But being a very contemplative introvert type since I can first remember, i have to say that almost everything said in the original post is what comes natural to me. I have always wondered at the new-age types who immediately tell me I need to learn to change my thinking to this or that because it has been such a revelation for them and so of course no one else could ever have achieved the same state of mind on their own.

Poets and great fiction writers do the same thing. How else can they so well observe their own thoughts and feelings, and imagine their characters and their thoughts and feelings and the inevitable self-reflection that the characters do throughout the story?

I think it takes more than these mind experiments to truly change an aspect of yourself. If any layers need to be peeled away, begin with the layers of self-deception that we build to protect ourselves from conscious awareness of who we really are, the best and the worst of ourselves. Approaching meditation and such to “clear your mind” is little more than technique of escapism from the self. It might be nice to do once in awile, but it you’ll still be the same asshole. Except now you’ll be an asshole who thinks he/she is enlightened and better than everyone else.

It is an illusion to think there is a core nothingness. If you see nothingness, that is a construct of our all-too-clever mind that seeks to protect itself from pain.

Nothing less that raw sustained courage will get one beyond what they are today. The first step is facing our real selves.

Sometimes I’ve “detached” myself from feelings of fear, and the experience of standing alongside them was even scarier than the normal feeling alone. It’s hard to describe. Probably it wasn’t possible to really detach from such a strong feeling, or I didn’t go far enough, thus further worrying myself. I don’t know. I’ve had this experience a few times in the past, but not so much anymore.

“It’s weird how it feels like someone else is putting those thoughts in.”

This is precisely what Gurdjieff and many others have claimed: man is a plurality of almost autonomous selves, each speaking in the name of the Whole, with different agendas, and unfortunately, usually totally unaware of the other selves.

And because of this, man cannot “do”; things only “happen” to him, depending on which Self or I is running the show. It is precisely because there is no permanent “I” that, according to G., the average person does not in any respect possess “Will” or “Consciousness.”

(I can say from experience that the more you self-observe, the more clear these concepts become.)

These things you seem to be grasping are concepts recently revealed to me (by a shiny new self within me!) as the fundamentals of esoteric transformation, key pillars in the understanding of oneself, and hence the world.

When I try that I am truly amazed at how the thoughts that pop into my head drop away again if I just observe them rather than get involved. It’s weird how it feels like someone else is putting those thoughts in too. They’re pretty persistant, I felt like a crowd of people were shouting at me at one point, my brain was trying so hard to quiet the silence.

The other trick my mind uses against me is to start commentating on how the process of watching the thoughts is going – and isn’t that a weird sentence to write?

Yep, not thinking is definitely hard work

Gurdjieff’s methods of self-remembering and self-observation are similar, if not more “harsh” and full on. Many limbs of yoga and initiation into magickal orders are also first concerned with stopping the endless conditioned chatter-worry of the mind, so that it’s initially fragmented nature can be unified to create some notion of Will (in magick) or Union (in yoga.) Similar means to near identical ends.