The Garden Of Consciousness

How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on’t! Ah fie! ‘Tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this!

Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play, and one of the most influential tragedies ever written in the English language. Hamlet has been analyzed, dissected and argued about over the last four hundred years. Why Hamlet hesitated in killing his uncle in the chapel seems to be a complex ethical, as well as philosophical issue. Hamlet’s decision may have been fueled by religious beliefs that were called truths at that time. Perhaps Hamlet believed that killing a praying villain would send him to heaven instead of hell.

We create our own weed-filled garden. It is a blend of beliefs, associations and influences. It is a root-filled comedy; a seed-filled tragedy, and a guilt-filled emotional flower. We materialize all our beliefs; the positive as well as the negative, in order to completely understand that our thoughts create our reality. We don’t completely understand the power of our thoughts until we physically experience what they create. Our garden is a world of mirrors. We plant and pick the images we want to experience. Our choices show us the beauty of recognizing our inner self or the folly of believing we are separated from it. Every choice creates an assortment of probabilities to experience. In each moment we can make another choice, and change how we perceive truth in our self-created world.

A Consciousness Enriched Sky

Evening Clouds Something like a cloud is spread over the sky, The earth, too, is something like cloud.

Fingers stripped of their gold foil, Overspread the earth, black as cloud shadows.

At sunset, when clouds burst into flame, The fingers move.

Shinkichi Takahashi’s poetry is an Eastern mind adventure that tickles our mental taste buds and challenges our Western perceptions. The meaning of his words seems to be tucked away in a Japanese vault of wisdom; our limited ideas about the self conflict with his Eastern esoteric thoughts. While seeking the essence of his work, we find the conscious mind and our ego wrapped around a poet’s world that is spread over a consciousness enriched sky.

All intense aspirations and unconscious motivations manifest and wait for the approval or disapproval of the conscious mind. Our thoughts produce results, and when they are habitually repeated they become beliefs and truths. These beliefs and truths seem to have a permanent effect on the mind so we rarely examine them until we are assaulted by physical difficulties that change the nature of our reality.

We may blame others, or our own childhood upbringing for these negative experiences. We may also blame God or the devil and hold them responsible if our religious beliefs are rooted in separation. Or we may simply say “that’s life” and accept the negatives as necessary aspects of being physical.

When we begin to realize that we create our experiences through our concentrated thoughts, emotions and beliefs, the clouds of negativity burst into flames. The energy of the conscious mind is free to choose another thought that alters the conditions that cause us the discomfort and diminish our creativity.

The Widening Perspective Of Consciousness

The idea that our sense of self, which we usually assume to be relatively stable and enduring, is actually constructed anew each moment out of a ceaseless flux of thoughts images and sensations may be an interesting concept when we read about it, but when seen directly in meditation it becomes undeniably clear, and by understanding egocentricity it can be life changing and helpful.

Roger Walsh M.D. Ph.D. wrote those thoughts in his essay, Hidden Wisdom. The fact that the conscious mind can change like a rapidly blinking light is a hard concept to grasp when we use our pragmatic education to explain that reality.

Reality and imagination are synonymous. Without one there wouldn’t be the other. We are taught that imagination has no place in our physical reality, but our reality originates in our imagination. Our creativity and desires come from imagination. Civilizations spring from imagination, and our belief system is created and altered by our imagination.

Imagination widens our perspective of consciousness. Consciousness expands from the imaginary desires we manifest physically. Our imagination within consciousness existed before our physical form. The data within our genes and chromosomes is imprinted long before we become physical, but it is constantly expanding as we expand our awareness. Consciousness is not dependent on physical perception, but our perception of consciousness is expanded by the experience of being physical. We are constantly in a state of action, and that state has no physical or non-physical limits.

Rhythms Of Consciousness

What you knew before you were born isn’t lost. You only hide it till you’re tested, till it’s time to remember. And sure enough when you want, you’ll find some odd, funny beautiful way to find it again.

Rich Bach wrote that thought in his book The Messiah’s Handbook. It’s hard to comprehend, but we do feel and see what we expect to see. Our physical world is a reference point. The exterior painting is a replica of our inner desire. Our living portrait of the world grows in the mind. It is three dimensional painting, and every individual in it is using a unique brush to color that painting. The great creativity of our consciousness was functioning before birth and it continues to function after death.

All consciousness has a hand in creating the world. Our physical world rises from the ancient feeling-tones that make up portions of our psyche. Feelings and emotions manifest in specific ways, and our thoughts grow on a bed of deep and abiding rhythms. These rhythms of consciousness are the result of the innate creativity that is inherent in all species.

The earth’s consciousness is connected to the consciousness of every species. We rise from unknowing to knowing rhythms in an odd, funny and beautiful way. As we do, we remember that our unconscious knowledge is knowing in its own unknowing rhythms.

Bach explains the unknowing this way:

As you’re one with the person you were a second ago or a week ago, as you’re one with the person you’re going to be a moment from now or a week from now, so you’re one with the person you were a lifetime ago, the one you are in an alternate lifetime, the one you’ll be a hundred lifetimes into what you call your future.

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