An Example of Enlightened Being

An important dynamic in the enlightenment process is the capacity to do two seemingly incongruent things in the same moment: participate fully in an activity while at the same time observing yourself in that action with no sense of need, desire, fear, judgment or goal as to outcome. This means being completely present; that is, with no degree of emotional detachment or withdrawal whatsoever.

A simple example of this might be as follows: you have a new kitten in your home that you have come to adore. Some of your relatives come to visit you bringing with them a large, playful, active dog. You are not sure that he is harmless when it comes to small animals such as kittens. You know for sure that it has caught and killed squirrels. In anticipation of problems between the dog and the kitten, you put the kitten in a bedroom where the dog cannot get at it. 

During the visit someone inadvertently opens the bedroom door and the kitten comes running innocently into the living room. The dog immediately gives chase. Terrified, the kitten runs for its life with the bigger, faster animal on its tail. 

The kitten becomes trapped in a corner and literally starts to climb the wall. You grab the excited, uncontrollable dog and at the same time try to grab and rescue the kitten. It gets free and heads shakily but quickly to the bedroom. You have done an effective job of keeping the kitten and dog apart.

During the whole riotous episode you are aware of something that has never occurred before. While being hands-on to the nth degree the whole time, you are aware of a heightened clarity of every detail of the encounter, especially the fact that at no time did you feel fear for the naïve and vulnerable kitten or anger toward the rowdy and unruly dog. You know very well that in the past you would have felt both of those things. 

You notice also that there is no emotional letdown or sense of relief once the episode ended. There had been no distress to have to make a comeback from. And it was not that you just kept a cool head. There was no conscious thinking or planning involved at all. Your heart rate was unchanged, you breathed normally, and you were never affected by an adrenaline rush. You just intervened as needed until everything was sorted out and then carried on as if nothing had occurred. 

But you know something unusual and remarkable happened. You were entirely immersed in a dramatic moment that cried out for emotion and judgment and instead you watched it as if you were a disinterested bystander, regardless of your love and concern for the animals involved.  You also know that you had nothing to do with how you responded. It is clear that something beyond your personal volition was at work. It is also clear to you that you would not be able to consciously, deliberately replicate what you had just witnessed in yourself.    

When you later recount the experience, you realize that you cannot describe the state you witnessed. The best you are able to muster is a description of what was not there, such as any sense of irritation or distress.  You also note, however, that being able to put what happened into words seems irrelevant. What happened happened, and now something else is going on.

Consciousness Evolves to Enlightenment

The evolution of enlightenment is evidenced by the various levels at which consciousness expressed itself.  Working forward briefly from earlier evolutionary stages, we find the animating force of consciousness in primitive one-cell life forms, in multi-cell invertebrates, in reptiles and amphibians, in lower mammals, in primates, and ultimately, in humans. At each level, consciousness is the program that, in a circular manner, drives development to the next higher form of its own expression.

In its basic form we might witness consciousness at work as the involuntary “knowing” by which a newborn infant locates and suckles at its mother’s breast, by which a bird perceives when to migrate, and by which a blade of grass orients itself toward the nourishing sun. But because of the advanced capacity of our minds, we also view levels of the expression of consciousness in a more abstract way. 

For example, we often describe being conscious as a state one can slip into and out of, as in the difference between being asleep or awake, and being comatose or alert. Thus, someone who is anesthetized is described as being unconscious until he is revived and aware at which point he is again conscious. 

At a higher level of abstraction, say in terms of someone’s psychological functioning, we characterize habitual behavior that is produced without reflection as unconscious behavior and behavior that occurs after thoughtful deliberation as conscious behavior. So, for example, when a person automatically lights a cigarette when stressed, we say he does that unconsciously. We also apply it to someone’s choosing yet another abusive mate after having worked his or her way out of a previous abusive relationship. 

This can apply to social groups, too. Trans-generational feuds and vendettas are carried on by participants who no longer know what caused the conflict in the first place. 

 At a more nuanced level, that which contains the threshold of enlightenment, we describe habitual thinking as unconscious when it is guided by even the slightest feelings of fear and desire or bias and prejudice and conscious when it has been liberated from such influences so that is free, flexible and adapted only to the present moment. 

Clearly, consciousness permeates everything, from the inorganic sub-structures of the early universe, through the simplest of life forms, to the highest workings of our minds. Its history is the story of creation itself.

A Brief History of Consciousness

As the foundation of life and the course by which every living thing evolves, consciousness necessarily predates life. In fact, consciousness predates all of existence. What this means is that the force that provides for life and is manifested in all of its forms of expression once had no form of expression at all. 

This is not so hard to envision. Like anything else, consciousness can only be expressed in a relationship context of some kind. Everything in existence requires a relationship with something else if it is to be said to exist or if it is to be aware of its existence. Thus, particles relate to other particles; cells relate to other cells; plants relate to the sun; infants relate their mothers, and so on. 

Relating essentially defines existence. We know we are here only because we have actual things and persons, or mental images of things and persons that we can play off of and orient ourselves to. Without them when we looked outward or inward we would experience complete empty space and utter nothing-ness.

Prior to creation and the introduction of time and space, no relationships were possible. Consciousness existed, so to speak, in an elemental, oceanic, completely undeveloped condition suffused by the unformed, undefined, unbounded, unlimited, substance-less, changeless, preternaturally serene realm that we call eternity. 

Because its inherent nature is to express itself, and because eternity is essentially a void and has no capacity to provide a context of any sort in which a relationship of any kind is possible, consciousness required a new field that provided for its contextual needs and fostered its expression. In short, consciousness was poised to become creation.

How consciousness actually initiated creation in context-free eternity is unknown. And it is not important to enlightenment that we solve the mystery. For now all that is important is that we remain mindful of where we came from and that we fully appreciate the eternal as the backdrop to our human nature. 

It is not a coincidence that the awareness of which we are capable and the consciousness that is fundamental to it derive from eternity. It is not a coincidence that evolution is hierarchical, with one thing building on the next ad infinitum. Eternity is constant; creation is change. By way of the evolutionary chain, our link with the constancy of eternity is unbroken. 

The realm of serene no-thing-ness has remained an essential part of our deepest nature from the beginning. Enlightened awareness is its highest expression. Expressing it is why we are here. 

There Is No Escaping Life

We know from history that Buddha never returned to anything resembling the life he separated from as a young prince. The progression of consciousness that he manifested had made any such arrangement impossible. The conditions of the paths that the people of his time called “the marketplace” and “the householder” no longer promoted his development. 

What a close reading of his life tells us, however, is that having achieved his level of awareness never precluded his having to deal with at least some of the elements of the human condition. It only makes sense, after all, that existing on this plane means confronting illness, infirmity, old age and death. No one escapes the effects of his or her context altogether. What he became skilled at is not being distracted from his enlightened way by any ordinary human concern. 

It behooves us to become clear that we will not escape our lives. Accepting who and where we are is an essential part of the foundation for all of the Buddha-like personal work we will be doing. We are not special, nor do we ever want to feel that we are special in ways that make us fundamentally dissimilar from our contemporaries. We are in the contexts we experience around us in order to grow. Not having them would be like living in weightlessness and expecting that our bones would be unaffected by the lack of gravitational pull.

We still need to be in the marketplace for the resistance it provides to the completely peaceful life. Even monks are made to sweep floors and clean bathrooms. And they have to put up with fellow monks and masters who they might find irritating. Once beyond Eden, there is no going back. 

What changes is our “us-ness.” While we remain essentially the same as always, how we experience the self is the core of our work. It is consciousness that evolves, not the being that is represented by the self. That being merely provides the gravity that assures the health of the support structure of our human awareness.

So, there is no “fast-forward” in the development of consciousness. The self, with its patternistic thoughts and emotions, remains a part of our everyday experience. The capacity for pure observation is in the wings waiting to welcome us in its own time. We just need to watch ourselves as everything arises and then practice letting it all pass. Needs will be reduced to wants, wants will be reduced to preferences, and even preferences will erode into just minor desires that fade when left alone. 

Eventually we will not even feel as if we are choosing, but that we are accepting what seems to be chosen for us in any given moment. There is no “me.” There is only acceptance. Nothing is actually removed. There is just no reaction to animate or strengthen a feeling, thought, fear or desire. 

The Pace of Change

Every child has to have an identity. He or she needs answers to the question, “Who am I?” in order to perceive his or her existence. No identity, no sense of “being.”

The culture into which we are born addresses this need with consensually-agreed upon beliefs, concepts and the like that are inculcated into subliminal consciousness through many repetitions over a long period of  time. 

Thus, we develop identities much the same way a river develops a sandbar, one grain of sand building upon another year after year. And like a sandbar altering the water’s course, the path of consciousness is eventually altered by the structure that now deflects its current.

In the case of consciousness moving toward enlightened awareness, past a certain point in our development, a fixed sense of self can hinder progress. Our job as active participants in the evolutionary process is to dissolve the sandbar.

Sandbars are best removed in the manner that they originally formed: one grain at a time. These are our identities, after all; we cannot afford to lose them all of a sudden.  

That is why the change process takes so long. If we were able to remove the disruption in the flow too quickly, there would be paralyzing disorientation in regard to who we are and what we are doing here. 

With fundamental change, it is best to take a patient and persistent approach. Just keep paying attention to the beliefs, opinions and positions that you become aware of that you hold about anything. Remember, any statement that begins with “I think ... I believe ... it is my opinion that ...,” especially the ones that we feel most strongly about, is first and foremost an expression of “I am” and represents a grain of sand in that barrier. 

Don’t attack any of them; just note them and let them go. Like the water itself, they are sure to come by again. When they do, just take note and let go. With time, the mass will dissolve and the flow will be released. Things then look quite different.

Celebrate the Self

Because, like breathing, it has just always been a part of our lives, we tend not to step back and take an appreciative look at the self. Here is an opportunity.

The self is the mental structure that provides us with a sense of being unique among all other people. I am me and you are you, and although in an abstract way we know that we are all “one,” our actual perceptual experience does not provide visceral proof. We “feel” separate, and that is that. 

And we are supposed to feel separate; that is the main function of the self. It provided the very first opportunity in all of evolution to actually experience separate existence. 

Think about it. We have the ability to watch our selves as if we are both marching in a parade while at the same instant standing on the curb watching us as we pass. Prior to the self there existed no such awareness of existence. (Other animals, and even plants, have awareness, but not like this.)

Therefore, while celebrating our unity with each other and with the rest of the universe, we may want to appreciate the sense of separateness that allows the incredible awareness that we enjoy every day: the self. 

Fear and Change

When considering why change is so difficult, it might be useful to keep Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in mind.

In this story, the cave’s inhabitants were chained to a log with a fire at their backs and a bare rock wall in front of them. All they were able to perceive beyond the darkness were their own shadows cast onto the wall by the firelight, and over time they came to accept the shadow world as a limit of reality.

One day, one of the cave dwellers had an inspiration. He began to imagine that there was more to life than he had been led to believe, and by simply turning his gaze rearward, his inspiration was rewarded with a panoramic view of a broad, lush, light-filled plain that stretched from the cave opening to the far horizon. He was ecstatic at his discovery.

However, when he tried to tell the others what he had seen, he was immediately set upon and killed. Clearly, no one else wanted to deal with the threat that his inspiration represented to the group’s fundamental beliefs. And after the execution, anyone who might have been inclined to imagine an alternative to the shadow reality must have thought seriously about keeping his eyes forward.

What the work of this philosopher offers us is a reflection on the power of what we have been taught and the effect of all the beliefs and practices that represent the consciousness status quo on our movement toward higher consciousness.  

Uncovering hidden influences on our perception of reality takes the gentle persistence of a regular practice of self observation and a willingness to do what Buddha prescribed, which is to doubt everything.

Kitten Consciousness

There was an enlightening study of perception done in which kittens were divided into two experimental groups. One group was raised in a room with horizontal stripes painted on the walls; the other group was raised in a room with vertical stripes painted on the walls.

When the “horizontally-reared” group was placed in a room with vertical structures, such as furniture legs, all of the kittens bumped into them as if the obstructions were not there. The same thing occurred with the other kittens when placed in a room with horizontal structures.

Because of previous conditioning, the kittens simply did not see what was literally right in front of their eyes. In a sense, their brains were on automatic pilot and their perceptual systems behaved as programmed even if the outcome was not in the kittens’ best interest.

What this study suggests is that the preconceptions that filter how we view the world that we assume we have come up with independently are perhaps less independent than we think.

Information is planted verbally and nonverbally early-on and is continually reinforced over many years by the families, societies and cultures with which we identify and on which we are emotionally dependent. This information provides us with the answer to the question, “Who am I?”

There is a saying that goes, “He was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.” This can apply to many of the positions, values and principles we hold that we think we arrived at on our own. This is especially likely with those that result in a “knee-jerk” or “gut-wrenching” reaction, or that we feel defensive about and are ready to instantly defend. 

We are up against a lot when trying to uncover who we really are. Patience and persistence are the keys.

The Heart of Meditation

Meditation is essentially a time of being quiet and still. Like all other things in creation, it is also a relative act, meaning that you can be “quieter and stiller” if being truly settled does not come easily. 

The main idea is just to slow things down. So, while some might sit in a comfortable chair in a favored room, others may do better strolling around the neighborhood or the park.

The heart of meditation is shifting the dominant brain wave frequencies from those having to do with being focused and productive (beta), to those associated with leisure (alpha and theta).

This “downshift” is readily accomplished through diaphragmatic breathing, which involves the muscle just below the ribcage that controls breathing. 

Diaphragmatic breathing aids meditation in two ways. First, it changes the oxygen/carbon dioxide balance in the brain, which has everything to do with how relaxed the body is. And second, it provides a place to focus attention when the mind gets distracted.

Start by placing your hands on your abdomen just below your ribcage. Inhale slowly, and as you do make sure your abdomen expands against your hands. Do this several times, then hold your breath for a couple of beats before exhaling. When you do exhale, let your whole body go limp like a rag doll. When your mind drifts, gently return your attention to your hands.

Do this for ten or fifteen minutes initially and increase the time as you wish. It’s that simple.

What Consciousness Is

Having participated in Twitter for a while now, and having read any number of tweets regarding consciousness, I have seen that people’s ideas about what consciousness is are all over the place. The following should help clear things up. 

Here is a simple way to think about consciousness: Imagine holding a four inch length of electrical wire in your hand. Picture about an inch of the outer coating stripped away so that you can clearly see all of its components at a glance: the metal, any insulating material between the metal and the outer cover, and the outer cover itself.

Consciousness is every component of the wire and every aspect of its manufacture. It is the elements that evolved into the base metal; it is all of the knowledge that went into designing and building the machines that dug and hauled the metal and that is used in the wire factory; it is the science of metallurgy; it is the human intelligence that put this all together; and it is the current that flows over the wire once it is put into use. (Of course, it is also the “you” who is reading and thinking about this piece.)

You get the idea. The point is that consciousness is everything and everything is consciousness. It is the physical, the mental and the spiritual. And from an evolutionary perspective, because the physical predates the mental, and both of these are necessary to perceive the spiritual, the common conception of “spiritual” consciousness being somehow superior to the others is just not correct. 

It is my hope that having a more unified idea about what consciousness is will add to everyone’s appreciation of how the universe is put together and what it means that we are all one. 

   

Making Change 2012

We are rapidly approaching that late-year season of personal reflection that involves looking both backward at how we have spent our time and forward to how we might do things differently. 

Unfortunately, like the venerable midlife crisis, this personal-growth activity is often diminished in importance by relegating it to common topical New Year’s resolutions, such as beginning an exercise program or reading a worthwhile book now and then.

These are not unreasonable considerations, of course. We often do need to take better care of our bodies and our minds. 

But to those of us to whom life has revealed itself as a journey, the automatic reference to the simplistic resolutions we see year after year adds an air of stereotypy to an otherwise immensely important function, the way the image of a middle aged guy buying a Harley is used to explain away true introspection about the possible need for fundamental change midway through a person’s life.

In this regard, we might want to keep in mind that introspection and reflection are processes that sit at the far end of billions of years of evolution. Name something that tops either of them. Without such capacity for awareness we would join the chimps as evolutionary champions.  

Perhaps we might honor this ability to look simultaneously into two time dimensions - the past and the future - at least as highly as the Romans did who awarded the process its own god, Janus.  

The reason for this musing has to do with my personal recognition of the evolutionary nature of the change process in terms of the way we look at ourselves, our fellow beings, the planet, and our lives in general. 

Let me ask a simple question: How many of you look at things differently now than, say, twenty years ago, or ten, or five years ago? (I am raising my own hand here.) 

Now, how many of you are aware that most of the changes that have occurred have done so outside of your personal control? (I am again raising my hand). 

And how many of you are amazed at how you see things differently? (Me, too.) 

I will bet we could spend a whole day exchanging tweets about the sometimes incredible ways we have changed and how differently we look at things.

What is being described here is the unending evolution of consciousness with the incessant urge to higher and higher awareness that is fundamental to our human nature. This is something we really want to pay attention to, and evolution has provided us with a unique structure that allows us to do just that. We refer to that structure as the “self.”

Because of our more evolved brains, only we among all mammals have the capacity to recognize the individual we are as a “self.” Simply stated, the self is our sense of an “us” that is separate from every other being in creation and is what causes us to perceive the rest of the universe as background. It is the most highly evolved structure in creation and the only “thing” that is capable of true reflection and of recognizing its own existence. 

For example, when we wake from sleep or a daydream, we know we were sleeping or daydreaming. No other living thing can do this. Also, we can sit here and breathe and be aware that we are sitting here breathing. And you can read this material and at the same time be aware of how the material makes you feel and what thoughts it engenders in your own mind. No other living thing is capable of doing this.

We have  the ability to be aware of us being us as if we are both marching in a band in a parade while at the same instant standing on the curb watching us in the parade as we pass. 

I say we have the ability to do this. The question for human beings always is how often we are aware of our own consciousness, that is, of the capacity of us being able to be aware of us?

It is not a coincidence that we tend to look backward and forward at this time of year. It is one way that the unending evolution of consciousness exerts its influence on the self to move awareness forward. We just happen to experience it in terms of a need for change. 

Our ability to look both ways at once is a treasure. We can actively participate in its evolution by using our annual urge to reflect as a reminder of the incredible mechanism behind it, and by honoring awareness all on its own without having to tie a particular resolution to it. We do this best through a regular practice of being quiet and still. 

This is not just a new year; it is the next leg of our journey. If we will just pay attention, all of the changes that we need to move us forward on the consciousness path will come effortlessly to mind. 

Happy New Year