Something is changing within our human species of consciousness. There is an awakening among us. As it happens, I am one of us. I am awakening and I have been consciously awakening and reflecting on the process for more than two decades now. It may be that I got an early start because I am a little slow! Be that as it is, I have been considering the process of this experience both personally and collectively for some time now. I have learned some things and I have some insight, which may prove useful to others and so, I feel I must share what has come to me so far.
I am not claiming to be anything extraordinary; but I do believe I am awake enough to be of some help. I would be grateful if I can make your journey smoother, faster, easier and more understandable.
Let us begin from the largest, most inclusive frame of reference.
The One which is All-That-Is includes all of us. This One is Self-organizing, Self-sustaining and Self-evolving. It pervades all of Itself; all the diversity, levels and orders of It’s Being are inherently subsumed and intrinsically interconnected. This One can be described as consisting of innumerable, temporarily stabilized, systems/processes within systems/processes within systems/processes, etc.; all of which is contained within the singular, pervasive field of light/energy/information of All-That-Is. Each of these subsystems/sub-processes can be described as ingesting, metabolizing and expressing some of the light/energy/information of the One.
This One is the source and substance of our aliveness and our consciousness of being alive. The spectra of living energies informing our actual experiential moment spring from the effulgence of this One. The interdependent self-world of our experience always and only occurs within our conscious awareness of the actual now moment.
On this planet, the One which is All-That-Is experiences and expresses itself as our human species of consciousness among all the other forms of being here. For whatever reasons, there is an awakening moving through our species at this time. In brief, as we are awakening out of our mind-mediated experience of reality; we are noticing our natural state of directly experiencing reality and re-cognizing our intrinsic, shared oneness.
Essentially, this awakening of our human species of consciousness involves two processes: noticing, attending to, experientially exploring and getting used to our natural state and deconstructing our conditioned frames of reference through which we have been experiencing and perceiving ourselves, others and our world as separate, reified and polarized and which appear to obscure our natural state.
Our field of experience is a set of patterns of the living energy of the actual present moment. We have been living within our mind-made representational field of our interpretations of these energies. This disconnected, mind-made realm of experience and participation is what is referred to by the Eastern traditions, as “our human, karmic vision of samsara.” Based upon a fundamental premise of disconnectedness and resulting in our polarized experiences and perceptions of ourselves, others and the world represented as “things” in relationship with one another. I have come to call this falsely premised representation of reality, our conditioned mind-world/dream-body. It is constructed by our minds and it is the world of our experiential lives.
Nevertheless, despite the reified deadness of our mind’s conditioned interpretations, there is, innate within us, something living, which makes now now and not the past nor the future. Our actual, living moment can be described as having two sides to it. They are awareness and experience. They are not separate; they are mutually pervasive but they are distinct. We can, and often do, notice, focus on and give preference to one – usually experience - pretty much to the exclusion of the other.
Most of us have rarely, if ever, noticed that we are the living awareness of now; we have been too focused on our experience and our interpretations and stories about it. However, it is possible for us to stop thinking for a moment and notice what our experience is like without our mind-made distinctions, labels descriptions and stories. As we do this, we can begin to notice the calm, clear and open space of awareness in which our field of experience is occurring. Within the highest teachings of Himalayan wisdom we are urged to stop thinking as often as possible and notice what is already and always here. “Short moments of re-recognition, repeated many times, become continuous and obvious in all situations and circumstances,” we are told.
In my experience over the years, the promise of this statement has been proving true. Over time my “short moments” have been becoming longer, deeper and more frequent. Gradually, I have become increasingly able to rest in open presence as conditioned patterns of mind, body and emotion roll through and self-release without me getting all caught up in old, habitual points of view.
Referring to these old, habitual points of view brings us back to the other side of the awakening process – the deconstruction of our samsaric mind-world/dream-body. Essentially this involves becoming conscious of the moments when I am creating a separate self in relation to a separate other and recognizing that both constructs and the believed relationship between them are my experience, they all exist within my mind’s field of representation,
As I release my consciousness from my commitment to my story of “how it is” and allow myself to recognize that my “self” and my “other” are both facets of my way of seeing through my conditioned filters, something different can begin to happen. If I can relax back, into the living awareness which holds both sides of the polarity as well as all the emotional charge I had invested into my current, self-justified story, the dynamic energies between the complementary duality begin to move and morph. At some point, I have found, they resolve and I find myself released into some quality of our natural state. It may be peace, or stillness, or silence, or clarity or any of the other qualities, which characterize us when we are resting as our innate presence.
The description of this process sounds simple but I have found that it is not always easy and sometimes, it is not possible. Sometimes the emotional momentum of my samsaric perception is so great; I so strongly believe I am right and he, she or they are wrong that I need to wait for a calmer moment and a cooler head before I can even reflect on what happened. At other times, repeated short moments are sufficient to allow me to interrupt the rush of thoughts, images and emotions associated with my interpretations and return my consciousness to sanity.
Through the course of the years of my awakening process I have found a number of clear and helpful teachers and techniques. I want to share these, now, but it will have to wait for another moment.