The "self-liberation of contact through recollection" is an important Mahamudra practice in which one recalls again and again that the apparent meeting of consciousness and object is not a real occurrence; it is a mere appearance, the union of appearance and emptiness. The five sense consciousnesses are non-conceptual - they are free from any thoughts that things truly exist. The conceptual aspect of the mental consciousness, however, follows this direct valid cognition of the sense consciousness and conceives of the sense consciousnesses' experiences as being real. By following this thought of sense perception being real with the recollection that the sense perception is appearance-emptiness, one practices self-liberation of contact through recollection, the remedy for that mistaken belief in the sense perceptions' true existence.

Milarepa sang of this practice in several of his songs. It is an important practice because we have to realize the transcendence of the meeting of the object, faculty, and consciousness if we are to realize the genuine nature of reality. If we still believe that the meeting of object, faculty, and consciousness is real, it is a sign that our certainty in emptiness is not stable yet.