‘It’s all about consciousness.’ A line from a favorite long-dead teacher that beautifully sums up the entirety of existence.
I can attest to the truth of that statement.
Or, more precisely, consciousness can attest to it. Consciousness writes this blog and consciousness ‘reads’ it.
And the consciousness that reads it is either in a state that understands it or it doesn’t.
You and I and everything around us – the universe itself – is consciousness. Or, if you prefer, God, awareness, presence. Pick your label.
What we call existence – and specifically, what we call ‘my existence’ or more simply, ‘me’ – is nothing more than consciousness.
You can experience this for yourself by sitting quietly, closing your eyes, and bit by bit investigating all that has been taught you and letting it go (if it was taught you it can’t be real – it’s a hand-me-down from some other form of consciousness, a parent, teacher, culture, etc.). You aren’t interested in anything that was inherited. You want to find the real you, the unchanging you.
Eventually, if you do this correctly, there will be nothing left but the sense of a presence. Again, call it God or presence or consciousness. Doesn’t matter. If you get hung up on the label, you’re obviously still in the grip of the mind.
There, in the stillness, in the silence, there is only that sense of presence or consciousness – something is, but it is indefinable.
If, on the other hand, there is a you that is sensing that consciousness or God or presence, the mind is still running the show.
I’m fairly certain this is the secret to everything, what the masters and mystics – the ‘awakened ones’ – have been pointing to for as long as there have been human things walking the earth. Yet most of us – today and across time – cannot grasp this nor will will even taken up the investigation. We’re simply not ready. Not in this lifetime at least. Maybe not in a hundred lifetimes.
Or as that same teacher would say, ‘What we call God is consciousness manifesting in individual experience.’ Which is why those same mystics pointed inward and noted that I am that which is seeking God. I am that I am. (See how different that plays out when the emphasis on words changes?)
It’s why Jesus kept telling anyone who would listen that the kingdom of heaven lies within each of us. Yet his followers were unable to grasp this, their consciousness not ready, and instead they built a religion dependent on rites and rituals, on middlemen and mythology. Their minds took control of a message that cannot possibly be understood by or articulated by mind.
Speaking of Mind
Consider your mind or, more accurately, that which you call your mind but is in reality a never-ending stream of thought.
The mind exists within consciousness. Or, to use another label, the mind exists within God or the Creating Intelligence.
Yet the mind mistakenly claims ownership of consciousness. It says, “I am consciousness.” And rather than investigate that relationship, it busies itself – across the course of its existence – labeling and judging the world around it. This, in a nutshell, explains all of the agonies of the world – today’s world, yesterday’s world, tomorrow’s world.
Across history and time, 99.999999999% of the human race has put its faith in the workings of an unexamined mind. Which is understandable when you consider that, from an early age, each of us began to experience thought.
More precisely, thoughts began to make an appearance (in that unexamined consciousness) and we took those thoughts to be accurate representations of ourselves and the world around us. Why wouldn’t we? None of those who were teaching us suggested otherwise.
Yet thoughts have no substance – they simply come and go of their own accord. Thoughts are only made real when we put words (labels and judgments) to them. Or when we act on them. (And these words and actions still don’t make thoughts real. See for yourself.)
In essence, that which we call mind is really nothing more than a relentless, unpredictable maelstrom of ‘thoughts’ that literally define humanity as we know it.
Seek and You Will Find?
If you take up the search for the real you, here’s what I can tell you: the more earnest your search, the more the real you will rise up to help. That help will come in unexpected ways (translation: your mind won’t see it coming). The truths or epiphanies or revelations – whatever you want to call them – will at times jar you. In my humble opinion, that’s how you know they’re real – they’ll make you uncomfortable, completely change the way you see things, or occasionally even freeze you in your tracks.
Many of the friendships and the practices that defined them may also dry up and blow away. You won’t necessarily seek for that to happen, they simply will, and you won’t miss them. In a sense, the ‘childish’ things will be put away.
Similarly, the news of the world and its endless sources of agitation will cease to play any role whatsoever. The affairs of the human mind become completely uninspiring.
You’ll may also start to experience a deep, unexplained sense of peace. Many if not most of the things you once worried about will gradually cease to matter. No, I am not fear-free. But so much of what once haunted me no longer does. And even when the occasional anxiety or fear does rise up, its seen for what it is fairly quickly and let go.
It is said that we do not seek God so much as God seeks us. That when it is our time to take up the so-called spiritual journey we’ll have no say in it. Truer words were never spoken. I cannot escape the search – it is always with me, during a 3am pee or a 10am meeting or a 6pm dinner.
And though it at times wears on me or annoys me or confuses me, I am so damned grateful for it. Because while the rest of the world roils over its latest source of agitation, I could care less. The whole of existence, God Itself, is right here right now.
Or, if you prefer, It is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient. And I know now that it is only a matter of ‘time’ before the reunification is complete, and Doug at last can be put away forever.
