This early morning sunrise at lake Eyre in South Australia took me right back into the birth canal.
Conflict versus “Easy Rider”
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 making things a lot easier.
Pardon me rolling the story right back to the beginning but it seems much more plausible when everything is taken into account.
Mind you, in the beginning, while we were a baby, we didn’t even differentiate between our different senses. All were perceived as simultaneous, as a whole body experience. We saw, while seeing without focus what it was we saw, and what it was we were seeing with.
We touched, without knowing what it was we touched or distinguishing with what we touched it. We, the whole of us, 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 wanted ourselves to experience, and there were others we connected to an experience of pain.
The “Nightcap” National Park lies like an island on top of the mountain range dominating the landscape around the North-East Corner of NSW.
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.
This path through the forest indicates an easy walk. But far from the truth. Before too long, it vanishes in the haze of the undergrowth, and turns to be steep and rugged.
All these actions, may they occur on an individual or an international level (politically for instant), 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..
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 confines him or her to just being a 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 fallen giant – probably many hundred years old – provides shelter and space to live for uncountable creatures making up the living world.
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 of entirely independent nature.
In fact, we can be conscious without having a thought, while thoughts are coming and going as they are pleased and only thoughts of our concern to us 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!
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 are thoughts, the gap in between is thoughtless awareness.
Applying this exercise in various day to day situations allows us to view it from a more detached 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.
A fig as it climbs its host killing it in the process.
One life form is providing for the other. Originating from the one source, what we call “killing” never accounts as such.
The cheer fact, that we are able to observe our thoughts establishes that we aren’t the thought itself but rather independent of it.
Thoughts, 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.
Another adventure for the author brings more time to contemplate.
What other beauty permits one to be wrapped by what one thinks about!?
