Understanding Consciousness: Part II

How does Belief affect Consciousness?

We are biologically programmed to believe. To know. Every thought results in electromagnetic conduits connecting and disconnecting, synapses forming pathways between neurons, forging the personality through experience and intent. The mind becomes whatever we think as our bodies become whatever we eat.

Convoluting the brain in this manner is normative. Even in rejecting belief we are forming a belief. Patterning the brain and its neural structures a certain way as opposed to another.

When we literally change our minds we change our brains physically. It is the way our bodies are set up to host consciousness. Part and parcel of the program. To not believe is a contradiction in terms. And yet, the paradox is that moving beyond belief and knowledge is the path. To change the mind, to change the biology to become perfectly clear is to change the state of consciousness. The correlation lies in the actual physiological shifts that occur in the body when modalities designed to clear the mind are implemented and integrated into a life, becoming the primary mode of expression. The new field of quantum biology explores the unity of mind and body and the physiology of consciousness.

While it is often entertaining and personally gratifying to obtain knowledge and hold beliefs there comes a point when holding on to the ephemeral, the constantly shifting, must give way to the search for inner peace. Returning to the paradox I mentioned above, knowledge flows easily and beliefs no longer hold the power to physically mold the mind once a state of mental equilibrium is reached. Of course many here are familiar with the practices concerned with achieving this state of being.

The important correlation here is the integration of body and mind. Leading to the understanding that this is all more than mere thoughts, word and actions in the colloquial sense of understanding those terms.

There is much more. The entanglement of minds that form institutions, attitudes, mores and norms, our interrelation to and entanglement with the biosphere. The speed with which our bodies change at the cellular level, the interaction of breath with the air and the environment, the passage of germs and viruses, the decomposition of biological matter and reintegration with the world corpus are all examples of the integration of individual and mass humanity with the Earth. The only separation inherent in our existence is the separation we create within our minds. The holistic nature of our entwined unity of consciousness and biology is no mere idea. It is the fundamental substrate of our very existence. Since that is so, beliefs cannot be subtracted from the corpus of cognition that we engage in and co-create every moment of every day.

Beliefs are an expression of consciousness, and the wide variety of beliefs speaks to the divergence of experience for the human family. Different sub-groups of the family hold differing beliefs, but the ability of all humans to access those cultural beliefs is a pale shadow of each individual’s ability to access the core experience of consciousness, which underlies belief and culturally-specific information. Understanding and relegating these beliefs to a supporting role and distancing them from the knowledge of reality that powers our experience of materiality enhances the connection with the deeper streams of material creation and the core aspects of the human biological interface with the world.

Understanding Consciousness Series

Part I

Part II

Understanding Consciousness: Part 1

Why and How We are Connected with All That Is

What is consciousness? From the freedictionary.com:

con·scious·ness  (knshs-ns)

n.

1. The state or condition of being conscious.

2. A sense of one’s personal or collective identity, including the attitudes, beliefs, and sensitivities held by or considered characteristic of an individual or group: Love of freedom runs deep in the national consciousness.

3.

a. Special awareness or sensitivity: class consciousness; race consciousness.

b. Alertness to or concern for a particular issue or situation: a movement aimed at raising the general public’s consciousness of social injustice.

4. In psychoanalysis, the conscious.

Thoughts are energetic emanations. Electromagnetic and expansive in nature, thought-forms as processed through the biological conduits of neurons and synapsesare the physical forms of creative communication. They can be measured and quantified. The brain’s biological mechanisms, from the amygdala to the thalamus to the pre-frontal cortex, are the structures by which it is wired to process thoughts and create emotions which provide a chemical momentum that powers not only the body but the non-physical energetic coalescence of presence and intent as well.

Humans are multidimensional entities. Consciousness is eternal, infinite and integrally connected to all that is. Quantum experiments have proven the validity of entanglement, which states that all matter in the universe and beyond is interconnected. The double-slit experiment proved that consciousness is an integral part of experience, that the observer cannot be separated from the observed. The existence of multiple dimensions of consciousness is now the general understanding of the nature of creation. All of these facets of scientific discovery are connected and provide a holistic understanding of reality that transcends ideas of a mechanical, objective universe and replaces them with an understanding of a universe, a multiverse, of synthesis, holism and oneness.

In such a creation, consciousness is the binding glue that connects the disparate levels. Humans contain the spark of divinity that connects them not only with all other humans but with animals, insects and plants too. The consciousness inherent in all life also is now beyond dispute, as the intelligence of animals and plants grows more and more undeniable. The ability to think, to reason, to love, to recognize danger and to communicate with each other with a range of emotivity previously relegated to humans alone have all been witnessed and documented as occurring in both the animal and plant kingdoms.  Canines and birds, crystals and fungi, flowers and whales, grasses and machines, viruses and germs all display aspects of consciousness. Humanity is far from alone in possessing the seeds of the divine, it is inherent in all matter, is a fundamental make-up of all of material creation, from the most inanimate to the most animate.

Beyond the material world, into the inter-dimensional darkness of the unknown, consciousness connects our 3rd-dimensional reality with other planes of existence as well. In the realm of psychology, the existence of a collective unconscious has been explored and confirmed, humans share symbols and archetypes across the diverse field of biological difference, no matter what part of the globe any individual or group might be from. This holistic field of shared consciousness can be broken down into cultural groupings, as those who share societal mores form smaller collectivities, still connected to the whole, but sharing individuated markers that make them distinct from the larger groups, to the extent that an individual is ensconced within a family collective that nests within a local collective that is also nested within a regional collective that exists within a national collective which is itself a part of a racial collective.

Understanding that consciousness is not unique to humanity opens the doors to deeper knowledge, prepares the mind for grasping the truths of existence that guide cause and effect upon their fateful courses for all of manifest creation. Communicating lovingly with pets and plants, screaming at breaking or broken machines, are ways of transmitting specific types of energy between different forms of consciousness. The types of energy that we communicate through our thoughts, words and actions determines the nature of our interaction with other forms of consciousness. When it comes to communicating to sensate creation, other denizens of the material plane of existence, emotions flavor our very essence, adding energetic impetus to the force of our thoughts, words and actions. Pets know when we are angry or sad, inanimate objects tend to perform or break coincident to our emotional state.

In the realm of experience, cause and effect also seem to be respondent to emotional states, as internal harmonic resonance often leads to positive life events and outcomes, while internal disharmonic resonance leads to the opposite. How and what a person thinks determines the trajectory of potential outcomes along their life-path. In the daily interactions of the awakened consciousness manifest, individuals embark upon vibrant and responsive patterns of thought and behavior, the holistic nature of their cognitive processes emanating outwards and affecting the world around them in all aspects. In the daily interactions of slumberous consciousness manifest, individuals embark upon repetitious patterns of thought and behavior, the fractured nature of their cognitive processes emanating outwards and affecting the world around them in all aspects. Alert and active participation with life is thusly the modus operandi of all those who have direct control over their thought-processes, words and actions. Sleepwalking through life is thusly the modus operandi of all those with no direct control over their thought-processes, words and actions.

Engaging consciousness actively can only occur if an individual understands the nature of reality. Coming to terms with the power inherent in full intentionality and living consciously awakens the inherent capacity of all humans to control the nature and content of their own minds, which in turn affects the people, the animals, the plants, the non-animate objects and extra-physical realities within which they exist. All denizens of materiality, the created world, must undergo a period of learning during their phase of existential interaction with the rest of creation, the final stage of which must be the harmonic and stable interrelation with all other forms of manifest reality. Moving past stages of fractious and unstable thought processes leading to fractious and unstable emotions, which then result in the vocalization and actualization through actions of such, is the goal of consciousness and the natural evolution of individuals and groups through adolescent stages of interaction to a more mature realization and manifestation.

Understanding Consciousness Series

Part I

Part II

 

Space Dust, the MSM and Spaced-Out Days

It’s a shame that the mainstream media (MSM) are not putting the pieces of the puzzle together for those who only get their news from the Television. Sure, they tell us about one super-storm. A sink hole filled with methane and other gases or an earthquake, if these issues are large enough to affect those in their primary viewership region.

What they don’t talk about are the new changes in the upper atmosphere and oceanic circulation that will be long-lasting. They don’t talk about the increasing earthquakes both around the pacific rim and on old, dormant faults, as well as the centers of crustal plates where there have been few historical quakes, located on micro-faults. They don’t talk about Sol-system (our solar system) moving into a new part of the galaxy with increased space-dust, feeding our sun, making it grow hotter, whiter.

Global warming on other planets in our solar system. But we are experiencing all of this all around the world. The experience cannot be hidden. Just not discussed together in the MSM as indicative of a larger issue.

Taken alongside the shift in consciousness currently in progress – which is directly caused by the electromagnetic and cosmic energy increase related to these extra-planetary events – resulting in the waves of unrest and change sweeping the world the way we experience these changes day to day seems so normal. We walk around in a spaced-out daze too often, in a state of cognitive dissonance as what we know conflicts with that which we don’t. Our experiences reflect the inherent confusion caused by these changes in very specific ways:

1. Emotional turmoil
2. Physical symptoms
3. Sleep problems
4. Increased perception
5. Life turned upside-down

The Ancients used to say, As Above, So Below. Our lives are referential of Everything Else. What is going on within each of us, is also going on without. There is only a problem when we don’t know what is going on within us. Then we only have a vague idea about what is going on outside of us. We may visit Doctors who examine our symptoms and prescribe medications to quell them. We may listen to Pundits who bloviate about the topics of the day ad infinitum in order to quiet our curiosity.

We undergo our quiet storms in quiet desperation not realizing that many people across the world are experiencing similar turmoil. We watch the news and shake our heads, not used to drawing the connection between what is going on in the Mid-east and what is going on at our jobs. Our increased irritability and Japan and China fighting over some small islands. The argument you had with your child’s teacher and the argument about education and charter schools.

Our personal energetic fields are inter-connected and our hearts send out magnetic vibrations at the resonance of its emotional state, affecting others. Individuals affect groups, groups affect communities, communities affect nations. The famous example of a butterfly in the Amazon flapping its wings and affecting the weather in New York City seems fanciful but is the same qualitatively as one person in the right position trying to make a change causing a war to erupt.

We are all in the “right” position. Each one of our lives has meaning. Everything we do is important, unto the smallest, most mundane events of the daily grind. Every choice, every decision leads to a course of action that furthers our destinies in the direction of our total and perfect free will expression. Consider our personal limitations, either by birth or circumstance, to mirror the limitations we see in the world around us. The world, as we are, is subject to a certain set of pre-conditions. The world, as we are, is evolving past those pre-conditions in order to manifest a new state of Being. The world, as we are, is changing.

What we individually perceive “out there” in the world around us is really an image we create based upon the limitations of our biology projected on the screen of our minds. We live our lives in our minds, the thoughts we think are the reality that we create.  Our brains create connections between different kinds of information to come to conclusions about the world and we live those conclusions through our decisions. If we are not exposed to as much information as we have access to, then our en-coding of reality is potentially less complete than we need it to be in order to interpret the world as correctly as possible.

The MSM doesn’t help in this regard. Therefore, it is incumbent upon each of us to inform ourselves above and beyond the means readily available to those who are satisfied with the entertainment industry gossip, political maneuvering, reality-based inanity and war-mongering.  There is too much going on to be consciously unconscious. To choose ignorance rather than knowledge.

There may come a time when the knowledge you find, where the connections you make beyond what has been presented to you in the MSM, may be important.  Go beyond what you currently know. Seek information beyond the mainstream.  Seek the truth behind the headlines. Find yourself in others.

Consciousness seeks itself both within and without. Find yourself, and in so doing, you will find the world.

The Voice from Nowhere

The pleasures of a life are many and fleeting but are as nothing compared to the ecstasy of life. The sublime experiences of the spirit are able to lift one from the midst of the daily grind, eliciting wonder and joy, giving a higher context to the purpose of living consciously and in search of the higher aspects of self versus the gratification of the lower. The juxtaposition of the physical and the spiritual is the cauldron of happiness and sadness we traverse through our experiences, the fixation of our attention and perspective alternating between the higher and the lower aspects of our lives. Navigating the Path between the two extremes requires discipline and dedication, mind control and emotional stability.

Life is both sweet and sour and it is designed to be that way. The Earth experience is not a garden of peace nor is it a war planet. It is both and neither, it is something more and something less. The more is the sum of its parts, the objective manifestation of all potentiality within a holographic material matrix of sensual inundation and psycho-spiritual bombardment that satiates the multidimensional requirements of evolving souls. The less is its relative and subjective nature, its tendency to overwhelm the senses and the mind, resulting in crass debauchery and physical enjoyment to the detriment of the higher senses.

Once you have experienced Oneness, the Godhead/Trinity, Unity, Source, directly and unequivocally, you are forever connected to it from that moment on. It lies behind every thought, it informs every relative truth, it denies all separation. It is the futility of living false lives, of telling lies, of being greedy, of serving the needs of self over others. It is pressing the internal button to turn on the omniversal multimedia presentation called Creation, to connect to it consciously, with the intent and purpose of complying with its directives, which represent the laws of energy conservation and movement at all levels of being. In all actuality, we are never disconnected from it – as it is our Home – but the inculcation of an egoistic personality complex and the mental structures of time and space navigation combine to obscure the deeper currents of mind, where the still and placid immensity of All That Is flow unendingly, ever available to those willing to let go and let God.

The pleasures of life lived for the senses are a mere distraction from the deeper pleasures of spiritual awakening. Going beyond pleasure, beyond happiness, beyond the need for any sort of material gratification or emotional intoxication is the reward of the spiritual quest. Food, sex, violence and all variations and associated modalities satiate the sensual, those whose highest aspirations are material gratification and that is as it should be, as life takes all types and we all co-exist at different levels of understanding and experience. But for those traversing these dales of lustful travails they pale quickly, the call ever heard to seek higher, go deeper, expand vision and experience wider. The quiet whisper of Truth promising something more, something amazing, something lasting, something real. And yet, paradoxically, it is the moderate experience of both sides that reveals the true meaning of life.

Complying with the directives of Creation is following the voice from nowhere, the one that speaks without sound. Learning to still the mind and cultivate the quietude of inner peace. Existing in the Now when necessary, recognizing the Crossroads moments and embodying purest Self in response, thereby fulfilling destiny and the highest potentiality of each and ever moment.

As humans on the journey of self-discovery it is necessary for us to be gentle with ourselves along the path. We will fail. We will backslide, meander, digress for a time, it is the nature of consciousness co-opted to alternate between sleeping and awakening for a time. But there will come another time when you will suddenly realize that you are awake more than you are asleep, that you are conscious of your path and purpose and you are actively manifesting the actions necessary to embody your truest expression of Self as only you can.

But to get to this space of Being one has first to begin the journey.

The gratifying reality of real spiritual advancement is that as you initiate your conscious and directed journey to realization you become aware of the existence of certain markers and signposts along the way. There are traditions that inform the seeker about roadblocks ahead or pratfalls to be traversed. Holy books filled with the wisdom of the ages and oral traditions cached with the truth of eternity. Continued immersion within spiritual themes contributes to control of the mind as contemplative practices such as meditation and prayer rarefy the mental space, making it a fitting abode for the Divine. As the mind purifies, the thoughts purify, as the thoughts purify so do the words and, as a result, the actions.

Jesus can get you there, as can Buddha, as can Muhammad, as can Eckhart as can Blavatsky as can so many others. The understanding that surpasses sectarian subjectivity and cultural relativity is the realization that all speak of the same underlying reality by way of differing perspectives. We each take on the perspectives that are comfortable to us. All who follow the path sincerely and with dedication will arrive at the same goal eventually. The path is an inner one and the religious traditions all possess the keys that will unlock the gate. Choosing to unlock the gate is choosing to integrate the higher and lower natures and to accept life as it comes, forgoing the dependency upon the physical nature to solve our problems and determine our goals in life. Getting past impatience and anger, jealousy and greed. Cultivating patience and tolerance, compassion and altruism. Becoming a complete human being, squaring the circle and enlightening the consciousness.

A Spider’s Life: On the necessity of a perspective shift

It’s often very easy to lose perspective.

Our thought patterns and emotions are often so repetitive and so bodily overwhelming that we become mired in thought patterns of self-imposed suffering, flights of inpure fantasy and imaginative armaggedons that threaten life as we know it daily.

In recently working to strip and repaint a century-plus old building, I kept maiming and killing insects. Small, anonymous spiders that would rush out of the way of the broom, sanding paper, steel wool or paint scraper, frantically seeking safety from my invasion of their territory. Think about it:

This is my home. Of my dozens of brothers and sisters, I found this place. Small, dark. Food comes, sparsely lately. The cold is coming. But I have my home. Today … 

My transgression resulted in pure fear, rushing adrenaline (or the spider’s equivalent of such), sometimes dismemberment, and death. For what reason? From the spider’s perspective, I was death itself, come calling. Out of the blue a massive, inscrutable invasion of not only their home but their body as well, initiating fight or flight but quickly becoming flight alone as the sheer incomprehensibility and massive size of my tools, body and presence made any perceived resistance on their part not only futile but impossible. What must those insects last moments have been like?

Not like this. Why?

We are often like that. Awoken from our waking dreams by events, inscrutable and immense that seem to sweep into our lives and change everything. Events that seem to have arrived from nowhere and that just as quickly disappear somewhere leaving our lives shattered beyond repair. If we are lucky enough to survive it with only dismemberment or personal turmoil we are left contemplating what happened to us, often re-centering our repetitive thought patterns around a new fulcrum and repeating the same pattern of dwelling and tumultuous emotional intoxication that reinforces the energetic perceptual miasma within which we conduct our lives.

The insects had no greater knowledge of my purposes. They had no idea I was repainting cleaning off old paint, no conception of my motivations for doing so or the larger societal structures that put me in the direct position to impact their lives. Similarly, we as humans of a broader but still limited perspective have very little idea about the reasons why certain events happen in our lives. We are not cognizant of the forces that brought them in to play at the societal and planetary level, at the solar systemic, galactic or cosmic level.

In the face of this kind of ignorance, the subjective siren song of the body and its needs consume our thoughts and direct our actions. The two brains, the one in our head and the one in our stomach, combine to send impressions, feelings, cravings and random bodily sensations to our consciousness which has to deal with those plus the functions of the higher mind that leave us lost in the past and future as our bodies navigate the Now for us, more or less successfully, given our penchant for distraction. Given the state of modern Western society and the physical and psychological ills that affect many of its inhabitants it should not come as a surprise that perspective is difficult to inculcate and retain.

Perspective in this instance does not come from centering consciousness in the body. As stated earlier, the body is the focal point of the emotional brew, in turn affected by the deprivations and delights of the sensual world. Food or the lack thereof, water, drugs and alcohol. The more we reside within our bodies the more apt we are to be distracted by it, hence the exhortation in spiritual systems the world across to come out of the body and seek one’s true center in the Divine.

Does a spider know God?

My web, my life, perfect geometric construction of fractal reality, my senses attuned to the sun, the wind. The exhilaration of the hunt, the sweet nectar of life slowly drained from my Food, sustaining me. Moments, hours, hanging, waiting, meditating upon Being with no future and no past, only Now. My web thrums …

From the perspective of a Human Being, do we know God?

The sense of clarity and presence resultant in living life amidst the predators and the saints with a perspective moored beyond either extreme of the spectrum is a mirror reflection of the clarity and presence attuned to when consciousness is centered beyond the body and within God. God in this and every instance being commiserate with Source, the Creative Void, Pure Consciousness, Love, Home. Like a still pool reflecting the sky above, impressions from the world are like single raindrops falling to disturb the peace of stillness, reverberating, rippling outwards to manifest as signs of struggle and suffering in our lives. The process of training the mind to retain that inherent stillness is the process of creating within yourself a receptacle for the expression of the Divine upon the physical plane.

The perspective of the Divine is beyond pain. It is beyond petty needs and desires, it is beyond jealousies, envy and greed. Since my spider friends and teachers are in direct and constant commune with the Source of All That Is without the distractions that we humans are bombarded by for much of the days and years their return to that essence and final goodbye to their bodies and this world were without the kind of turmoil that humans, when faced with imminent death, are subjected – by their fears – to. The religious and culturally-derived fear of death that permeates our present milieu is a direct result of the loss of that direct and constant commune with the Source of All That Is.

The perspective of the Divine is that there is no Death. Living life honoring the body and the biological by not consciously seeking to terminate life is fulfilling a higher purpose. And yet when death occurs no matter the circumstance,  it is a perfect reflection of causes and results and levels of higher aggregation generally too abstract and multi-dimensional for our conscious minds to encompass. As chaos theory posits the effects of a leaf upon a hurricane, so each thought, word and action affects our lives and lives beyond ours at a level of interconnection that defies explication. And yet, it is, these things are.

And so we must shift our perspectives to find peace and clarity amidst the ripples, hurricanes and circumstances of life. Look past the body and its needs, society and its needs, to a higher cause, a higher affinity, a higher responsibility. The responsibility that we each have to each other, to Life, to Creation, to God. As individual shards of consciousness distilled from the multiversal brew our singular lives have purpose and meaning in the constant and never-ending evolution of All That Is, but that meaning is contextual to your meaning, to her meaning, to his meaning, to our meaning. Alone, we are units, while together we create a whole,  co-existing in all possible permutations of probability, enacting and enjoying this thing called life.

Making a Change: The personal choice to combat ignorance

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. ~George Orwell

There is no expiration date for ignorance. As the expression of a manifest desire not to know, ignorance stands as one of the most confounding illnesses that the Awakened have to deal with during this  time of intense energetic shifting and the manifestation of a new world-wide paradigm.

Ignorance is expressed at the individual level and at the collective level. Ignorance is a part of many personal choices in how to live a life. Whether to become apprised of a certain body of knowledge, let’s say, politics. Or, economics. Or even culture. Stubbornly refusing to learn about both sides of any political argument or how money is created or even how to get along with a neighbor of a different religion.

Ingrained belief systems are often to blame. Being raised in environments where diversity is low or not growing up within an environment where life-long learning is emphasized. Sometimes, ignorance is an expression of a perception of superiority. The belief that one’s own understanding and perception of the world is so right that everyone else’s must be wrong and, therefore, unworthy of the attempt at understanding.

Ignorance is also unavoidable. It is inevitable that every single person is ignorant about something, since it is not possible to know everything about everything. Since some amount of ignorance is unavoidable, the state of humility is an excellent space from which to relate to the world. Understanding that our ability to be apprised of all of the variables that comprise a situation is limited, so remaining open to new knowledge is the paramount perspective from which to view and interact with the world.

Being open to new information allows the brain to function at a higher capacity. The neural net can build new synapses, connecting old information to new, creating more complex networks that allow the individual to function beyond the abilities of those who rely upon old, static information and knowledge. Being open to new experiences allows an individual to grow in ways beyond their ability to predict or even to understand. While it is true that it is impossible to hide from life or to cover one’s head in sand and allow the winds of change to blow over with no personal effects, standing straight up and staring change in the eye is a much more preferable way to deal with the world and take charge of your perception of it.

Too many people are living under someone else’s ideas about what the world is, what it is about and why we are all here. Too many people don’t go out and find out for themselves, instead they rely upon the perceptions and opinions of others, which is fine, to an extent. If those opinions and perceptions are relied upon to the detriment of one’s individual initiative and if those opinions and perceptions form the basis of decision-making, becoming dependent upon another’s perspectives without being fully apprised of their intentions or the perspective in opposition to the one in question can represent the heights of ignorance and lead to dangerous and unwanted consequences.

Making the decision to become personally responsible for our own understanding of the world is making the decision to become a sovereign soul. Making the effort to understand both sides of any political argument, how the world in which we live works and why people different from you believe the way they do is making the decision to become an informed individual who is then qualified to make wise decisions in relation to the world around them. Learning how to navigate the informational highways in all of their personal and impersonal varieties contributes to the educational process as all of the institutional traps and dead-ends also become apparent for what they are.

The world is what it is, our perceptions of it do not necessarily match what’s really going on out there. The extent to which our understanding is limited is the extent to which we have relied upon external input or no input at all in navigating our lives. Living life on auto-pilot only works for a short time. If you encounter a bump or an air-pocket along the way it quickly becomes clear that course-correction is in order. To then return to auto-pilot is the height of ignorance. Unfortunately, that is what most people do. Follow the courses of action laid out by others, responding to emergencies and then returning to the previously unworkable course of action, washing, rinsing and then repeating, again and again and then wondering why life didn’t turn out the way you wanted it.

Take the chance to make a change. Become responsible for your perception of the world by finding things out for yourself instead of relying on others opinions. Go see for yourself. Step out of your comfort zone. Go talk to a Republican or Democrat, see why they think the way they do. Watch a movie that informs you about Modern Money Mechanics. Go talk to the Muslim or Jew or African-American down the street.

Combat ignorance with curiosity and reap the benefits of participating in your world instead of being carried along by it.

Practical Enlightenment: Dealing with instant karma

A return to the creative void, to Source and the experience of Nirvana, aligns the individual with the All.

The experience of total union, of submersion within Oneness will retaining a recognition of one’s self apart from that Oneness sears the synapses, clearing emotional detritus of a lifetime and allowing the individual to return to mundane waking life. But that does not remove her from experiencing the effects of her actions. Past karma is cleared but current karma in the Now must always be resolved as both the seed and the result are contained within every action. The wisdom of the Ages instructs without err in proclaiming that those seeking to live a higher form of life must free themselves of all attachments, be they good or bad. By so doing, future actions will not create karma that must be resolved in this or another lifetime.

But how can you live a life free of karma?

By being totally integral.

What does that mean?

By living free of obscurations. Totally clear, like a glass of water.

What are obscurations?

They are the expressions of ego. All separateness from others creates obscurations.

What are some examples of these expressions?

Lying, coveting and all behavior associated with these obscurations.

Attachments bind one to the object of attachment. Resultant behavior not in alignment with Source must be corrected to be in alignment. The purity of Source is the ultimate love, an infinite measure beyond that deemed to be human love, an expression of the totality of all emotion underlying the form of creation as the substrate of materiality, the magnetic and gravitational force that simultaneously attracts and repels, binds and releases, causes and results. As the foundational aspect of all being, its precision is mathematical in nature, encompassing all potentiality and probability, according all natural and human laws as dependent variables that range around a median modality of expression materially manifest as the cosmos and multiverse. The energetic reality underlying the objective experience enforces compliance with multiversal law which is experienced materially as thermodynamics and karma.

Human experientiality ranges in the median of all energetic variables. Our senses experience only a small fraction of the total.  We see and hear in the middle of the visual range, our other senses are limited to our perceptual awareness which is all too often minimized due to the distracted nature of our thought processes. The inherent subjectivity of human incarnation is made even more difficult by the isolation of ego and the facade of relativity mistaken as objectivity. The inability to see and experience reality clearly result in obscurations that must be reconciled along the spiritual path. That reconciliation is the goal of all aspiration.

Once the seed of karma has been watered its fruit must be born as it is an energetic equation that must eventually  be solved. The clearer one becomes the quicker the karma is resolved. The less detritus that stands in between the individual ego and Source the more direct the path between cause and result. The emotional return is dependent upon the chosen connections made following Satori, if any. The choice to remain living in the world necessitates the choice of attachments to maintain in order to retain that connection to materiality, or else the call of the formative void is too great to resist for very much longer following the direct experience of it.

What do you mean, the call is to great to resist?

Death calls, ever.

Death is the end of everything!

Death is the end of nothing.

Isn’t death fearsome?

Death is the end of fear.

How is it possible for one to be afraid of a place one has visited previously? This is the primary gift of Satori. The sure knowledge of what lies beyond the mortal veil. From the moment of that realization on, fear of death is done. All lesser fears immediately or gradually fade away as well.

Nothing in this Creation can truly harm any of us. Living life consciously in awareness of Life after Death is to live a life of total Freedom. Realizing that the choices and the conditions of a life are shifting and ephemeral is to take away their power to give rise to fear within and, if and when the choice to live according to full knowing is made, the person so connected to that which lies beyond becomes the living expression of the infinite and eternal and the ancient truisms pertaining to divinity without and within become the lived modality of being. All thoughts, words and actions are then in alignment with Source as Source is the direct knower, manifesting through the material vessel of the individual who has evolved to this state of manifestation. Certain aspects of personality remain, the ego remains, but now as a servant rather than the master of the vessel.

Those who achieve this state of being are often apart but never lonely as their compassion fills the world, connects them to all souls within the world and beyond. Normal relationships may fall by the wayside as people move on, as they are not receiving what they were previously on the emotional side of the relationship. The individual may appear uncaring on the level of romantic love, even though the heart of compassion is alive within them. To old friends and lovers, they may seem like a different person altogether. And they are. The memories of the person they were before remain, but the emotional connections no longer define them. The experience of true unity, true all-encompassing, all-permeating, all-existent love, compassion and one-ness contextualizes human aspiration and life and we incarnate within its grasp become visible at our true scale in relation to all things.

Such  a revelation can be staggering if ego is engaged fully, its impermanence and instability on display as always. But beyond ego there is a space of knowing that we all have. An understanding of where we have come from and where we are all eventually returning to that can reveal the true meaning of life beyond the dramas, the pain and the tears. All of that has its place in our existence and is meaningful to our individual and collective spiritual growth. Everything is an expression of one thing and nothing is separate. Absolutely nothing.

The seed and its fruit are implicit in every thought, word and action. If you do something, what you thought would happen? Will happen. And it will be what you knew would happen all along.

Now you just have to deal with it.

The Enlightenment Series

The Great Gathering

Practical Enlightenment: The aftermath of Kenshō

The End of Forever

Practical Enlightenment: Living in the World

Practical Enlightenment: Processing the emotions of other people

Practical Enlightenment: The vale of tears

Practical Enlightenment: Dealing with instant karma

True Awakening: The conservation of energy

What are you thinking? Core aspects of BEing-ness …

What are you thinking about?

Nothing.

C’mon, tell me.

Absolutely nothing. My mind is empty.

At this point in the conversation, the person you are engaged with will generally give you a look intimating that you have lost touch with sanity. Then they will laugh and continue to press you until you tell them what you were thinking about.

When people answer “Nothing” in response to that question, it usually means that what they are thinking about isn’t worth discussing, or they don’t want to talk about it. It can be anything from having sex with the person they are talking to, to  feeling uncomfortable because they have gas and don’t want to raise a stink. The answer, “Nothing”, is a way to get out of answering the question truthfully and perhaps changing the topic of discussion to something more comfortable to deal with publicly.

But what if, when asked the question, you really are thinking about absolutely nothing?

What if your mind is actually cleared of discursiveness and you are engaged in the act of non-abidance?

This feat is so un-imaginable for most people that if you attempt to tell them about it or describe it to them they will again look at you like you’re crazy and change the subject themselves, as the thought of being without the constant running discourse of thoughts that most people have continually running through their head is nigh inconceivable.

It sounds so hard to do. And it is so hard to do. But there is a paradox there because it is not as hard as it sounds. And to do it is not hard. The contradiction lies in the fact that to do it, you have to do nothing. You have to just stop. Stop doing. Release, let go, cultivate silence of the inner self. But if you’ve ever tried to meditate before, then you know that once you sit down and close your eyes, the thoughts start to cascade through your mind like a waterfall, seemingly without end. You may have found yourself in daydreams or thinking about what’s for dinner or remembering some past hurt or hoping for something in the future. You may have sat down with the intention to meditate, but all it seems that you did was to think in a constant and steady stream of words and images, as usual.

It takes time to practice non-abidance successfully. Breath meditations allow one to concentrate on something automatic while observing the passage of thoughts as they flow through your mind. Once you are able to observe them, you will see that they are like mirages, with no real substance in and of themselves. The emotions we feel are exactly the same way. It may come to mind at some point that if all of this thinking and emoting is really so ephemeral, then why do we spend so much time acting on them as if they were real?

…

…

…

Exactly.

There is a space that exists in every situation, in every moment, where we can make a choice. That space exists before we say a word, before we take an action. We can choose what we are going to say, we can choose what we are going to do. We are sovereign individuals, we are not slave to our thoughts, we are not slave to our emotions.

Or are we?

Are you?

Do you think before you speak? Do you think before you act? Do you find yourself blurting out thoughts? Do you find yourself acting out? Do you find yourself regretting the things you say and do?

If you do, then what you are really regretting is what you think and feel, because thought and emotion precedes words and actions every time. If you can control your thoughts and emotions, you can control your words and actions. If you can control your words and actions then you can control the way that you perceive yourself and the way that you perceive the world.

Sounds like a useful goal, doesn’t it? To be able to truly take responsibility for yourself in every way possible? To live a conscious life, being careful in thought, word and deed?

It is a goal worth striving after. It is a life worth living.

Once you have come to a point in your life where you have succeeded at controling your thoughts, words and actions, you will see your life change as a result. Your life situation will change, the people around you will change in relation to you, you will change in relation to yourself. You will find out that all of the wise, pithy words that you’ve rolled your eyes at over the years were actually true and that there is something to all of this self-transformation stuff after all, because the quality of your life will improve drastically once you make the choice to improve yourself in all of your Core Aspects of BEing-ness.

It’s worth the time to explore your inner world and find out who you truly are. Yes, you will have to go through a lifetime of detritus, a lifetime of pain will have to be recapitulated, as will a lifetime of joys. You will probably deal with the emotions all over again, deal with the hard memories, face up to some things about yourself that you are ashamed of and never wanted to ever think about again. But the up-side of doing so is that once you face them squarely, take responsibility for yourself and your thoughts, words and actions – even in the past – you can clear your slate of the backlog of karma that you would otherwise have waiting for you at some point later in this lifetime or the next.

And if you are living a well-favored life, who knows? You might forego the need to ever have to come back here again!

And that’s a goal worth stopping thoughts for.

Insane Thoughts and Crazy Talk: Who are you, really?

There seems to be a lot of negativity going around in the last few days. Wherever I turn, wherever I look someone is ready to start a fight and someone else is there too, ready to end it.

Perhaps it is mercury retrograde right now, but communications are at a standstill. People are standing on virtual street-corners screaming out their truths and not caring who is listening or responding back. The babble is continuous and it is rising as space weather increases and the sun pops off flare after flare, as things go downhill even further in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world, as politics in the USA heat up, as our lives continue to progress along their winding paths and our personal dramas ratchet up a notch or three, all connected, all beholden to the same energetic input that must find its resolution through some form of activity, some means of resolution. All of the voices, shouting, screaming, crying, complaining, querulous and fearful at heart, the anger, the rage but a front masking the underlying terror. Despite the noise, there seems to be no resolution possible. They all can’t seem to hear each other because the chatter in their own minds is too loud.

The chatter that lies between the stillness that is your Truth and the world without. The chatter that is continuous for some people. The chatter that streams forth in a constant volley of unthinking discursiveness for some, the chatter that is released after considered but still inadequate rumination in others.

The chatter that it is our goal in life to still.

What? You can still the chatter?

Yes. You can.

But why would I want to still the chatter? It is my thoughts!

No, it is your ego’s thoughts. You are not your ego. 

But my ego is my personality! My history, my life, my experiences! My likes, my dislikes, everything! My ego is who I am!

That is what most everybody thinks. That is what our life experiences seem to tell us, at least. The life experiences that make up our personal history. Our childhoods with our parents and siblings, our time in school, our friends, our secrets and our shames, our triumphs and our joys. These are the things that we count on to represent our journey through life, these are the things that we recount when people ask us about ourselves, who we are, what our biography is, what our life is about. For those of us who are a bit more thoughtful, we might even put them in some sort of topical order and call that our path through life, as if the details of our journey are the sum of our experience and make up the totality of what we have gained along the way.

What do you mean, I am not my ego?

Your ego is limited. You are limitless.

Remember. Think back. Examine your memories. For many of you, there will be at least one that is characterized by stillness. By some moment or collection of moments when you looked around at the world and you realized that you were a part of it. There were no thoughts in this memory. Only wonder, what some might call an epiphany. It might have been when you were looking at a newborn baby, or a loved one, or a pet, or even a sunset or some other scene of natural beauty. Some moment in your life when you got it, when you understood that you were a part of something grander than the petty dramas of your life, the likes and dislikes, the hatreds and loves.

Many of us have these memories because, in those moments, we had connected with something within ourselves that is usually hidden. Something quiescent but that is always present, that is always there, watching, behind the thoughts, behind the imagination, behind the memories, behind the emotions. Something still. Something pervasive. Something that is definitely present, that is recording every single instant, every thought, every iota of information both conscious and unconscious that passes before your eyes, that crosses your mind. If you stop, right now, close your eyes and sit for a moment, turning your attention inward toward your thoughts, delving deeper than the discursive chatter that typifies the mental workings of most people, you will catch a glimpse of that something. Try it.

But what is it?

It is you.

But isn’t it the same thing as my ego? My personality?

No. 

It is what remains when your personality is gone. It is what remains when your ego dissolves. It is what remains when you die. It is consciousness. It is unbound, it is eternal, it is infinite. It is awareness. It is vast, it is inscrutable, it is impenetrable.

There are many spiritual traditions that attempt to describe it but since it is indescribable, they resort to parables, riddles and koans. It can only be experienced. It can only be realized through intense inner scrutiny and personal mental work for the purpose of stilling the discursive tendency of the ego in order to get behind it, to get beyond it, to get to the crux of who you are. It is the meaning of the ancient saying, Know Thyself. It is the meaning of the ancient truism, As Above, So Below. it is the meaning of the ancient recognition that God is Within.

It is the most ancient of mysteries, hidden in plain sight, shouting out its presence to those deaf to its voice. It is the space of emptiness that is not emptiness, the creative void of potential within each of us that connects us to the creative void of potential that is the Multiverse itself, that is God itself. It is where the many gods and goddesses spring from, much like humanity itself, it is where the nature spirits and the ultradimensional consciousnesses arise, descend through the levels of materialization and take on form, where God splits and multiplies unto infinity playing at separation to experience itself in all of its diverse unity, a multitude of seemingly cacophonous voices expressing the will of one overriding consciousness, one overriding life, one overriding love.

Wait, all of that is too much. My life is hard enough just dealing with the daily grind.

It is not enough. You must realize. You cannot Awaken until you do.

But why? Why can’t I just live my life? Why do I have to think about things like this?

That is exactly the problem. Too much thinking.

How Do You Sell Your Soul? Daily, and for cheap

What is wrong with living our lives?

Nothing. Everything is as it should be.

What can be the cost of living our lives?

Our souls.

What do you mean by that?

The choices we make in the course of living our lives determine what happens after our lives are done.

Being comfortable in life is one of the primary goals society programs into us as citizens of different countries. Despite the geographic differences and distances, Western culture as a whole displays remarkable similitude in how ideofacts and sociofacts are ingrained within populations. To be successful in any of the Western cultures, a modicrum of capitalistic ideology and consumer-oriented methodology must be inculcated by groups, families and individuals. To belong and to epitomize the expression of said culture, the actual, material expression of lifetime success is a relative degree of affluence as measured by the modernization memes that permeate Eurocentric society and those sycophant socieities serving as peripheral outposts of raw material and low-wage earner extraction.

The daily choice of complying with the demands of modern society result in the accumulation of karmic debt as a result. Because we choose to work, we accept the ramifications of what it means to do that work. If I am a police officer, then I accept the consequences of protecting the property of the rich. If I am an Insurance salesman, I accept the consequences of propping up a system built upon the enslavement of human beings. If I am a soldier, I accept the consequences of being involved in corporate mercenary adventurism. If I work at a fast food restaurant, then I accept the consequences of feeding customers food that not only is not good for them but actually helps to kill them.

Society is successful because of the complicity of ordinary human beings. Because we need jobs, because we have to pay our bills, because we have to drive our cars, because we have to live, we accept the consequences of contributing to the continuation of the vast life-draining machinery that we call modern Western society. We accept our complicity in it continuance often not even wanting to know the details of that agreement. We don’t want to know the depths of the crimes we are engaged in by association and by active work. We would rather take our paychecks and spend them on big-screen televisions, be able to go out to nice restaurants with our friends on the weekend and imbibe in more death-dealing food, drugs and alcohol in order to drown ourselves in oblivion as a result of not wanting to face up to the consequences of our lifestyles and what those lifestyles actually support.

It is painful to look at the path of a lifetime and determine that you are not on the side of the good guys. If you come to realize it, you may ask the universe, but what else could I have done? What other choices did I have? And the answers to those questions might have shaken you to your very core. Or given rise to a visceral fear that the loss of material security must result in.

In these days and times of political and social unrest, of economic insecurity and planetary shifts, nothing is certain. No life, no relationship, no job, no aspect of the natural world currently exists in a state of equilibrium, all is in flux. This flux is resulting in the gradual coalescence of a new paradigm of interrelation that must of necessity result in a more sustainable global society, a society based upon principles of egalitarianism rather than unrestrained capitalism and economic privation.

Despite the fact that everything as it currently exists is as it should be, that does not mean that there is not room for change. Since change on a global level must start with change on a personal level it is incumbent upon all who desire to live a conscious life in support of sustainable interrelationships with each other and the world, all attempts at shifting the paradigmatic focus must start within us each. Each one of us must go within and find out what it is that we are made of. In order to do that, we must determine, first, what our major illusions are, what our fears are, what is it in our lives that is holding us back from being all that we can be?

What is holding you back?

What do you fear?

What is it in your life that you absolutely cannot afford to lose?

What is it that causes you to compromise all of your vaunted ideals and accept less than you deserve?

Asking these questions – actually realizing that these questions need to be asked – is one of the first steps to choosing to awaken to some of the deeper realities of life. Of accepting the fact that the way things have been is not the way things should be and that a change is in order. Accepting your compliance with the system and that you are indeed an agent of the system as long as you work for and through the system to support the global hierarchy of dominance and control is a big step in figuring out how to create a lifestyle of non-compliance and opposition to the machine.

That opposition does not have to be violent. In fact, non-compliance is one of the best and most effective ways to isolate systemic institutions and marginalize them to the extent that new, people-centered and sustainable institutions arise to serve the needs of a humanity more concerned with living life instead of accumulating capital and material goods. Living life in support of life, in support of animal rights, in support of human rights, in support of the earth’s rights beyond the capacity of formal institutions based upon capitalistic redistribution of wealth that actually serves to continue the concentration of wealth among the Haves rather than increase its availability to the so-called Have-nots. Going beyond money to reclaim a basic goodness and sense of shared destiny and circumstance that binds us all together as a whole – rather than continue giving power to the separation memes dividing us into classist, ethnic and individual parts – is the only way to make sense of any future conceptualization of life in this world. Anything less can only be a continuation of what is already occurring.

And the way life is being lived right now – or dreamed of being lived right now – by way too many is not what life is supposed to be about. Making money. Being rich. Being famous. People sell their souls on the daily and watch themselves, helplessly, as their spark for life lessens, as their bitterness grows, as their bodies age and their minds ossify in regret and lost hope. And they wonder what happened and when, knowing all the while exactly what happened and when they made the choice to conform to the life presented them and to give up their dreams for a sense of false security.

These things are distractions from the true purpose of life. Introspection. Inner growth. Spiritual evolution.

Happiness, love. Peace.

What is right with our lives?

Everything. Living in awareness is conscious evolution.

What is the reward for living a good life?

Stability of surroundings, of societal and familial roles. Peace of body and mind.

Is that really a goal worth living for?

It is the only goal worth living for.