Detached Yet Whole

Therefore whatever of matter (or body) there is , whether of the past, of the future, or of the present time, whether internal or external, whether coarse or fine, mean or exalted, far or near, all matter (or body) is to be regarded as it really is, in the light of perfect knowledge. One who thus seeing the world turns away from the world is truly freed from evil passions and has the consciousness of freedom. Such is called one who has the obstacles removed, trenches filled, one who has destroyed , is free, one whose fight is over, who has laid down his burden, and is detached.

D.T. Suzuki uses this thought from the Majjhima Nikaya in his 1927 essay, Enlightenment and Ignorance. Perfect knowledge is knowledge in action. The action of the cells is perfect knowledge since the cells function in the past, present, and future, but we only sense the present action in our time sequence. We carry a blueprint of perfect knowledge which is capable of bringing about the most favorable version of a self in the probable system that we understand.

These blueprints exist spiritually, mentally, and physically; they biologically exist at every level of the self, but they also exist apart from it in the place of no place in the complete action called consciousness. The physical self carries information from these blueprints and that information is used to draw the theories, ideas, and technologies we use individually as well as in mass. This blueprint of impulses is perfect, but is never done or finished because there are inherent characteristics of creativity which seek to surpass or expand physically as well as non-physically.

A fragmented self tries to construct these blueprints in the perfect image of perfect knowledge, but the separation from other aspects of the blueprint makes the quest for perfection a relentless effort filled with egotistical expressions.

The inner world of perfect ideas and impulses are rooted in the consciousness of self and are fulfilled through the selective significance of the individual. Accepting our created reality for what it is allows the cells to draw from this perfect knowledge. The God-stuff in us creates the physical stuff which becomes the oneness of this inner and outer reality.

In that moment we are detached, yet whole and we reach for ideas that are beyond the walls of a resistance filled awareness and we find other fragments of our infinite nature.

Gratitude

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.
It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial
into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.
It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.
Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today,
and creates a vision for tomorrow.

Melody Beattie the author of Codependence No More puts the meaning of gratitude in terms everyone can understand. We always find the art of accepting, allowing, and appreciating staring us in the face, but our focus may be somewhere else. Gratitude is a message that is rooted in all religions. It may be dressed in a suit of authoritative boundaries, and it may be armed with stipulations that impose selective restrictions on its use, but gratitude is always waiting to shine the light of abundance on our journey through life.

A few simple thoughts about gratitude unlock the door of knowing and a chasm of emptiness is filled with the abundant and ever-giving stream of our own consciousness.

If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is,
"thank you," that would suffice.
~Meister Eckhart

Let's be grateful for those who give us happiness;
they are the charming gardeners who make our soul bloom.
~Marcel Proust

Best of all is it to preserve everything in a pure, still heart, and let there be
for every pulse a thanksgiving, and for every breath a song.
~Konrad von Gesner

The Integrity of Truth

The whole notion of truth, which naturally and without reflexion we assume to mean the simple duplication by the mind of a ready-made and given reality, proves hard to understand clearly. There is no simple test available for adjudicating offhand between the divers types of thought that claim to possess it. Common sense, or corpuscular philosophy, ultra-critical science, or energetics, and critical or idealistic philosophy, all seem insufficiently true in some regard and leave some dissatisfaction. It is evident that the conflict of these widely differing systems obliges us to overhaul the very idea of truth, for at present we have no definite notion of what the word may mean.

William James in his 1907 essay, Pragmatism and Common Sense opens an inter canal of knowing that is hard to dismiss without feeling a twinge in the solar plexus. Truth is a fragment in this physical world of beliefs. Beliefs are boxes of truths that bend and expand based on our significant selection of thoughts.

We vibrate to the music of probable constructs or prejudiced perceptions, and assign a meaning to them. These perceptions have roots in truth. We also block other thoughts that have just as much credence as our focused thoughts. We find the self accepting a series of truths that we accept as our reality.

Reality is born out of our selective thought process and belief structure.

The Opaque Air of Consciousness

All that we call sacred history attests that the birth of a poet is the principal event in chronology. Man, never so often deceived, still watches for the arrival of a brother who can hold him steady to a truth, until he has made his own. With what joy I begin to read a poem, which I confide in as an inspiration!

And now my chains are to be broken; I shall mount above these clouds and opaque airs in which I live, opaque, though they seem transparent, and from the heaven of truth I shall see and comprehend my relations. That will reconcile me to life, and renovate nature, to see trifles animated by a tendency, and to know what I am doing. Life will no more be a noise; now I shall see men and women, and know the signs by which they may discern from fools and satans.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is his 1844 essay, The Poet is certainly connected to the opaque air of poetry. When we use our innate senses we become the poets we know ourselves to be. It’s no longer necessary to worship what lies above the clouds for it is our own consciousness that reconcile our lives and renovate nature in terms of our awareness of it.

We could look at figures like Christ, Mohammed, Buddha and all the influential figures we worship in our religious beliefs as poets for they steady truth until we sense our own. Churches certainly used a collective ego consciousness to hide some of these truths for control purposes and the individual self gets lost in the word which is a fabrication or fragments of the inspiration that exists within our collective consciousness.

Dominance and control for economically sound religious reasons transforms ego consciousness into a separate entity that dictates inferiority, but the inferiority of nature and the poet are not tarnished by religious principles. Life is not a noise in the pure air of opaque truth; it is an innate sense that clearly understands that religious concepts keep tribes together, provide social structure, and helps insure physical survival.

It is the awareness of self that opens the clouds and breaks the chains so the poet within us all discerns the foolishness, but the necessity of fragmented religious beliefs.

A Power in the Mind

It is the growing conscious of a new power in the mind, which enabled it to judge things from a new point of view. Ever since the unfoldment of consciousness we have been led to respond to the inner and outer conditions in a certain conceptual and analytical manner. The discipline of Zen consists in upsetting this artificially constructed framework once for all and in remodellling it on an entirely new basis. The old framework is called Ignorance and the new one Enlightenment.

D.T. Suzuki in his 1927 essay, Satori is explaining how consciousness is constantly changing and expanding in awareness. Basic units of consciousness are the foundation, frame, and framework for the expansion of the essence as well as the fragments of self that Suzuki calls Zen.

Consciousness units make up and form all the atoms, cells, molecules, and organs that make up a world. The great organization abilities of consciousness expand the collective from its own precognitive information which produces the impulses that create probabilities. The cells sense the future but the future is only experienced in the now. The cell’s now is a combination of the past and future in our terms and that creates the experience of the now.

There is a constant give-and-take type of communication between the cell in the now time and the cell as it was in the past or as it will be. The present cell is the focused result of a before and after of itself in time and from that knowledge it receives its present structure.

The spiritual and biological presence of cells cannot be separated. Their reality and purpose merge so consciousness is constantly creating a conglomeration of probable issues, abilities, and conditions to be experienced. Ignorance of self is one of those conditions that we choose to experience in order to expand each fragment of the self. Enlightenment is the awareness of a greater self that is a blueprint of consciousness in all forms. Therefore, enlightenment is a progressive state of awareness that continues to create units of consciousness that form new frameworks of expression.

A new power in the mind is expressed in the energy of its own enzymes and that power manifests as the mind becomes aware of its ability to know itself in the expression of fragmented enlightenment.

Rippling Energy

We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. Maugre all the selfishness that chills like east and west winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. How many persons we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor, and who honor us! How many we see in the street, or sit with in church, whom, though silently, we warmly rejoice to be with! Read the language of these wandering eye-beams. The heart knowth.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote those thoughts in his 1841 essay, Friendship. Emerson used more than his five senses to write thoughts. His words have innateness about them; they’re filled with knowing, but are wrapped in the film of self-created ignorance. There is an energy within us that permeates all thoughts and we constantly project it outward so it mingles with other energy. This energy needs no verbal confirmation or effort to interact with other forms of energy it is always received and utilized in some fashion.

Everyone at some point in time experiences the warmness and the kindness that Emerson talks about, but most of us don’t think much about it. Some say its physical attraction or a kindred spirit that wakes up certain emotions when a person or a group of people just “feel right” about each other. There is a constant flow of energy from us that creates the experiences we call life and we accept some of them and ignore and discount others that are equally filled with this energy of consciousness.

Different actions are stimulated by the energy we receive from others and that can be confusing as well as interesting especially when the action doesn’t fit into the box of perceived, but limited facts we build around our persona. This energy can come from people we don’t know or even interact with physically; energy moves freely and doesn’t need effort or action to stimulate it.

The point is we can focus this energy with intentions and we often do, although we don’t realize it. We prompt individuals to act or say something that is based on beliefs we deem true. We create our own reality but there is a rippling effect created by other energy emissions. When we become aware of the power of this energy it can be directed in kindness and appreciation. We can honor and be honored by accepting the fact that as consciousness all things are connected and all energy creates actions that become experiences in some reality.

Dew from the Nucleus of Self

Penetrate into the ultimate truth of mind,
And we have neither things nor no-things;
Enlightenment and not-enlightenment they are the same;
Neither mind nor thing there is.

Dhritaka the sixth patriarch of Zen expresses his thoughts about non-physical consciousness in this translation. No one is sure exactly what Dhritaka meant when he expressed those thoughts centuries ago, but it is safe to say he was explaining an aspect of self that is functioning in the void of no-thing. This void and the emptiness within it are filled with consciousness units that expand to experience other elements of self.

The belief in religion has in one way or another followed the development of these consciousness units so religion does serve a purpose. Although much of the information about the inner void is distorted by religion some of the messages it reveals touches on aspects of our inner reality. In historic terms the development of religion gives us an interesting picture of the development of human consciousness and the growth of ideas that describe the individual.

The individual physical self is becoming more aware of inner conscious knowledge and that opens new thoughts about the nature of the self. As we do become more aware we recognize that this physical self goes beyond the concepts of one body, one self, one god and one world. The ability to experience other species of consciousness which Dhritaka identifies is as real as this physical world.

The world is moving from the era of religion to the era of the self. The difference is religious beliefs actuality devalue the individual; they emphasize the collective, and they emphasize greater powers than the individual and that emphasize authority. Religious beliefs don’t focus on the individual, except when they are discounting the significance of the individual and emphasizing the significance of the authorities.

The ultimate truth of religion is an interlocking yet free flowing stream of impulses that expands with awareness. The religion of self is constantly expanding as the no-thing expresses impulses that recognize the interaction that exists within basic units of consciousness. Enlightenment and non-enlightenment are the same in consciousness as drops of awareness touch the self with dew from the nucleus of self. Religion becomes a compliment in this multiply self awareness process.