, can only come from you. It's an impossible situation to stand up against. ”

“ The other trend is in the opposite direction, toward depersonalization.380 We need to look out, not in; to forget self and to be absorbed in objectives. We are impelled to escape our environment and interest ourselves in things that are remote in space and time, in nature, the stars, great causes and events, personalities, masterpieces, to escape from our miserable selves by their contemplation. We cannot see the countenance of things for their soul. ”

“ Deceive yourself if you will for a time, but sooner or later you, like those from whom you came and of whom you are a part, will be the plaything of self-indulgence and weakness and passion. Fate has made your image that you see in the mirror, refined and comely so that you may see the better the work of heredity when it asserts itself. ”

“ Can any anguish equal the depths of those blues in which a man's whole self hangs in suspense before his own eyes, and he doubts whether he himself, with his entire outfit and apparatus, body, soul, and spirit, isn't to be, after all, a complete failure? ”

“ The smile, how bitter!—for 'tis scorn's worst task
To scorn ourselves; and yet we could not choose
But mock our actions, all we say or do,
If we but saw them as we others see.
Life's best repose is blindness to itself. ”

“ It is this forgetfulness which is, after all, the foundation of our pleasures, for in memory is the weightier part of our misfortunes. Of a truth in the course of our journey many pains befall, and there are times of gross evil, when sorrow, as a toad, squats in our doorway, when the scales kick the balance with a rush. In such an hour we come to look upon life as the dreary passage of our commonplaces; there is neither present gain nor future hope. But how soon this mood passes! From our base ancestry we have the divine gift of forgetfulness. ”

“ I had tried to persuade myself before that mine was that rare thing—the rarest on earth, indeed—selfless love; but I knew now that that had [168] been the flimsiest gauze of self-deceit veiling the secret hopes and desires that had urged me forward. Out of the inmost thoughts came up now the skeletons of my lost desires, gibbering and mouthing and mocking me with the hopelessness of my love. ”

“ This consciousness of the insufficiency of our own knowledge, joined with an ardent desire after a broadening of our understanding, tends to turn the mind in strange directions. The result of clearer self-knowledge in this modern epoch of ours is an adverseness to any form of romantic fancy, and is likely to end in a sad resignation that may result in pessimism. ”

“ To keep oneself unspotted, to feel conscious of no sense of stain, to know, yes, to hear the heart repeat that this self—hands, face, mouth and skin—is free from all befouling touch, is all one's own. ”

“ One may believe that at first, engulfed by the instinct of self-preservation, tossed by the whirlwind from one emotion to another and into the lowest pit of physical pain, the mind is too confused, too stunned to realise the full significance of all that is happening. ”

“ It is this constant persistence in clinging to ourselves that is most in the way; it increases that crown of nervous troubles, self-consciousness, and makes it quite impossible that we should ever really know ourselves. ”

“ But what we oftenest forget is the amount of self-sacrifice hidden modestly away in so many of these truly admirable lives. Is it nothing to be without home and its love, w [118] ithout future, without personal ambition? to take upon one's self that cross of solitary life, so hard to bear, especially when there is added the solitude of the heart? to forget one's self and have no other interests than the care of the old, of orphans, the poor, the infirm—those whom the brutal mechanism of life casts out among its waste? ”

“ Praise thou God that in the world of the dream thou hast witnessed such disclosures.
With reference to what is meant by an individual becoming entirely forgetful of self: the intent is that he should rise up and sacrifice himself in the true sense, that is, he should obliterate the promptings of the human condition, and rid himself of such characteristics as are worthy of blame and constitute the gloomy darkness of this life on earth—not that he should allow his physical health to deteriorate and his body to become infirm. ”

“ They are dreadful, too, when they bring memories—vague and indistinct, perhaps—of some serious altercations, passionate words exchanged, and expressions of defiance reciprocated; but, as a measure of self-reproach and humiliation, I know not any distress can compare with the sensation of awaking to the consciousness that our cups have so ministered to imagination that we have given a mythical narrative of ourself and our belongings, and have built up a card edifice of greatness that must tumble with the first touch of truth. ”

“ To be the same being in another life would be worse than the torments of the ruru worm.
"To remember oneself forever and ever, with no chance of forgetting, is a thought too horrible for the mind to endure. ”

“ Figure yourself groping in a dense gloom, saying: “There are things here which I feel are precious to me, which are of deep consequence to my happiness and to the happiness of others, but I cannot recall their names or their aspect!” and meanwhile the subtlest of your instincts is driving you mad with importunities to prosecute your search and lay the store of memory open to the light! This is worse than blindness; it is death in life. The years that you have lived are cut away from your existence, and with them all the precious accumulations of experience—love, sorrow, and thought itself. ”

“ All this, I say, I have done, and a thousand other very silly, though very disinterested, things in my time, and for all which no soul cares a farthing about me.... Is it to be wondered that he should once in his life forget you, who has been all his life forgetting himself? ”

“ We have to consider whether our feelings in the matter are elevating and humanly disinterested. True self-sacrifice must be the keystone of our lives. Yes, I expect from you the nobility of renunciation. The whole of our future must be dedicated to memories alone. Are we ever likely to enjoy again such exquisite hours as we have spent together? ”

“ You have invested everything in one basket, self-realization, and, in the end, suddenly you discover that there is no self to discover, no self to realize — and you say to yourself "What the hell have I been doing all my life?!" ”

“ Because we can never wholly get rid of self, in this lower life, does it therefore follow that we must concentrate our thoughts and aims upon it? Must we forever deny ourselves the ennobling, elevating, softening influence of a duty and a hope outside of ourselves; an object of affection, trust, and desire, higher than ourselves? ”

“ I knew that for the first time I had looked into eyes which no ugliness, no meanness, no unworthy thought could ever trouble, and that I was of the privileged of the world to have seen her. One look, a look that might pass a thousand times—one look in the mists of the dawn, in the scrambling, shoddy crowd—and yet, for that one instant’s fugitive understanding, all that I had been and was became as nothing, and my destiny—for better or worse, for ill and pain and sorrow, emptiness and loneliness—was irrevocably determined. Yes, mystery of the good and evil that is in us! ”

“ yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am, and live with shadows tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, ”

“ For who can wonder that man should feel a vague belief in tales of disembodied spirits wandering through those places which they once dearly affected, when he himself, scarcely less separated from his old world than they, is for ever lingering upon past emotions and bygone times, and hovering, the ghost of his former self, about the places and people that warmed his heart of old? ”

“ For the most part we look upon them as stories of opportunities: episodes of passion at best, or perhaps only of youth and temptation, doomed to forgetfulness in the end, even if they pass through the reality of tenderness and regret. ”

“ You will say, you have much to struggle with in your own character, and that nothing can satisfy you while you have to contend with self so continually. But your greatest temptation is to dwell too much upon your internal trials, leading you almost insensibly to that most insidious and deceptive form of self-love, a too constant thought of self even in regard to one's faults. ”

“ The self-indulgent man remembers after a little that indulgence of impulse has resulted sometimes in pain rather than satisfaction, and his imagination pictures a recurrence of the unhappy experience. ”