The Ying Of The Yang Of The Conscious Mind

The Poem

It discovers by night

What the day hid from it.

Sometimes it turns itself

Into an animal.

In summer it takes long walks

By itself where meadows

Fold back from ditches.

Once it stood still

In a quiet row of machines.

Who knows

What it is thinking?

Donald Hall, the 14th U.S. Poet Laureate, digs deep into the subconscious, and we find another portion of the conscious mind smiling back at us. The subconscious has gotten a bad rap through the generations. Religion plays a part in shuffling the deck of fear, and then dealing us a distorted hand filled with half-truths. The Western World has been taught to believe that the subconscious is unpredictable, unreliable and filled with unpleasant energy.

The door to our inner self has been padlocked with a mental combination lock. We have been taught to believe that we are divorced from a portion of our own reality. The concept of original sin holds us in a hammer lock of uncertainty, and the only way out is to participate in superficial rituals and guilt-filled obligations. The idea of a tainted consciousness opens the door for major psychoanalysis and soul reconstruction.

As Hall points out, we live without consciously knowing how we maintain and use our physical awareness. But, we do know. The atoms and molecules within the cells have their own consciousness, and they mesh with the molecules and atoms in the air, earth, and universe. That mixture produces a unique reality that is built for us by our subconscious.

Our subconscious believes in us even though we don’t know what it is thinking. It is the night of our mental day or the ying of the yang of our conscious mind.

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The Inexhaustible Energy Of Consciousness

When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. When people see some things as good, other things become bad. Being and non-being create each other. Difficult and easy support each other. Long and short define each other. High and low depend on each other. Before and after follow each other.

Therefore The Master Acts without doing anything and teaches without saying anything. Things arise and she lets them come; things disappear and she lets them go. She has but doesn't possess, acts but doesn't expect. When her work is done, she forgets it. That is why it lasts forever.

Lao-tzu, the Chinese philosopher, wrote those words 2500 years ago. The Master is the inner self. The inner self adopts a physical consciousness in order to manipulate the world we call our reality. Our consciousness exists in many forms and is active in many dimensions, but our conscious mind is focused on directing outward activity using a dualistic method. That method is a product of our belief structure.

From the duality the conscious mind sets the goals and the inner self brings them about using the inexhaustible energy of consciousness. The value of the conscious mind is its ability to set direction and make decisions. The conscious mind has a dual role. It assesses data that comes from the inner self as well as the information we perceive from the physical world. When the conscious mind is not limited by our beliefs, it is able to act without doing and teach without saying anything.

We are taught to fear the consciousness within us. We fear our own thoughts, and accept the beliefs of others. We distort inner data and our physical expressions reflect those distortions. There is no war between the inner self and the conscious mind. That is only a perception based on our choice to ignore the information we receive from our subjective self. But, the inner self continues to give us the information we need whether we use it now or store it in a mind cell labeled “forever.”

Interior Hut Of Consciousness

This hut is larger than the earth, Since there’s nothing that is not. In the small charcoal stove

Burn sun and countless stars, And the corners of the kitchen Buzz with humankind

Shinkichi Takahashi’s poem Here is a good example of 1920’s Dadaism mixed with an abundant dose of what-the-hell? The 20s and 30s were restless decades in Japan. Takahashi was an emerging artistic figure. His work gave that reality a touch of existential flavoring.

The hut in Takahashi’s work is the inner self. Before we perceive anything physical we sense it through our inner pathways. Everything exists in the non-temporal reality before it is materialized, and perceived physically. Ideas generate emotions and imagination. They activate interior patterns, which come from the creative force from which all realities manifest.

We consciously react to the noise of physical data. Takahashi calls it “the buzz of humankind.” Physical data is carried through the nerves using time lapses. Time lapses are necessary within this dimension. The sun and the stars represent the invisible light and sound patterns that form using the electromagnetic energy of the nothing that is not. This nothing is not ruled by time and space, and cannot be explained using our limited format.

From that nothing temporal perception takes over, and we separate everything that is not accepted by our educated conscious mind. But in our interior hut all physical and non-physical events and objects are recognized and connected.