In his invaluable book, In Search of the Miraculous, Peter Ouspensky quotes these words from George Gurdjieff: Fusion, inner unity, is obtained by means of ‘friction,’ by the struggle between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in man. If a man lives without inner struggle, if everything happens in him without opposition, if he goes wherever he is drawn or wherever the wind blows, he will remain cheap beats by dre headphones such as he is. But if a struggle begins in him, and particularly if there is a definite line in this struggle, then, gradually, permanent traits begin to form themselves, and he begins to ‘crystallize.’ These are passionate words and, to understand them, we have to begin with our own experiences of presence, our own remembrance of moments of higher consciousness. No one can infuse verification in another. Consciousness is truly beyond words as the Sun is beyond shadows. But your personal verification is your Sun. As our verification of the miraculous nature of presence-of higher states of consciousness-deepens, our desire to evoke presence deepens, and the inner struggle begins again on an ever higher level. Of course, there are different points of view about the nature of this struggle. Some teachers remind us that the struggle itself is an illusion, that Divine Presence is You, and therefore there is nothing to be done. Indeed, they would say that we must drop the struggle entirely. Nevertheless, however it is characterized, the true spiritual path will always refer to the same epic journey from here to here, and we are thrust back on our individual experience of this journey. From my own understanding, I can only say that the achievement of a higher state must be won. Every effort to become present to this moment is necessarily met by a powerful force within that strives to customize beats cheap undermine that effort. This is what Gurdjieff meant by the “struggle between yes and no”-the Struggle of the Magicians. This effort to be aware of ourselves, to engage presence, can take many forms. In Orthodox Christianity – as expressed in the Philokalia – this effort is embodied in the Prayer of the Heart; in Islam, by recitation of the Koran; in Zen, by formal meditation; in Sufism, by the Zikr; and in the Fourth Way, by self-remembering. Simply put, self-remembering is awareness intentionally brought to the Higher Self, whose existence can only be found in this very instant. From one point of view, presence is the Higher Self; from another point of view, presence is the awareness of the Higher Self. Presence is deepened by the very effort to be present, and the source of this effort comes from our most intimate desire to escape the bondage of time and death. As our experience of presence increases, our sensitivity to the loss of presence also increases. The comparatively lifeless inner state that follows in the wake of presence begins to catapult us into another effort to remember ourselves. This practice-self-remembering-is the hub of the Fourth Way system. One way to evoke self-remembering is to practice divided attention. This method is deceptively simple yet quite difficult to prolong. You place your attention upon yourself while simultaneously placing attention upon an object within your environment, whether internal or external. Your attention literally becomes a double-headed arrow ? It is actually divided. When you spiderman beats by dre divide attention, you will experience a change of consciousness, even if it is quite subtle.