Truth Of Consciousness

Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification-processes, just as health, wealth, strength etc., are names for other processes connected with life and also pursued because it pays to pursue them. Truth is made, just as health, wealth and strength are made, in the course of experience.

William James, in his 1907 essay, Pragmatism’s Concept of Truth explains how truth is whatever we want it to be. We design our reality around a set of beliefs that may not be true to others. The truth we call truth is flexible; it is wrapped in beliefs and changes as we alter our beliefs. There are inner truths, and they exist without beliefs. They are expressions that hold elements of significance in all areas of consciousness.

We don’t identify many of our beliefs as beliefs. We call them truths so we don’t question them. When we rely on the preconceived truths of others, we create a reality filled with judgmental convictions. We add these convictions to our accepted truths, and we experience a mass reality of sorts. We create these different realities so we can expand our awareness of physical consciousness.

The Universal Beauty Of Consciousness

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the Eternal One.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote those thoughts in 1841. Emerson knew that ideas are psychic intent. Psychic intent generates emotions as well as imagination. Ideas are a force of action within consciousness. They are the means by which all interior events are manifested physically. Everything is the result of the action of consciousness. Consciousness is not a thing; it is action. That action contains and is the wise silence of the eternal one.

Emotions and imagination are a powerful form of energy. Intense emotions have more energy than the energy required to launch a rocket in space. Emotions are thoughts from our interior reality. They break the barrier between the physical and nonphysical and manifest in our objective world. They achieve this feat over and over again as we focus on our individual and mass reality.

We do live in divisions, in parts, and particles. But we are never separated from the universal beauty of consciousness. Our physical activities are directed by the conscious mind, but the body consciousness also plays a part in constructing our reality. The invisible counterparts within our body consciousness are fueled by the whole. These counterparts never leave us. Even after death the invisible interior sounds and interior light qualities of our body consciousness stay with us, and we continue to use them to focus and experience other realities.

The Unconsciousness Of Consciousness

Jonathan Seagull spent the rest of his days alone, but he flew away out beyond the Far Cliffs. His one sorrow was not solitude, it was that other gulls refused to believe the glory of flight that awaited them; they refused to open their eyes and see.

He learned more each day. He learned that a stream-lined high-speed dive could bring him to find the rare and tasty fish that schooled ten feet below the surface of the ocean; he no longer needed fishing boats and stale bread for survival. He learned to sleep in the air, setting a course at night across the offshore wind, covering a hundred miles from sunset to sunrise. With the same inner control, he flew through heavy sea-fogs and climbed above them into dazzling clear skies . . . in the very times when every other gull stood on the ground, knowing nothing but mist and rain. He learned to ride the high winds far inland, to dine there on delicate insects.

What he had once hoped for the flock, he now gained for himself alone; he learned to fly and was not sorry for the price he had paid. Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull’s life is so short, and with these gone from his thoughts, he lived a long fine life indeed.

Richard Bach, in his 1970 book Jonathan Livingston Seagull does a superb job expressing the wisdom that rests in all of us. There is an unconscious, but conscious force within us, and it’s filled with exceptional abilities. This force manifests physically from the well of wisdom within the inner self.

The conscious mind is a portion of the inner self. It holds the information we need to function daily. The conscious mind also holds other knowledge that does not directly apply to our physical reality. When we need that information, it will suddenly appear unless our conscious beliefs create a barrier and block it. When they happens, we ignore pertinent data that lies within our filed of perception.

The inner self manifests whatever experiences the conscious mind desires. This unique self keeps the body alive, but it always looks to the conscious mind for an assessment of the body’s reality and condition. It forms an image that is in line with the beliefs of the conscious mind so our beliefs and ideas about the self create the body we live in. The body is an artistic creation. It is constantly being maintained at unconscious levels, but it will always align with our conscious beliefs about who and what we are.

The Wise Silence Of Consciousness

The things we now esteem fixed shall, one by one, detach themselves, like all ripe fruit, from our experience and fall. The wind shall blow them none knows wither. The landscape, the figures, Boston, London, are facts as fugitive as any institution past, or any whiff of mist or smoke, and so is society, and so is the world. The soul looketh steadily forwards, creating a world for her, leaving worlds behind her. She has no dates, no rites, nor persons, nor specialties, nor men. The soul knows only the soul; the web of events is the flowing robe in which she is clothed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote those thoughts in 1841. Emerson believed that our physical consciousness is contained and made one by the entity known as the over-soul. Beliefs are thoughts reinforced by emotions as well as imagination so they are powerful vibrations. They impact the nature of our individual as well as mass reality.

Beliefs develop from within. They leave indelible, but changeable marks on the ego. We can’t touch our beliefs, but we do feel them emotionally. The sense of believing impacts the atoms and molecules in our cells, and we become what we believe. The brain accepts this form of inner energy, and it utilizes it to form portions of our reality. Most of us are not cognizant of the power that is buried in our repetitive thoughts.

The inner sound of our thoughts has a huge impact on the body. The cells listen to those sounds and the body reacts. There’s also a wise silence within the body. That silence can change our body and our reality when we allow it to override our belief structure. When we identify the reason we believe in or for something, we discover the thoughts that restrict that silence.

The wise silence within us percolates with natural desires. In each moment, clouds of silence vacillate in rotating energy. The complexity of the events that unfold from that innate silence moves through the dynamic spiral of time and space. The silence lingers like smoke, and we become more than we believe.

The Imagination Of Consciousness

Thus those who say that they would have right without its correlate, wrong; or good government without its correlate, misrule, do not apprehend the great principles of the universe, nor the nature of all creation. One might as well talk of the existence of Heaven without that of Earth, or of the negative principle without the positive, which is clearly impossible. Yet people keep on discussing it without stop; such people must be either fools or knaves.

That interesting thought was written 2500 years ago in Chinese by Chuang-Tzu. Chuang-Tzu had a pretty good handle on his reality. He understood that contrast creates expansion. He believed we create a life filled with dualistic lessons.

Our will power and imagination are never in conflict. Our thoughts and beliefs may be combatant, but our will power will always follow our imagination. Imagination helps create reality, but we also choose to fulfill our desires using beliefs. Beliefs are filled with positive as well as negative influences and associations. We communicate our beliefs to others, and they accept or reject them in their own way. Individuals develop their own protective screen of personal beliefs, and that screen creates personal realities.

Life is an ever-changing three dimensional painting. When we change the structure of our beliefs, we change the painting and our experiences. We can mentally throw away beliefs that no longer serve our desires, but there is a residual energy attached to those antiquated beliefs and that energy may continue to restrict the fulfillment of our desires.

Religious Consciousness

Mere scholasticism or mere sacerdotalism will never create a living faith. Religion requires something inwardly propelling, energizing and capable of doing work. The intellect is useful in its place, but when it tries to cover the whole field of religion it dries up the source of life.

D.T Suzuki wrote those thoughts in his 1949 book Essays In Zen Buddhism. Suzuki believed that religion is fundamentally based on the life force called Zen. Early Chinese philosophers also identified this subjective power. They called it Chi. Confucius wrote about Chi, and the works Lao-tzu express the value of Chi in all physical thoughts and actions. When Chinese artists and thinkers are unable to assign a quality to a particular phenomenon, they simply paint two wavy lines. Those lines are the original characters used to express Chi. The names we use to identify this life force doesn’t matter. It is firmly rooted in our consciousness, but our religious beliefs change how we perceive this life force.

Thought is energy. Thought creates and alters beliefs. Beliefs are the product of religious thought; they are road maps for our experiences. They help us perceive our reality. We live in a religious based reality. That reality has been in motion for thousands of years. Beliefs produce chemical and electrical actions within the body, and they also create a harmonic resonance between our molecules, cells and organs. It’s no wonder we react differently to the same information. Our beliefs color the cells in our brains, and our perception of reality is tainted by the associations within those beliefs.

Chi Consciousness

Human beings are born because of the accumulation of Chi. When it accumulates there is life. There is one Chi that connects and pervades everything in the world.

Zhuang Zi in his book, The Great Happiness talks about the energy of Chi. Zi, one of China’s 4th century BEC philosophers, explains that Chi is an eternal non-physical life force that continues to expand. He also said physical life was limited, but the amount of things to know is unlimited. Zhuang Zi is considered a precursor of relativism. True relativists say there are no absolute truths in physical life. Truth is always associated with a belief within a language or culture.

The energy of Chi is well-known around the world. The actual translation of the word Chi is energy flow. The term is often compared to the Indian notion of Prana or the Western words energeia or élan vital. Other translations of Chi, which is also written as Qi or Ki, are air, spirit and breath. Huang Di, the founder of what is now known as Chinese medicine, believed that Chi is the foundation for all healing. He developed acupuncture to remove self-created internal blockages that limit the flow of Chi through the body.

All matter originates as thought so thought is energy. The body was consciousness before it was matter so it does make sense to address the thoughts that restrict the pure energy of consciousness from circulating through the body. Restricted or blocked energy will manifest physically in some way. Energy is constantly in motion. It continues to move through layers of consciousness, and we feel the effects of that motion. If there is nothing blocking this life force the body functions as it is designed. When we block it with stressful thoughts the body responds.