17/01/2026
“Another object of self-observation must be, generally speaking, our habits. Every adult human being is made up entirely of habits, although they often do not realize it and even deny having any habits at all. This is never the case. All three centers are filled with habits, and a person cannot know themselves until they know all their habits.
Observing and recognizing habits is especially difficult, because in order to see them and ‘take note’ of them, one must escape them—free oneself from them, even if only for a moment.
As long as a particular habit governs a person, they cannot observe it; but at the very first attempt—even a very weak one—to struggle against it, a person begins to feel it and notice it. Thus, in order to observe and know habits, one must try to fight them.
This opens the possibility of a practical method of self-observation.” — In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching
P. D. Ouspensky
