Perhaps it isn’t exactly understood, but the aim of inner practice isn’t to “remember one’s self.” Not in the context I generally think of this, anyway. I have the ideas in me, but it’s really nothing. Not enough, certainly, not nearly enough, because I am not asked to have ideas. I am asked to participate. This is quite different than having ideas. And what I am asked to participate in is all of creation; this isn’t hyperbole in the least; it's a fact.
The aim of inner work is to transcend the limitations imposed by my ideas and develop a corresponding organic sensation, an emotional sensation, of the presence of God within every moment.
Every moment.
This is the true remembering of the Self—not as I am, but as I can become—because we are individual manifestations not just of the presence of God as expressed through us, but of God Himself, iterations of His name arising and existing within the level we are on. For all manifestations at every level are expressions of the Word of God, which cannot be separated from material reality: all of it is part of the Great Body of the Lord, which is made of Light, and filled with Love.
The fact that I have little sensation or understanding of this is what puts me in the position of having a Self I do not remember; for the Self that can BE remembered is always, and none other than, God.
Submission (Islam) is the submission to this force, the loss of individual identity as it’s expressed within the narrow confines I am accustomed to, and the surrender to an energy which transforms understanding and allows the direct manifestation of Christ Consciousness, which is in all things, and ought by rights to be manifest at all times in humans.
I guess I just don’t usually see that Christ is in all things, and that the Lord is forever present. Yet this is an absolute truth, not an intellectual or theological one, and my overt resistance to that truth itself, in every particle of my intelligent and (so I think) neatly rational being, is what leads me to the need for submission in the first place. “Thy will be done” is the meaning of Islam; there is no alternative for the seeker, no matter how I try to squirm out of the need to submit. It’s only in submission that my organism aligns itself with the Lord.
Attempting to sterilize inner practice and expunge this undestanding leads into a desert where no rain falls.
Praise for the Lord ought to arise spontaneously, and at all times; there ought never to be hesitation, from one moment to the next, to rush into the arms of the Lord as He opens them, according to His will, and to praise Him continuously.
If I don’t understand this, I must definitely strive to.
And I must not ever give up; I am here to be tested, in faith and in deed.
I respectfully hope you will take good care.