Saturday, September 29, 2012

The Magnificence Of Consciousness

Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree. All things swim and glitter. Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. Ghost-like we glide through nature, that she was so sparing of her fire and so liberal of her earth, that it appears to us that we lack the affirmative principle, and though we have health and reason, yet we have no super-fluity of spirit for new creation?

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1838 essay, Experience, brings a bit of 19th century genius to the center stage of our thought process. We desperately look for our genius in the pews of churches and in the thoughts of others. Our outward search leads us to a steel door where salvation is the key that unlocks the pain of sin. This belief-based search inhibits our inner genius and we cover it with the manure of fear.

Nature doesn’t need acceptance to display its genius; it innately knows how to connect with the world it creates. Nature is designed to show us what our genius looks like, but the dense fog of educated misconceptions keeps us, as Emerson points out, in a mist-filled sleep.

Our genius waits to be discovered in the beauty of a butterfly or the sound that trees make as they sense the experience of physical life. Butterflies and trees continue to fine-tune the art of being more than we expect by fully experiencing life in all its dualistic splendor.

Our winged comrades in consciousness flirt with the hibiscus and honeysuckle to experience and feel the magnificence of life. Trees drink the water of knowing and grow in its presence. These free forms of nature teach us to expand our perceptions and break through our chrysalis of ignorance, and become caterpillars that know they are beautiful butterflies or trees that change without regret.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Consciousness Moves Through Itself

When we speak of beings of higher dimensions, we are speaking of the rate of vibratory frequency, not as better than or more important than humanity. There is no being anywhere who is more than another. The angel is no more than the human. The angel simply knows more of who it is. You are still learning. There is no hierarchy within Divinity.

Jani King, the Australian psychologist, has written several books on the nature of human beliefs. She explains that our physical belief system is based on learned knowledge as well as physical experiences. We expand our awareness using our beliefs and the experiences that manifest from those beliefs. We believe that there is a hierarchy in the spiritual aspect of the self, but there are not hierarchies in consciousness.

Consciousness is infinite, but it is also appears finite. There are non-physical regions, aspects, elements and various forms of consciousness, but there are no divisions within consciousness. We assign levels and a hierarchy in order to comprehend consciousness in our finite world. Religion as well as philosophy teaches us to dissect and catalogue consciousness in order to physically understand it. We move through and sense several regions of consciousness in order to feel it physically.

Our beliefs create vibrations and those vibrations are tuned into a specific frequency. That frequency is our reality. We also create vibrations through thoughts that are not beliefs. Those thoughts may come from a different frequency. Other aspects of our consciousness are aware of these frequencies so we sense the energy that emulates from these unusual vibrations. Some people call it intuition. Some call it voodoo while others call it magic. Consciousness calls it consciousness being conscious. Consciousness is always conscious as it continues to expand in its own divinity.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Consciousness Is Imaginary

The distinction between what is real and what is imaginary is not one that can be finely maintained. All existing things are imaginary.

John Stuart Mackenzie, the late 19th century British philosopher, was a Fellow at Edinburgh, as well as Trinity College at Cambridge. In 1895, he became professor of logic and philosophy at the University College at Cardiff. Mackenzie is considered a Hegelian in philosophy circles, which means he agreed with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s philosophical beliefs. Hegel was an early 19th century German philosopher. Hegel believed that spirit manifests itself in contradictions and opposites in order to unify and expand. Hegel thought that finite things don’t determine themselves as finite; their character is determined by their boundaries as they pertain to other things. In order to become real they must go beyond their finitude.

Mackenzie believed that as finite beings we are imaginary, and so is ever other physical manifestation. Reality as we know it is a catalog of beliefs. That catalogue is put together by our conscious mind and ego, which are aspects of our infinite being. We use our belief catalogue to make the finite real.

Jacob Bohme the 17th century philosopher, as well as shoemaker, said that the imaginary separation of spirit and body was a necessary stage in the evolution of awareness. Through the contradiction and negation we experience in our reality or in our belief structure, we expand the infinite. Contradictions and contrast are self-created phases that expand the awareness of the finite self. That awareness is then projected into the infinite reality of our whole, which is constantly expanding.

Our whole is not a thing or a being that exists outside of our imaginary physical being. It is an element of all consciousness, which expands as the philosophical comprehension of each imaginary self experiences some sort of reality.

All realties are imaginary, but they are very real in terms of experiences. Linear time experiences are expressed in physical contradictions as well as in unity. Experiences that are real today are in our imagination tomorrow. Experiences that are real tomorrow are imagination today. We imagine and create. The infinite creates the finite so consciousness can feel itself physically.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Temperamental Consciousness

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments. Undignified as such a treatment may seem to some of my colleagues, I shall have to take account of this clash and explain a good many of the divergences of philosophies by it.

Of whatever temperament a professional philosopher is, he tries when philosophizing to sink the fact of his temperament. Temperament is not conventionally recognized reason, so he urges impersonal reasons only for his conclusions.

Yet his temperament really gives him stronger bias than any of his more strictly objective premises. It loads the evidence for him one way or another, making for a more sentimental or a more hard-hearted view of the universe, just as this fact or that principle would. He trusts his temperament.

Wanting a universe that suits it, he believes in any representation of the universe that does suit it. He feels men of opposite temper to be out of key with the world’s character and in his heart considers them incompetent and ‘not in It,’ in the philosophical business, even though they may far excel him in dialectical ability.

William James in his 1906 essay, The Present Dilemma of Philosophy, is explaining how philosophers as well as all humans expand their belief structure using their personal temperament. Our mental, physical and emotional traits define our unique humanity. Temperament is a quality of consciousness that is firmly rooted in beliefs.

A philosopher’s job is to open the door of awareness so people can align their temperament with other humans. Once a belief structure is aligned with similar belief structures a chain reaction is set in motion, and collective experiences unfold. But, each individual experience is different in that collective whole.

Religion, politics and other beliefs are constantly shifting and changing as the boundaries of our beliefs expand. A plethora of influences impact our individual temperamental structure. We use those associations to confirm our convictions. We then defend those convictions using our own perception of pertinent data.

Unconfirmed data also affects our collective temperament. Integration through acceptance changes our temperament. Rather that disputing or disclaiming conflicting political or religious philosophical issues we have the ability to sense an innate presence within us that blends different philosophies in a vat of cajoling perceptions. The integration process gives us the opportunity to accept individual beliefs even when we disagree with them. Our diverse collective consciousness is mixed together in this form of mental energy, and the result is a dualistic agreement to agree to disagree with respect and appreciation. Acceptance through integration is the chisel that craves a path so individual consciousness can accept and appreciate the mental juices that overflow in our temperamental dialectal mixture.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Complexity Of Consciousness

Okubo Shibun, a Zen master, was known for painting kakemonos which are Japanese scroll paintings that hang on the wall. He was asked by a patron to paint a bamboo forest and willingly consented and painted a beautiful bamboo grove, which was completely red.

The patron marveled at the extraordinary skill with which the painting had been executed. The patron asked the artist, “Master, I have come to thank you for the picture; but excuse me, you have painted the bamboo in red” Well, cried the master, in what color would you desire it? “In black of course,” replied the patron. And who, answered the artist ever saw a black-leaved bamboo?

D.T. Suzuki tells that story in one of his essays in his 1949 book, Essays In Zen Buddhism. The story is a good example of how the ego can ignore the conscious mind and create its own reality. Our reality comes from a functioning corner in our psyche and it is dressed in an abundant array of perceptions. We might say our reality is the crude oil of the conscious mind and the refined oil of the ego. When the conscious mind tells the ego something is real a belief is born. Each new belief becomes part of our intricate belief structure.

As we move through our dedicated time element we add associations to our beliefs and influences are salted in for good measure. We create a plethora of masterful realities to experience. The ego’s job is to orchestrate whatever version feels good to the physical self. Each version is real and valid,and each one is available to experience in some form.

Thought is energetic activity and it is a powerful tool in assembling as well as rearranging beliefs about the nature of our chosen reality. We construct several internal stories using the complexity that exists within our own consciousness. The chosen product is a reality that is fine-tuned using the conscious mind and the ego. We accept that product as fact.

The complexity of our consciousness expands the nature of our reality, but, as Suzuki points out, other realities are hidden below the surface of each conscious mind and its adjunct, the ego.