NOTES ON CONSCIOUSNESS
Excerpted from, and related to Eckert Tolle’s work in
A New Earth
There is CONSCIOUSNESS.
There are “OBJECTS”.
“Objects” is a slippery word, because
A THOUGHT PATTERN IS ALSO AN “OBJECT!
(Sometimes the word “Awareness” is a helpful substitute for the
word Consciousness)
MUSIC:
“Furniture Pieces”= Objects.
About perfect renditions of known entities.
“Processes Pieces” = Contextual Relationships
Room design, function, moving the furniture around,
More like Weather
They are about experiencing POTENTIAL in the form of sound.
“This Could happen” “This Might happen” “What if…?”
Therefore, Consciousness and Awareness – IN THE MOMENT.
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All KNOWING IS WITHIN THE REALM OF DUALITY
Subject and Object, the Knower and the Known.
Consciousness/Spirit is NOT OF THAT REALM, and therefore,
Can’t be known through it.
This is because THE “I”, the “EXPERIENCER” has no form.
Only FORMS can be KNOWN.
Therefore: Consciousness – the traditional word for which is
SPIRIT – cannot be known in the normal sense of understanding
a word.
(Seeking is FUTILE)
Although you Cannot Know Consciousness, you can become
conscious of it as your SELF.
You can SENSE it directly in any situation.
The words you are hearing now are the foreground, THE
FURNITURE,
and Consciousness, the “I AM”, is the Sub-straight,
the Underlying Background,
the PROCESS of every experience, thought, and feeling that you
have.
Can you feel the “energy” of it in your body and behind your
thoughts?
So, who is TAS? I AM.
And what am “I”? – CONSCIOUSNESS
What is Consciousness?
This question CANNOT BE ANSWERED
- because it goes beyond thought forms.
The moment you “answer” it, you falsify it,
Because you make it into an OBJECT.
You can approach it metaphorically – something like the
dialectical method used by Jung to study the Unconscious.
It is ALWAYS a METAPHOR, NOT A SIMILE.
But you cannot reach a final definition –
partially because CONSCIOUSNESS is always EXPANDING
[Awareness both Expands and Contracts]
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TIP:
“When you leave the realm of the Transcendent, you immediately
enter the world of opposites”,
the realm of Duality (and Multiplicity). This is Reversable!
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Definition of Ego - from Oprah Interview # 2,
EGO = Identification with forms – primarily thought forms.
THE (complete) SELF IDENTIFICATION WITH THE STREAM
OF THINKING.
Why the parenthesis? Because there are various levels of ego
involvement.
Tolle says:
“If evil has any reality (and it is a relative reality) it’s this:
complete identification with forms, primarily thought forms.”
CAUTION:
Mind-Made Images are VERY SUSCEPTALE to OUTSIDE
INFLUENCES (advertisers, insinuations of various sorts, and so on)
EVIL = Complete Ego involvement, complete identification with
objects (including the stream of words in your thinking).
Because this makes us forget what/how we really are:
This breaks or weakens one’s connection to “the Whole” of nature;
Evil = A break in your connection to all of life and existence.
This results in (total) unawareness of your connectedness with the
“Whole”,
Unawareness of your intrinsic Oneness with every OTHER, as well
as with the “Source”.
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This kind of Forgetfulness is “Original Sin”, suffering, or delusion.
Our movement AWAY from Paradise
“Eating from The Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good and Evil”
metaphorically represents the BIRTH of our ABILITY to THINK.
Thinking was very good at first, but it slowly took over.
This was to the exclusion of other ways of connecting to the world.
* Why do you suppose we are doing Movement/Embodyment work on Thursdays?!?!
Memory, Past Conditioning, and Mental Concepts (all made up of
Thinking) have come to dominate most people’s awareness and
presence in the world.
People now derive their sense of “who they are” from their stream
of thinking; from mind-made images.
THIS DIVIDES THEM
They split themselves in two:
“The Story of ME”.
“There’s Me and My Story: Me and Myself”,
as in “I said to Myself”, or
“I can no longer live with “Myself”
What exactly is the “IT” that can no longer live WITH IT’S SELF?
Remember: This was Tolle’s big breakthrough realization!!!
It led him to see that his True Essence is Prior to Thinking and
Goes Beyond It.
Many people are not aware of what they are BEYOND their own
Mental Image of who they are.
It is what you are BEYOND the limitations of your mental selfimage that is the truest and most primary ground of your
being.
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This is many people’s reality:
As soon as something is perceived, it is named, interpreted,
compared with something else, liked, disliked, or called good or
bad by the phantom self: The Ego.
It is through this constant “naming” that the Ego remains in place
as the Unobserved Mind.
Most people are imprisoned in thought forms, in objectconsciousness.
You do not awaken spiritually until you become aware of the
compulsive “Naming” and are, thus, able to observe it as it
happens.
“Be Still, and Know that I Am God”
Whenever the naming ceases
(Naming = the stream of word-objects in your mind),
even when you just become aware that the “naming” is happening,
you can sense an Inner Space (Also called PESENCE)
and your are no longer completely Possessed by the Mind.
Remember:
It is what you are BEYOND the limitations of your mental selfimage that is the truest and most primary ground of your being.
You are NOT your experiences, you are THE EXPERIENCER.
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THE EXPERIENCER IS PRIOR TO ALL EXPERIENCE, BUT
WITHOUT IT THERE WOULD BE NO EXPERIENCE!
“What Was Your Face Before Your Parents Were Born?”
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When Ego seeks out and attaches itself to things
it is substituting them for BEINGNESS, which EGO is UNABLE
to FEEL.
EGO CAN’T FEEL, it can only THINK
TECHNIQUE:
Awareness (of Breathing) creates gaps in the stream of thinking.
Without those gaps, your thinking becomes repetitive and
uninspired.
These gaps will lengthen as you practice this.
Bring these gaps into your daily activities
Intersperse Thinking with Awareness; with SPACE
What does “Inspired” mean?
It means: “Having been Breathed Into”
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Remember our Sem Ticket quote:
“We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective
consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God
speaks chiefly through dreams and visions. The Buddhist discards
the world of unconscious fantasies as useless illusions; the
Christian puts his Church and his Bible between himself and his
unconscious; and the rational intellectual does not yet know that
his consciousness is not his total psyche” (p. 92).
“Subjective Consciousness” means EGO here!
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Jung says that there is both an Inner and Outer Ego
He reminds us that the Unconscious parts of our Psyche have their
own priorities and sense of direction.
This is related to the inner “Great Man” (great person), and to the
psyche’s natural gravitation toward Individuation.
POSSIBILITYALERT:
Finding One’s Purpose is when the Inner and Outer Egos are
in “agreement” about one’s direction in life.
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How Do You Move Through Daily Experience:
Is this Moment an obstacle to be overcome (because you have to
get to some other moment); a means to an end, a stepping stone to
get to the next moment?
Ask “How do I relate to the Present Moment?” – because that is
your relationship to life, and...
Life always reflects back to you your Predominant State of
Consciousness.
So, what is your relationship with Life?
Is it hostile, do you make the present moment into an obstacle, or
even an enemy?
If so, you will consistently feel life as an obstacle or an enemy.
SOLUTION:
You can go into “Presence”, be aware of the “Now”, and problems
will lighten.
Yes, you you’ll still have challenges, but not “Problems”.
Problems require that you fixate on them and leave the present
moment; go into future projection or ruminations on the past:
Into Obsessive Thinking!
Can you not be present because you have TOO MUCH ON YOUR
MIND???
Careful, the mind will sometimes tell you that there is no point in
even trying to be present.
However, if you are present, it will lead to “Right Action”.
- But that’s for another program!!!!!!!!!!!