Advanced Awareness in Personal Development #2 Retrospection

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By Chris Walker - Advanced Awareness Course #2 Retrospection As concentration is distinctly a morning exercise, so retrospection is the proper discipline of the evening. Having completed your work for the day, your body is ideally exhausted by its efforts and needs - wants seeks rest. In the peace of that twilight which divides daily life from rest, your thoughts instinctively turn towards the actions of the day past. The discipline of retrospection was designed to serve two purposes: first to instruct the individual to analyse the consequences arising from their daily activities. Everything that we do becomes a causal point from which flow innumerable effects, and retrospection is intended to reveal the true order of these outflowing effects. And, retrospection is also an Chris Walker - Innerwealth - Coaching, Adventures, Retreats, Education, Consulting

additional stimulus to the memory because it causes the individual, through the association of ideas, to live over again the day just past. From this detached viewpoint of an observer, the obscure issues are clarified and mistakes made evident.

Like concentration, the practice of retrospection should be governed by the laws of order and repetition. The process should be the last waking act of the day, when the mind has begun to release its hold on worldliness and withdraw into itself. Again, there should be no effort. The events of the day are then allowed to flow through the mind like the passing incidents of a panorama, watching a movie or a TV screen. The course of the picture, however, needs to be reversed. The mind can work backwards through the day, beginning with the last act and ending with the first. The goal is a smoothly flowing recapitulation of every incident and circumstance of the day.

By placing the effect before the cause, as is done in retrospection, we introduce an entirely new element. The perspective is changed and what we call facts we find are largely matters of perspective. By approaching the matter from the opposite end of the happening, new values are discovered and the errors in decisions become apparent. Retrospection is a very good cure for insomnia, having many advantages over the archaic method of counting sheep jumping through a break in the fence.

The average person cannot remain awake through a period of retrospection. They often go to sleep before they have recalled one-tenth of the actions of the day. This, however. is not a cause for discouragement, since once the rhythm of retrospection is established. the process will continue throughout sleep. Retrospection is the greatest organiser of life ever discovered, and after practicing it for a short time an improvement will be noticeable. As the mind grows accustomed to think on the result of action, it begins to reason by anticipation and the decisions necessary for healthy ordered daily existence are made with gradually increasing ease and accuracy.

Five years of faithful performance of retrospection will lift the individual from the haphazard state of the majority to the level of the philosophic few, because it is impossible to contemplate sincerely on action without instinctively desiring to improve that action and make it more healthy, evolved, conscious in the sight of the Self, which must always be the supreme judge. People with a bad memory - which simply means one that Chris Walker - Innerwealth - Coaching, Adventures, Retreats, Education, Consulting

has never been developed or has been broken through abuse - often complain that they are incapable of performing an accurate retrospection. At the same time, most of these people feel disappointed about their memory and wish that could improve it. Retrospection will improve memory but it's a journey and you need to be patient. Little by little the ability to remember will increase and in time the smallest incident can be recalled at will. Nothing is ever really forgotten, but very few can tap the store house of memory and recall the thought pictures that are stored there. Retrospection gives control over these pictures and a person who has achieved proficiency in the exercise can go backward not only over the day but over their entire life., recovering each detail and distilling wisdom from every apparently accidental occurrence.

Retrospection should not be extended unduly and if the individual does not fall asleep in a short time the effort should be discontinued until the following day. In a dream a person can live over a whole life time in a few moments. The same is true in retrospection. A minute analysis of even a well- filled day should not require over ten minutes and to lengthen retrospection beyond this point may cause an unpleasant sense of fatigue.

Nor is it wise to one permit any irritation that comes from the inability to remember something important. If you can’t remember it, then it’s best pass it over with no emotion except a sincere desire to do better the next time.

One other point is important in the exercise of retrospection, namely, the moral or ethical aspect. When the exercise has revealed some complex of action, the individual should make a definite effort to "order" the circumstances and determine what they could have done differently under the circumstances. They might feel a certain pleasure from the contemplation of a distinctly righteous act. Then, in this situation the individual is wiser to also honestly criticise themselves without, however, any sense of pettiness and find where they have been delinquent in some aspect. Retrospection includes not only the living over of the day but also putting it in order, picking up the broken fragments and loose ends, and preparing the whole temperament for more constructive endeavour in the future. We call this last piece the emotional shower and it really does encourage you to see balance. Every retrospection should bring life up to date, summarising that which has been accomplished and, to a certain degree, sensing the direction of future accomplishment.

Chris Walker - Innerwealth - Coaching, Adventures, Retreats, Education, Consulting

When concentration and retrospection are practiced daily, the entire life will reflect the improvement that inspired thinking brings.

These exercises, give the proper stimulation to the whole nature, will finally bring the student to the path of self-awareness, if followed as here suggested. They prepare the conscious nature for its new duties in a larger vista and are the absolute prerequisites of a spiritualised state, and, most important of all, they do not jeopardise integrity or endanger the health and efficiency of those who practice them.

Love and Wisdom Chris

Chris Walker - Innerwealth - Coaching, Adventures, Retreats, Education, Consulting