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.

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.

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.

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.

Marinated Mixture Of Consciousness

Across centuries and cultures transpersonal experiences have been regarded as vitally or even supremely important. In our own time the transpersonal vision and transpersonal disciplines are crucially important for many reasons. They draw attention to a neglected, misunderstood family of experiences; provide new understandings of ancient ideas, religious traditions, and contemplative practices; offer more generous views of human nature; and point to unsuspected human possibilities.

Roger Walsh and Frances Vaughn wrote those thoughts in their 1993 book, Paths Beyond Ego. Our beliefs structure is rooted in transpersonal experiences. Our belief about religion is a good example. All religions are based on transpersonal experiences that have been accepted as fact. The amount of transpersonal information that we accept as fact is considerable. There is a constant stream of non-verifiable impulses flowing into our reality, and all of them have value. We tend to analyze these impulses using an academic epistemology. That practice filters out some pertinent experiences. Those experiences are banished to an isolated mental contour in our psyche until our epistemology changes. The standard way we accept impulses is to marinate them in a selective mixture of associations and influences. That process makes some impulses pliable as well as hard to swallow mentally.

Ancient cultures accepted most transpersonal experiences as real. They became beliefs. All beliefs are valid to the believer. Beliefs have no expiration or do not use date. Some obsolete modern world beliefs are still valid in areas where there is an antiquated view of life. All beliefs are influenced by awareness, and can be expanded by new transpersonal experiences. Our transpersonal impulses restructure antiquated beliefs, and we experience that new structure using our own marinated mixture of consciousness.

Mysteriously Enchanting

Magical is a word that we all have used at one time or another to describe an event or a person that crosses the boundaries of our physical and scientific understanding. We believe the word means mysteriously enchanting in a non-ordinary sense. Magical can describe the world of the unknown as well as the art of being unreal in some way. There is an element of beauty attached to any magical world. We all love the stimulation we feel when a magical event takes place before our eyes. We stretch the corners of our brain to find an answer for not knowing why or how something exists. In most cases we throw these unanswered questions into a vacant lot in our conscious mind, and mark them ‘magic’ or ‘not-normal.’

Most of us are too busy to watch the magic that unfolds around us every day. The rigors of work and family responsibilities take up most waking hours so there is little time to enjoy the natural magical beauty that surrounds us. As the great Sufi poet, Rumi said: “Beauty surrounds us, but we usually have to be walking in a garden to appreciate it.” The quest to stay afloat in our economic pool of ‘what’s next’ takes a toll on what we see and experience in our individual reality, and the other natural realities that are constantly occurring around us.

We are conditioned to overlook our own spiritual magic. It sits in specialized compartments in our psyche while we idolize and worship other compartments that tend to fill the void we have within us. We have been conditioned to believe magical beauty belongs to an exclusive club and most of us don’t have a membership card. The quest to be more than we think we are is hindered by our thoughts about our own beauty and our creative imagination.

My book, The Butterfly Ball, is about the magical mystery of change. Who better than a butterfly to tell a story about change? Just like butterflies, the people in the story awaken from their metamorphic state in their own way.

Butterflies are living metaphors, but we are not educated to see them in that way. To most of us they are strange insects that become beautiful flies. We don’t usually focus on them as they flirt with bushes and flowers and spend their physical time drinking, eating and having sex. Their world is unknown to us, but when all the frills of life are extracted from our lives, we discover that we live just like butterflies. Our physical lives are exaggerated versions of the beautiful mystical magic that flows through butterflies, and all forms of life. The free will of butterflies represents the nature of our true beauty. Like all other aspects of consciousness they are here to imitate the multiplicity that exists within our conscious mind. When we bring that beauty into our awareness, life is less of a mystery and more of a journey of discovery.

Another Version of Consciousness

To conceive the truth as something external which is to be perceived by a perceiving subject is dualistic and appeals to the intellect for its understanding, but according to Zen we are living right in the truth, by the truth, from which we cannot be separated.

D.T. Suzuki is still considered the world’s leading authority on Zen Buddhism. Reading Suzuki’s work is an eye-opener for anyone who wants to know more about the nature of consciousness. If our inner consciousness used words to communicate with the ego the word Zen could be used to describe that process.

But consciousness is not restricted by words or specific thoughts about its nature. Consciousness expands in unique ways as we experience different elements of the psyche. The psyche is deeply immersed and extremely active in several regions of consciousness, but it is also consciousness acting as a free agent in this reality. The spokesman for this free agent is Zen. Zen gives us a clear view of the self as it absorbs other elements of consciousness. Several elements of consciousness create an energy mixture that flows in and out of Zen while the ego functions in time.

When consciousness is examined using rational thought it projects itself as an unknown. We measure this unknown using with various fabricated truth. Those measurements are man-made and have little to do with the truth that flows from our inner voice. Zen is not defined by religious beliefs; it is only identified using the language of those beliefs.

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We concoct our own version of Zen consciousness and truth so they conform to our beliefs. Everything we experience in physical life is consciousness and is rooted in the quality and truth of Zen. This other quality of consciousness is an important aspect of the psyche even though we consider it irrational as well as undefinable.