Awareness

Part I

If you start from the premise that what a man or woman is, at root, is a point or center in a "field of pure awareness", an individual "drop" in a limitless ocean of consciousness, a particular latitude and longitude in boundless "mental space", than the root cause of all life's apparent problems is rather easily discerned. Each specific manifestation arises from a fundamental misapprehension of who and what we as human "states of awareness" -- as the "human way" of seeing things -- truly are. Put even more simply, we as the "human condition" of consciousness have, both literally and figuratively, "missed the point!" As such, all wounds are "self-inflicted", and we only suffer the consequences of our individual and collective ignorance.

In an attempt to keep this reasonably simple, lets just say that what I truly am, as a man or woman, is a particular center in a field of conscious awareness; and, further, that I, as an individual "point of view" within that field, am synonymous with the field itself, making no comment as to how large either I or my "field of awareness" may ultimately be. Lets just say that I, as a center of awareness in that field, since I and the field are one, have the potential to encompass the entire field, however large, -- and leave it at that.

Now, there are two fundamental ways that I may manifest myself as a field of awareness. I can "stay at home" and maintain an "absolute perspective. That is, I can stay in the middle and remain simultaneously conscious of every "objective state" of consciousness that arises within the field of my awareness -- be omniscient and omnipresent with respect to entire field of my vision, however large.

Alternately, I can narrow the field of my awareness, this by sequentially focusing conscious attention on alternate objective states of mind -- mental pictures or images, as it were -- however defined and delineated, and implicitly drive out of conscious awareness, and so into an unconscious repository, all that I might otherwise be aware of. How so? Simply by forgetting myself as an underlying subjectivity, blocking out all the other objectivities, and thus losing sight and sense of the unified field of awareness in which both simultaneously and implicitly arise.(Note: The analogy of a flood-light that can narrow its beam to the equivalent of a spot-light, and thereby leaves what was once seen clearly, in outer darkness and relative unconsciousness affords a perfect analogy). ...(to be continued)

Part II

In the first case, I, as a center of conscious awareness, and the associated feeling of "subjective being" my native sense of centrality would beget, would, quite naturally, feel and maintain a fundamental sense of conscious identity and oneness with the underlying "field" of my awareness, as well as with the "objective states" of awareness that arose within that field. I would feel myself to be "one" with all such states or conditions of conscious awareness, because I, as a "subjective sense" of being, and they, as an "objective sense" of being, would, in truth, be no more than alternate ways of sensing and experiencing myself as a unified field of conscious awareness.

Now suppose that I, as a fundamental sense of centrality, as a fundamental feeling of being in the middle, and so as a fundamental sense of subjectivity, lost sight and sense of myself as being one with the underlying field of "primal awareness" -- the ground of my being, as it were. Suppose I, as the "son, central or subjective state" of conscious awareness, began to believe in myself as a substantial reality apart from the "mother, circumference or objective" state of awareness -- a condition of consciousness that included within its nearly boundless nature, not only myself, but all other subjective and objective states possible within the limits of relativity -- and apart from the "father, primal or absolute state" of awareness within which all live, move and have their being.

Quite clearly, I would become consciously alienated, not only from the "ground of my being", but from the "field of objective awareness" in which I too arose -- both from my center and from my surroundings, from both my "mother and my father" -- and be damned to a purgatory of partial awareness, a twilight zone of relative consciousness, a shadow land of mental ghosts and apparitions, of half-truth and lie. But how could I, implicitly a child of this marriage of the "most high state" of awareness and the "most high being" of being -- this wedding of heaven and earth -- have come to this low and miserable estate?

Quite simply by coming to believe in the innately fallible and circumscribe report of relative thought, sense and consciousness; by coming to believe that I, as a state of relative being, am a substantial reality, in and of myself, and apart from all else; that I, as I have come to think I am, am a "self-existent" and "integral being". And exactly how, you might ask, could I ever come to think this? ...(to be continued)

Part III

Simply by becoming personally involved and identified with "relative states" of awareness, and thereby losing sight, sense and consciousness of the underlying "absolute state" of awareness of which I am, and you are, but one center, one perspective. By coming to think, feel and so relate to reality in this circumscribed manner; not because it is true, but because it has become a habitualized way of "seeing things" -- a conditioned way of looking and seeing ourselves that causes us to manifest our fundamental awareness of being along habitualize lines.

This rather low estate of self-awareness arose because I came to believe in relative awareness, and the partial and limited sense of existence it necessarily creates, as my fundamental reality. This, in turn, because I habitually manifest conscious awareness in a dual, polar or moving manner -- a manner which must necessarily beget a sense of relativity, rather then "non-relativity or oneness," as ones fundamental feeling of existence, as ones bedrock sense being (i.e. the mental and emotional ground upon which "relative mind and consciousness" builds its house of mental cards, etc.).

Because I sense and feel it to be so, because of the report of partial sense, I have come to believe that it must be, never realizing that the relative and partial way I habitually look, think and see, must necessarily distort and corrupt the way I might otherwise feel. Instead of "being still" and resting in the middle, the central focus of ones attention and awareness, ceases to be the "underlying field" of awareness, but "falls" to the level of relative or dual consciousness, in which the "subjective state or sense" of consciousness feels itself to be "other than" the "objective state or sense" of consciousness, even though both must ever be "one with" the underlying field of "pure awareness" some have called "Father Consciousness".

The pity in this is that "the two are never not one", never truly "other than each other". At root, at the level of "pure or original" awareness, they must ever remain one. For only at the level of "relative or dual" awareness, can there seem to be any "split" and that only apparent. For "I", as a subjective or central sense of being, and "you", as my objective or circumstantial sense of being, are and never could feel ourselves to be "other than each other", if we hadn't fallen into the trap of manifesting conscious awareness relatively, instead of absolutely.

Part IV

And how might we go about returning to this Edenic state of awareness, to a right and true awareness and sense of both ourselves and all else? The remedy is surprisingly simple, though impossible to implement directly by one who remains identified with partial sight and sense, and the circumscribed perspective and vision they create. The answer lies in "dying" to, and so giving up that self-same, circumscribed sense of awareness and the partial sense of being it naturally begets. That, and, in so doing, opening the mind's "mental lense" so as to be able, once again, to encompass the full breadth of the "absolute awareness" that underlies it -- this by doing no more then moving back mentally and setting the mind's focal length on infinity.

For in truth, "absolute awareness" is the natural and native state of ones being, but a state or condition that cannot simultaneously exist while any relative state of conscious awareness remains present. Two into one simply won't go without fracturing its absolute wholeness. Moving awareness -- awareness in which the focal point of attention constantly shifts between "subjective and objective" polarities (i.e. self and other, etc.) -- simply cannot exist in the same "mental space" with absolute awareness -- a unitary state or field of awareness which, by definition, must be absolutely still and silent -- this because any movement whatsoever implies a degree of relativity (i.e. something to move, space to move in, and time to move, etc.)

As an aside, one might even posit that a narrowing and subsequent movement of conscious attention, and with it a shift in center of awareness from one point in an absolute field of awareness to another, may be the mechanism through which a "mental illusion" of "relativity" was originally created. This to synthesize an almost "magical sense" of "relative being" so that an "absolute field of awareness", being infinite and eternal, and so faced with the prospect of eternally perfect knowledge, might thereby avoid "absolute boredom".

Alternately, to "return home" (i.e. pass go and collect $200, etc.) all one need do find some means of returning to a "still and silent" state of pure, quiescent and settled consciousness, a state of absolute (non-relative, non-dual) awareness, in which ones mind (nothing more than "mental movement" in which the focal point of conscious attention, narrowed to the level of relativity and alternately focused on the mental objects that said relativity begets) simply ceases its habitual and incessant movement, and, in so doing, releases its strangle hold over conscious awareness.

Part V

With regard to "how to", there are two general approaches, although both merely approach the same end from different directions. Both attempt to transcend "relative awareness", and so beget a "re-collection" of "absolute awareness" by removing one or the other of the two poles between which mental attention and awareness constantly shift. In this regard you can attempt to drop the "pole of self" (but obviously not directly through self effort -- he would always escape and become harder and harder to detect with each attempt) or drop the "pole of other".

The idea is to kill, not your "real self", which, if you have followed the previous treatment, is by definition immortal, or "reality", which is equally indestructible, but a false, limited, partial and circumscribed sense of both self and reality. So it is that nearly all religions advise some degree of "selflessness", some degree of "dying to self" as a precondition to salvation -- witness Christ on the Cross. What is intended to die is not you, but a "false sense of you"; abet, a sense that seldom "...goes quietly into that goodnight...", more often than not, "rages" and has to be "brought to its knees", before it gives up the "ghost".

The alternative approach, an approach reflected in the "self-effacing" actions of nearly all religions, as they relate to natural and worldly things, is that of "killing desire", and so dropping the "other" pole in the mechanism of moving consciousness. For if either pole be dropped, the habitual movement of relative mind and consciousness will necessarily come to a stop, and in that moment will come a natural re-awakening to the "absolute state" of awareness that remained ever before ones eyes, but to which one, being "relatively sighted" and so "absolutely blind", could never relate.

Which path or approach one takes to this absolute state of awareness is a simple matter of individual taste, or perhaps better yet, simply a function of where you, as a state of relative awareness, presently are and, as a necessary function of where you, where you are coming from. There are as may paths home, as there are travelers. In that respect only one thing is certain -- you have to start from where you are, and not from where someone else is! As many have said before, though the question lies without, the "answer lies within." NATURE