The Movement of Conciousness

You cannot force consciousness to be conscious. It must first dwell within the realm of the unconscious. Consciousness is a movement, it is your enlightenment. Yes, intention brings you inline with consciousness so that the process flows...so that one becomes aware, but if we are to try and force consciousness, force it through will, we simply are left with the experience of forcing consciousness. What needs to occur is processing. We must process consciousness so that consciousness can become known. The process is inward observation. Simply that. So sit with oneself, when one is quiet and still the unconscious can begin to move, can begin to stir, and can become to be known.

Silence requires nothing. Therefore the evolution of consciousness, in a sense, requires nothing. It simply requires a release...an environment that supports the movement of the unconscious into conscious awareness is an environment that respects utmost the inward experience of living. When we do not go within, we go with out. And simply, if we are to move towards "realization" we must simply realize. Consciousness evolution than is the product of awareness, internal processing, acceptance, and subsequent release. This is the movement of human conscious energy that goes unchallenged by dogma, thought paradigm, and the definitions of self.

Repetitive Patterns in our Relationships: Enhancing our Conscious Awareness of Self Through the Mirror of Relationship

At the core of each and everyone of us we desire to be loved. We also desire to bring love into someone else's life. Typically we are graced with these opportunities throughout our lives. Some more so than others although it is not the quantity of relationship that matters but the quality. One person may acquire as much love and experience from one relationship as another would from three separate ones. It is all about intent. Yet often we find that our intent makes itself manifest in repetitive patterns in our relationships. There is an unconscious element to this.

As it is, we are always in relationship. There is never true isolation. Even when we are alone. We are in constant relationship with the environment and its people around us. Our inward projections, our emotions, reveal the unconscious and conscious feelings that play themselves out in our relationships. Many of us, if not all of us to a certain degree, are still in relationship to the past. This is where the unconscious element is found. For we would not relate to the past if we were fully conscious of this. Yes we may be sentimental to the past, but this is not what I am referring too.

The relationship to the past consists of the emotional "residue" [emotional body] that was created through the interaction of our inherent personality with the experiences of our entire lives, from our infancy all the way to the present moment. It is this emotional body, along with our individual mode of expression, that influences the way in which we interact with everything and everyone.

It is the emotional body that influences the "conditions" of our relationships. The conditions being our emotional responses to the variables of our inter-personal relationships:

What is important to conceptualize is that we filter our relationships through our emotional body. This causes us to create conditions that play out our intra-psychic energy [intra-psychic meaning it deals just with the relationship to oneself, as opposed to inter-psychic which refers to our relationship with another]. What I mean by "play out" is that we reflect our intra-psychic processes on another to cause an energy that resonates between the two people. When both people do this to another...that is, they play out inther intra-psychic enegry upon another the couple creates an interplay to whereas ones own inra-psychic energy can be magnified., become more easily perceptible. This is the mirror of relationship. This is how we can see deeply within the reflective mirror of another into the depths of our unconscious and conscious aspects of being.

The mirror of relationship allows us to look deeply into ourselves. I think we can agree that it is the emotional body that causes us to "react" in our relationships. When we cater to the emotional body we cater to the past. We "play out" our past upon another [this is the basis for conditions within a relationship]. This is not to say that our relationships and experiences are not to be emotional, they are...very much so...but when our mind shapes the emotional body in a way, when the mind identifies with the pain and hence holds it in place...the emotion experienced becomes an emotion of the past. We repeat the past. That is if we are unconscious of our intra-psychci energy. The more we are aware of our intra-psychic process the more we can be released from the conditions we so typically put around love and walk into the experience of love as if it is a liberating exchange of energy.

We are "reactive" when we let the past unconsciously affect how we relate to the current relationship [in whatever capacity]. The emotional body is mostly unconscious to us, but the more conscious we become of it, the more we are able to walk more deeply into unconditional love. I make such a broad connection based on the observation that in my own life, the more I have become aware of my own patterns and relation to my current relationships, the more I realize I have the capacity within me to move into a state of openness with everyone. "Openness" is "oneness" with another.

Of course I am guarded like anyone else, but I strive to come to accept and witness that everyone acts the way they do, including myself, in a way that acts to protect their heart from pain, from abandonment, and from lose. Yes pain, abandonment, and lose, are mind concepts of which derived from our relation to fear that has been driven into us through social fear paradigms...yes, these mind concepts are in a sense abstract and not "real" for they are the past, yet these pains nonetheless linger within us and we attribute to them their "realness" through our identification with them [which more likely than none is unconscious too us]. This perpetuates the emotional body and enables it to be "real." For if the mind "knows" that this fear is real, than it becomes our experience [and we suppress aspects of ourselves, we let lie dormant aspects of our conscious awareness to ward ourselves from our sensitivity...becuase when we are sensitive in a fearful world...we embody it very deeply.]

The emotional pain body is unconscious to us for there are painful things that we wish not to deal with. But I promise you this, when we become brave enough to look beneath the surface we grant ourselves the opportunity to liberate ourselves from the unconscious impulses that keep us in repetitive patterns in our relationships. And it are these repetitive patterns that create the conditions of our relationships. And conditions, only limit the love, put a box around it, and diminish its ability to heal. For healing is growing and growing sometimes is not always pain free. But "growing" is freedom, for this is what the soul yearns for. Remember, the pain only comes from the witnessing of our unconscious reservoir, but it is a reservoir that is not infinite and can be cleared. Unconditional love is possible for us all.

What exactly is unconditional love? I can use words to try to describe it, but it nonetheless evades definition. For how can the most profound act of existence itself be contained by words. But I can say one thing...it is a love that makes us feel more alive, it is a love that encourages us to keep evolving. Maybe conditions will always exist...maybe the unconscious reservoir will always exist; maybe that is the purpose of the relative world. Yet what I am saying is that there is always something too move towards. There is a karmic and spiritual purpose for growth through the mirror of relationship. It seems to me that the purpose is too allow ourselves to shed the emotional past so that the soul of self, the absolute self, can transcend the conditions that the emotional body and the mind create. The mind, and the ego may always "be here" with us, for they "should," for they allow us to know what we are transcending, but when the "should" is transformed into "irrelevant" we have moved closer to world peace and harmony [do not think that world peace does not exist through the mirror of relationship. That is the only place it exists].

So allow yourself to take a step back. Witness another. Witness their defenses. And what you may begin to see may profoundly transform you. For in that moment you may realize that their condition, there inability to unconditionally love you stems from the psychic pain to which they identify with. The past has held a lot of pain for us and when we witness this in another we begin to see how they unconditionally love to ward themselves from the preconceived pain that they "may" receive from another. In a world of "what if's" and "possibilities" we protect ourselves from the pain too which we feel is inherent in relationships. We have been conditioned, through the pain of our parents, to see that all love contains conditions. It is a pain body that has moved with us from generation to generation and is also contained with the social norms. Yet, when we become aware of this pain within another we are given the ability to see it comfortably within ourselves...This is not a selfish thing, this is not a cop out. This is just the mirror of relationship. Because to see something in another means that we give ourselves the opportunity to see "it" within ourselves. It is all about opportunity, for the opportunity of unconditional love, or love beyond the conditions that the pain body creates for us is within our reach.

Knowledge and Understanding

Is there a difference between coming to knowing oneself and understanding oneself? These two words, knowing and understanding, I will use, as a matter of semantics, to try to observe something about human nature. What than is it to know oneself? What are we "knowing?" What is it to understand oneself? What is it that we are "understanding?" In many ways these two words can be used interchangeably. But for the matter of this post knowledge will imply a thought form, a solidified, agreed upon [however subjectively] fact, either about a person or about a situation. Understanding will be more feeling oriented. The understanding of something is an assurance through the witnessing of oneself.

When we come to know ourselves through some idea, some concept or such we find "salvation," for no longer do we need to search. We are confident for we know who we are. We are a "________," etc., but could this salvation, this confidence of self, be nothing more than ego gratification [ego gratification in the sense that is puts us in a psychological state where we become more so desensitized to our effectual core and its existential need for liberation]? Could this declaration of who we are be nothing more than a mere distraction? Does this declaration of self not limit the reach of our existence within a cognitive framework? Are we than not distracted from witnessing the real experiential self that is boundless, that escapes all definition, of which is a part of the flow of nature?

When we declare a "knowing" about our selves we structure our identity around some cognitive formulation. This cognitive formulation than, in a sense, is what we declair as "truth" and becomes what we pay homage too for we give it our attention. When someone "knows" that they are, for instance, a Christian, they see themselves within the cognitive boarders that describe, to the person subjectively, what it is to be a Christian. There is a confidence from such a declaration for there is a sense of salvation. "I know thyself" the ego declares! Due to the religious nature of this declaration the ego feels important, if feels as if it belongs to something greater than itself. Yet, in the religious sense, there is a declaration of what is holy, what "I" belong too and such, and in a way there is a salvation that is born, for the self declaration, the self "knowledge" assures the person that they no longer need to seek, for they know! There is peace. But is this peace, is this knowing, not derived from an abstraction?, from a reliance on some sort of authority? Is it a distraction in the sense that it gets the mind to perform the illusory trick of believing that it knows what is actually going on. Yet can we really come to know the totality of life, the totality of our existence through words and identification with them...can we really know when we declare we know...or do we only understand when we put aside our knowledge and come to feel what it is to be you, what life is, what the mystery of the expanses are?

Is God a word or an experience?

Spirits in Nature

When the Native Americans, or most indigenous people for that matter, witnessed nature, for example say the wind, they held the notion that there was a great spirit moving the tree. To the indigenous people the wind is a spirit form. Today when we see the wind...we see the thought that the word has created, and typically we bypass the witnessing of the actual experience becuase we are so tied up psychologically thinking the word. Our perception of the world outside of us, in this case observing the wind move through a tree, becomes a mere thought instead of a "witnessing".

Furthermore, what is the difference between observing the wind as some causal event or as some intervention from something divine? Is the scientific observation of the "wind" not merely a description of what is unfolding? So than how does the observation of something, the scientific analysis of something, render it not divine, or not meta-physical? Because we lack the science to understand the non-physical that does not mean it does not exist. One word: Love...is that a creation of the physical? - or does the spiritual energy of "the divine" make itself apparent in the manifest and subsequent experience of feeling love.

When we can witness the "wind" without our observation of the nature around us being filtered through the cognitive creations of symbolism, linguistic interpretations, and such, we see the totality of the experience. We feel it with our eyes. When we see the "wind" around us...rustling through the world...when we observe, with our hearts, the pulse of this experience we see that the divine is here and always was. This is what the Native American people meant that the wind was a spirit. For them witnessing the wind was a spiritual experience. They did not so much focus on the words and identifications of things. They experienced them.

Yes, we can abstract but can we listen with our hearts and gaze with our eyes? Herein lies our ability to know how to abstract reality, but furthermore how to experience reality.

The Inner World of One Self

Ultimately, our perception is our reality. Yes, our perception is shaped by the collective society, but the way in which we are conditioned is nonetheless under the governing influence of ourselves. The social conditioning which I speak of takes form in our identification with symbols; words, ideas, concepts, etc. It is the identification with symbols, idols, and concepts that drive the separation we have with the inner voice within, for if our focus is in the mind, through the imitation of some ideal our actions become mere repetitions. Our being becomes an imitation of a thought paradigm and hence we stagnant for we loose our self in the word that we believe we are or the word that describes what we are doing. Identification with words creates a separation from our experiential experience. This separation diminishes our ability to be here Now.

In regards to the "past," we can become conditioned to believe that the words in which we use to describe a prior experience are actually who we are. We can allow our selves to hold onto certain things we find true about ourselves even when they are born of the yesterdays. This "certain thing" is the emotional energy tied up with the word or experience which we identify with. This energy, of which is a stored emotion from the past becomes your now. We can claim that we are the way you are because of what happened to us, or who our parents where, etc., etc...and this may be "true," but it is as only "true" as to the strength to which we give those convictions, those identified with conditions.

Once you assume that you "know" yourself, and you declare that there is something about you that is "real," you lock in place the perception you hold about yourself. Yet, could it be possible that we are beyond the symbols, words, concepts, and ideas we use to attribute a sense of meaning to our lives? Could it be possible that the words in which we try to assume meaning from are inherently limited in their ability to describe the experiences they are symbolized after, created after?

Furthermore when we declare that we know ourselves we are nonetheless using the past as a marker of who we are now. Yes what we have accomplished and experienced in the past becomes the energy of who we are now but there is also something about each and every one of us that escapes time. And it is this aspect of one self that escapes time that is really who we are. This aspect of oneself that is not bound to any time, or to even any experience is the absolute nature of your spirit. It is free of time in the sense that it will always exist, it always existed, and yet it exists right now. This is soul. And this the energy that is you beyond the collective emotional build-up of your past experiences.

Ultimately it is our choice that dictates whether or not our mental and spiritual energy gives heed to the collective energy of the past. Yes, the past is what it was, but it was, it is now no longer. So how can the words of the past touch the vastness of the now, of which is beyond words, for it is constantly taking shape, constantly becoming defined?

In regards to the past traumas and ills of our lives, they remain if we decide to leave the stone of our unresolved energy alone. If we use words and symbols, ideals and idols, to meander our perception around the things we wish to leave unobserved we become more entranced by our conditions, more repetitive in our actions, and we subsequently become more attached to mental identity forms we cannot come to move away from. For how are we to move away from the things we believe we are if we cannot move away from identifying with words and ideas? The past now an idea. The past may have left an energy residue that hinders your joy, but it is our identification with this energy, our identification with the words and ideas of that energy that either keep it alive and conscious to us or alive and unconscious [for words cannot touch what is conscious]. Yet, in either case, the "pain body" is alive.

Yes we must look, but be afraid not, for your past cannot inherently hurt you,...that is unless you choose it too...It seems "plausible" that sometimes we must unconsciously choose to first experience the pain, which in turn creates the need for our defenses. Yet, from a long term perspective, this enables the experience of, what it is to know experientially, the birthing of the "new self."

[did your emotion react in anyway to this; why not observe that if so...
also note how I said "your emotion:" implying that it is your creation...]

If we can look and honor whatever it is that comes up in us we allow for life experience to come through with our psychological defenses diminished. When the defenses are down we inherently accept the "what is." But how do we do this?

Defenses become as aspect of our intra-psychic reality that influences our perception of things by filtering the way our emotional body witnesses the world. Our "emotional body" becomes the reservoir of our consciousness, for consciousness is our spirit. Spirit is what enables consciousness to be and express itself through the physical body.

Our consciousness, our spirit, may be closed off to certain "avenues" of intra-psychic expression because we circumvent our conscious energy away from aspects of self that we hide from. The thing is that the aspects of self which we do not like, the aspects of self that are tucked away and hidden, are there. They are always there. They are just hidden. Yet, they are only hidden in the sense that they are unconscious to us. They nonetheless "occupy" psychic room in the inner workings of our spirit; for everything, that being the totality of our lives as well as the life of the universe, is known by spirit. And if the spirit is potential everything...it is inevitably everything.

To know spirit, to know thyself, on a deeper level one must let go of the "old karma" that is weighing them down, keeping the conditioned body unchanged, and keeping us living within the boundaries of the same defenses. To do that we must ultimately accept, but to accept we first must "purge" the emotion(s) that are withheld in spirit and which are unconscious to us [Remember: because spirit is inevitable everything].

To do this we must witness "it" [it being the "hidden"], be aware of it, and walk into it. Our emotions will come up as they do, but why not experience this with courage and have faith in the notion that whatever it is that is coming up is not to be ashamed of or judged as an inferior aspect of self in anyway? For we will see that these "old aspects of you" are what enable you to know yourself the way you inevitably want to know yourself.

Purge the emotional bodies that are constructing fictitious boxes around the inevitable expansion of our awareness. Remove the conditioning of the "thought paradigm" you witness all around you. Remove the tension that conditioned life has instilled upon you.

That tension is the spirit saying to body that there is disharmony present. In this case the spirit is trying to tell mind and body that there is an experience that is occurring that is "out of the line" with the natural order of things. The more we evolve consciously we become more sensitive to harsh realities of our day. Which may in turn build even greater tension within the mind and body of someone.

There are "breaking points" were our unconsciousness becomes so pressing that it forces, sometimes by "accident," our life into upheaval so we are forced to make changes. Yet, honor these upheavals. For anything you experience you should honor...why not honor your life? But more importantly than all...forgive yourself...always. Do what you need to to. Be "crazy" and do what your impulses call for, but why not direct these impulses [and be conscious of ourselves instantaneously] in a way that honors your life, not damages it.

Jump in the cold ocean and scream with fits of furry if you feel. Do whatever it is to allow yourself to love yourself enough to forgive the past that haunts you. Release the stored physical energy of, what Eckhart Tolle refers to as, the "pain body," in any way that feels passionate to your being.

Allow yourself to release your past through "careful catharsis:" careful in the sense that you know it is right in your heart not to hurt you or anyone else around you. For you know, in your feeling of love for oneself, that your rage will seize, your past will be forgiven, and you will come to know a "new" you. A you that moves beyond the past by living in the Now...

And to live in the Now, fully, we need to let go of the chains of our conditioned past. By allowing yourself to forgive those who have hurt you and subsequently "changed" your life, you ultimately alter your perception of things and you open yourself up to a higher aspect of yourself. You experience your self in a lighter fashion. You become of a higher, more ethereal vibration.

I guess the experience of going the deepest into now brings us to the point where experience becomes everything and we become immersed into something way beyond our being [this is "God-Realization;" or closer to knowing the "God experience", for God is always evolving too {this is the same movement that runs through us, and the same way in which we come to know thyself}].

The work to be done now, by enabling ourselves to drop our defenses [of which were put in place, by the choosing of our own soul, so that we could experience higher aspects of oneself through experiential catharsis and subsequent perception expansion] we again, move into higher, more realized, versions of one self.

[our expansion into the now: our ability to go into deeper moments of the now both in an intra- and inter psychic manor is thwarted when we label our selves in ways, or "know" things about "who we are." The ideas we have about ourselves are essentially who we are, but our self forgiveness and our self understanding will grow when those ideas no longer limit oneself to perceive oneself beyond the analytical and rational creations of the thought realm. Is maybe "who we think we are" our shield from coming to know the sense of self beyond all these concepts and ideas? This I am not particularly sure of, for we are all different, but I know that it is true that the longer we stay "inside" the ideas of who we think we are the more distanced we become from actually being able to "change." When we change we do indeed stay the same [for we are always our essence but we do nonetheless grow. We move into the now more so of our "emotional presence."

That "Emotional Presence" is your soul.

And again, when we step into soul, we step into the deeper reality of our own inner world. When we step into deeper experiences of the now we step deeper into the womb of reality, into the womb of Earth and the Cosmos. For we are understanding, experientially, what life is all about...Expanding consciously, the Emotional Presence of Self.