Fastidious Remembrance: The Practice of Catching Yourself in the Act of Being
How the Pulse of Consciousness Interrupts the Machinery of Ordinary Life
This post grows out of work I’ve been doing with Cynthia Bourgeault’s course Practicing Living Presence: Discovering the Mind of Christ Within, which itself is a sustained engagement with Kabir Helminski’s Living Presence. In particular, it draws from the chapter titled The Power of Being. What follows is not an attempt to define Being, because Being cannot be defined without being reduced. It emerges instead from noticing how rarely we allow Being to show itself on its own terms.
We tend to treat Being as something we must enter, generate, or maintain. We approach it like a discipline to master or a state to stabilize. In doing so, we quietly miss the more radical truth. Being does not arrive as a possession. It reveals itself as a recognition. Brief. Fleeting. Undramatic. And easily overlooked.
Helminski names the work fastidious remembrance of being. The phrase is precise. Fastidious does not mean tense or obsessive. It means attentive. Careful. Willing to notice the smallest shift in inner posture. Remembrance does not mean recall of something absent. It means recognition of something already present.
The practice, if it can be called that, is not about sustaining awareness. It is about catching yourself in the act of already being aware.
Being Is Not a State. It Is a Pulse.
One of the most helpful correctives in this chapter is the insistence that consciousness is not a steady condition. It is a pulse.
There is a common fantasy among spiritual practitioners that one day awareness will “turn on” and remain on. That presence will become continuous, seamless, and uninterrupted. But this expectation belongs more to perfectionism than to wisdom.
Consciousness flashes. It opens. It closes. It returns. It disappears again.
You notice yourself noticing. Then you are gone.
You notice again. Then you are gone again.
The mistake is not losing the awareness. The mistake is believing you were supposed to keep it.
Fastidious remembrance works with the pulse rather than against it. The moment you see, the work has already been done. No need to prolong it. No need to stabilize it. No need to congratulate yourself. The pulse will return on its own time.
This is why the practice belongs in ordinary life rather than in protected spiritual conditions. Silence can help you recognize the pulse, but friction reveals it.
Why Ordinary States Are the Best Teachers
Being announces itself most clearly through contrast. It is easier to recognize awareness when something in us is off-balance than when everything is smooth.
Boredom is one such doorway. Boredom has a distinctive texture. A flattening. A mild irritation with time itself. The invitation is not to escape boredom, but to notice it. The instant you see boredom as an object rather than an identity, awareness has already appeared.
Hurry is another doorway. Hurry compresses attention. It pulls the mind forward and creates a subtle sense of emergency. Catching yourself in hurry does not require slowing down. It requires seeing. The seeing itself is not hurried, even if the body continues to move quickly.
Annoyance is especially useful. Annoyance is sticky. It wants to justify itself. The moment you catch the storyline forming, the moment you notice the tightening behind the eyes or in the chest, awareness has entered the room. Nothing needs to be resolved. Seeing is enough.
Pleasure belongs here too. Many people only attempt presence when they are distressed, turning awareness into a coping mechanism. But pleasure offers the same opening. The moment you know you are enjoying something, the pulse is present. Being does not oppose enjoyment. It contextualizes it.
Practicing only in suffering turns presence into a tool. Practicing across all states allows it to remain what it is.
The Difference Between Seeing and Fixing
A crucial distinction in this work is the difference between seeing and correcting.
Western spiritual culture is deeply infected with the assumption that awareness exists in order to improve behavior. We notice in order to intervene. We observe in order to optimize. Even mindfulness is often recruited into self-management.
But Helminski’s instruction is subtler. Awareness does not need to fix what it sees. In fact, the impulse to fix is often what obscures the pulse.
Seeing is instantaneous. It happens outside of time. The moment you see clearly, something shifts, whether or not circumstances change. Fixing happens in time. It requires effort, strategy, and outcome.
Fastidious remembrance trains the eye, not the will.
You may remain annoyed after you notice annoyance. You may continue rushing after you notice hurry. You may still feel bored after you notice boredom. The difference is that you are no longer identical with the state. Something else is present, quietly containing it.
This is not detachment. It is intimacy without fusion.
Reserving Attention for Being
Helminski speaks of “reserving some attention for being itself.” This does not mean splitting your focus or constantly monitoring yourself. It means allowing a small margin of awareness to remain unclaimed by the activity at hand.
You are fully engaged in what you are doing, but not completely lost in it.
This is the difference between being absorbed and being aware. Absorption collapses the subject into the object. Awareness preserves relationship.
The image often used is that of the diver sitting on a rock at the bottom of a river, watching the current pass overhead. Thoughts, emotions, sensations, and impulses flow by, but awareness remains anchored elsewhere.
This does not require effort. It requires permission.
Most of us abandon awareness the moment life becomes compelling. Fastidious remembrance is the decision not to abandon it entirely.
Why the Practice Feels So Small
One of the reasons this practice is underestimated is that it does not produce fireworks. There is no dramatic shift of consciousness. No guarantee of peace. No reliable emotional payoff.
Often the pulse lasts only an instant. A flicker. A quiet recognition. And then it is gone.
This can feel disappointing until something deeper is understood. The transformation does not occur in the duration of awareness. It occurs in the cumulative reorientation of identity.
Each moment of seeing loosens the grip of identification. Each recognition weakens the assumption that we are our moods, our reactions, or our inner narratives.
Over time, a new center of gravity emerges. Not because you held awareness longer, but because you stopped confusing awareness with effort.
When Activity Loses Its Center
Helminski makes a stark claim. Activity without Being becomes chaotic, wasteful, and misdirected. This is not a condemnation of action. It is an observation about its source.
There is a kind of energy that feels powerful but leaves exhaustion in its wake. There is a kind of productivity that accomplishes much while quietly draining everyone involved. This energy is often mistaken for effectiveness.
Being has a different signature. Actions that arise from it tend to be simpler, cleaner, and less violent, even when they are decisive. They carry less excess force.
Fastidious remembrance is not about withdrawing from life. It is about restoring proportion. When Being is present, action no longer needs to prove itself.
The Experiment That Never Ends
This is not a practice you complete. It is an experiment you repeat.
Catch yourself when you are bored. Catch yourself when you are hurried. Catch yourself when you are pleased. Catch yourself when you are annoyed.
Do not correct. Do not improve. Do not narrate.
Just see.
The pulse will come and go. Let it. Over time, you will discover that you are not entering Being at all. You are simply remembering where you already are.
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This felt very close to something our own traditions have always known.
Awareness is not something to hold or polish. It is what notices, even for a moment, and then steps back into silence. In the Upanishads, the Self is not described as a state to reach, but as that which is already seeing every state pass.
What I liked most here is the simplicity of it. No chasing. No fixing. Just a gentle returning to what is already awake.
It reads like a reminder and those are the ones that stay.
WOW, VMB, if we were playing baseball, you’d surely be awarded the trophy for knocking the ball out of the park! In this moment what I’m noticing and appreciating so deeply (I’d like to think my Being just made a bow to your Being) is your ability to choose words that I “get” and at least for today my sensing is visceral. Having instances of remembering is new for me. For me, it’s an AHA moment. A “blinding flash of the obvious.” And, as a student, I continue to be gobsmacked by how you, the teacher, shows up at exactly right time for me to see, to hear, to feel your heart and to make meaning from your words. You and David Whyte each have a way of saying: “Dear Sandy.” Thank you for your Being and for your writing. Namaste. ❤️🙏