Like a walk-way through life, this forest path leads past various insides into its multiple expressions!
Conflict versus Easy-Rider…
And visiting the Bunya Mountain National Park in Queensland – Australia
Sometimes we tend to believe that just by being a member of our society conflict is created by default.
There is some truth to this, although there also is an understanding on offer we can apply to make things a lot easier.
Pardon me rolling the story right back to the beginning but it seems much more plausible when everything is reflected.
Mind you, in the beginning, while we were a baby, we didn’t even differentiate between one sense we had to another. All were perceived as simultaneous, as a whole body experience. We saw, while seeing without focus on what it was we saw and what it was we were seeing with.
We touched, without knowing what it was we touched and with what we touched it. We were the sensation created by our senses.
As years past by we’ve learned how to differentiate. We learned to make intellectual sense of it, made positive and negative experiences and separated one from the other.
Looking at our baby stage, the nature of being human was already clearly defined. There were things and happenings we liked, things we actually presented ourselves to experience, and there were others we connected to an experience of pain.
Pain like happiness occurred in variable forms to us. Such that, after a while, before it even took place, we knew what’s coming.
That resulted in us trying to avoid the painful experiences. We adapted to circumstances by acting in trying to prevent a painful outcome, while preparing our readiness to receive pleasure.
This basically outlines the behavior a human being uses to achieve a life filled with as much pleasure as possible.
These mighty Bunya crowns rule the light for the other plans in the forest. Bunyas are prehistoric trees reaching back as far as 200 million years.
Sometimes we tend to believe that just by being a member of our society conflict is created by default.
There is some truth to this, although there also is an understanding on offer we can apply to make things a lot easier.
Pardon me rolling the story right back to the beginning but it seems much more plausible when everything is reflected.
Mind you, in the beginning, while we were a baby, we didn’t even differentiate between one sense we had to another. All were perceived as simultaneous, as a whole body experience. We saw, while seeing without focus on what it was we saw and what it was we were seeing with.
We touched, without knowing what it was we touched and with what we touched it. We were the sensation created by our senses.
As years past by we’ve learned how to differentiate. We learned to make intellectual sense of it, made positive and negative experiences and separated one from the other.
Looking at our baby stage, the nature of being human was already clearly defined. There were things and happenings we liked, things we actually presented ourselves to experience, and there were others we connected to an experience of pain.
Pain like happiness occurred in variable forms to us. Such that, after a while, before it even took place, we knew what’s coming.
That resulted in us trying to avoid the painful experiences. We adapted to circumstances by acting in trying to prevent a painful outcome, while preparing our readiness to receive pleasure.
This basically outlines the behavior a human being uses to achieve a life filled with as much pleasure as possible.
Although we already can speak of a certain manipulative pattern connected to the way we present ourselves, we are, at least to a certain degree, still vulnerable to the influences our environment presents us with.
When we leave the house in the morning, we are hardly sure of what awaits us. Moods people bring with them, not even mentioning our own mood, confront us with situations bringing pain into our life beyond our control.
All these actions, may they occur on an individual or an international level, are arising from one particular human behavior.
Naturally, that is excluding a process of increasing awareness, we are identifying with our personality, story, and integrational pattern in society. Simply, we think of being the one we perceive: Name, family status, social status, capabilities, job etc..
One of the more successful trees in the tropical rainforest is the Strangler Fig. It gets its seed brought into the top of existing trees only to send its roots all the way down along the main trunk to anker in the ground. After a while these “roots” grow into trunks themselves strangling their host and building a new tree. The circle of life completed by involving the most different aspects, like that of the birds help.
By now, we should be able to reflect the truth of that and wonder what else we could be, if not the natural behavior a human being shows as defined member of a society?
If that was all there is to us, we wouldn’t differ from any other creature on earth.
While I am far off claiming to know what other creatures are able to perceive, I place a claim on knowing ourselves to be more than meets the eye.
To start our individual process of definition, we need to learn the difference between thought and awareness.
Till now, most of us, identified with thought. We claim the thoughts we are thinking to be our thoughts and our thoughts alone. We also claim to be aware because we are thinking, placing animals and in particular plants in a category of none awareness.
What if we are mistaken?
Our social history shows, that science – placing a claim on the use of the intellect – and spirituality were separated some three hundred years ago. Ever since we approached the physical plain with a more inquisitive mind, discovering realities unheard of before to exist.
Simultaneously, all matter invisible was placed under the authority of religion.
While science placed emphasis on the physical origin of all existence including thought and awareness, religion placed its believe in multiple stories conveyed to the human deriving from happenings in forgone times.
The detailed beauty displayed by naturally growing things is often breathtaking if we just look close enough.
How obvious it is that water, while being the life giving element, also connects all living things.
Not that without water existing things are excluded. They too are made of vibrating atoms deriving from the same source as we do.
This societal impression on us left us to believe that consciousness derives from thinking, and reality is bound to a story we ought to believe, removing any form of authority and self-responsibility from us.
This may all sound very sophisticated to you. In reality though it turns out to be very simple!
While thought originates with the very functioning of our brain, consciousness is to be seen as an element entirely of itself. In fact, we can be conscious without having a thought, while thoughts are coming and going as they are pleased and only thought of our concern cause us to stop and reflect.
This scenario leads us to a completely different view of our self’s and the world we live in!
From the hight of the mountain top, the only place where old growth forest survives, we view the lower, fertile, lands in the valleys below.
There is an easy to perform exercise to prove to ourselves that consciousness derives from a different source to thought:
We ask ourselves:
“Am I conscious right now?”
The question leads us to stop thinking, and in the gap we reflect being conscious.
Then we answer precisely:
“Yes, I am conscious now!”
While question and answer were thoughts, the gap in between was thoughtless awareness.
Applying this exercise in various day to day situations allows us to view it from a more remote position.
To confirm this position we now start to observe our thoughts and the connected reactions which are normally endorsed by emotions induced through biochemical substances produced by our brain.
The cheer fact, that we are able to observe our thoughts establishes that we aren’t the thought itself but rather independent of it.
Thought, as you will endorse, are a product of the environment we are exposed to. While consciousness, or awareness, is present everywhere, generating us and the rest of the world into existence.
Referring to it, rather than depending on what we think and feel at any given point in time, provides us with a freedom unknown.
As a human being we maintain a certain preference for feelings and experiences within our life. These feelings are dominated by Love, Peace, Freedom and Happiness.
All of these attributes come to live, as soon as we refer to consciousness being at the source of everything existing.
The mighty trunk of the ancient Bunya Pine leaves the visitor speechless. The fruits they carry once a year used to call the Aborigine tribes, to hold and celebrate their sacred meetings.
