What Is Consciousness?

We have been taught that the word consciousness means the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings. The dictionary also describes consciousness as the awareness or perception of something by a person. Both of these meanings are credible descriptions of our objective consciousness, but as most of us know we are much more than the objectivity we express. Consciousness is not limited by our description of it. In fact, nothing limits consciousness as it continues to expand in the action and energy of awareness.

The billion dollar question is how does consciousness act in its subjective state and how does that action affect our physical being? The answer may surprise some of you. Others may discount the answer based on individual beliefs. No matter what you belief, the fact that all physical objects exist in a subjective region of consciousness before they become objective is a metaphysical and a recent scientific truth.

Atomic Awakening

The progress of science has now reached a turning point. The stable foundations of physics have broken up. . . The old foundations of scientific thought are becoming unintelligible. Time, space, matter, material, ether, electricity, mechanism, organism, configuration, structure, pattern, function, all require reinterpretation. What is the sense of talking about a mechanical explanation when you do not know what you mean by mechanics?

Alfred North Whitehead wrote those thoughts in his 1967 book, Science and the Modern World. Scientists have been studying atoms and how they act when they show themselves in our system of reality for years, but they still don’t understand the nature of the atom. Scientists understand there are spectrums of light, but they fail to realize there are spectrums of matter as well. We are conditioned to think in single-line thoughts so we believe events are complete actions. But in the probable system of life, those events are just a fraction of their entire existence.

If the atom was capable of phasing in and out of what we call time then these same atoms would appear in other systems of reality. If the atoms that support the body exist in other realities, our consciousness would function in these realities as well.

The mechanical explanation for these mind-blowing truths is right around the corner. Hang on. We’re in for quite an atomic awakening. We might begin to understand other portions of the self and the atoms that support it.

Nervous Energy

The place that Solomon made to worship in Called the far Mosque, is not built of earth Of water and stone, but of intention and wisdom And mystical conversations and compassionate action.

Every part of it is intelligence and responsive To every other. The carpet bows to the broom. The door knocker and the door swing together like musicians. The heart sanctuary does exist, but it can’t be described. Why try!

Solomon goes there every morning and gives guidance with words. With musical harmonies and in actions, which are the deepest teachings. A prince is just A conceit until he does something with generosity.

Rumi hits our ten pound bag filled with nervous energy when he shares his thoughts with us. Science is just discovering what Rumi understood eight centuries ago: Thoughts creates and influence matter. A church or mosque is not just stone or brick; it is a composite creation of thoughts.

Thoughts and beliefs create places and we develop a story around those thoughts. Intention and wisdom fill the cracks in the mortar, and appreciation dresses the interior with the action of consciousness.

Worship is a form of awareness. It should not turn into idolization. There is nothing to worship outside of the self. The environment and everything in it is an extension of the self. Everything material extends outward from our consciousness. Physical reality is just one form of reality. We value it because we focus on it. We choose this reality to physically feel the action within our experiences.

Consciousness Seeds

Poetry seems to me more physical than intellectual. A year or two ago, in common with others, I received from America a request that I would define poetry. I replied that I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat, but that I thought we both recognized the object by the symptoms, which it provokes in us.

Alfred Edward Housman, the classical scholar and poet, was born in Worcestershire, England. Housman was the main character in the 1997 Tom Stoppard play, The Invention of Love. Housman wrote an early 1900s collection of poetry called, A Shropshire Lad. A wall hanging was created for A Shropshire lad, and it now hangs in St. Laurence Church in Ludlow, England.

Poetry floats above our beliefs structure, and it creates a cloud of thoughts that showers our objective world with subjective hail. The hail melts and our belief system floods with new roots. Those roots move to the rhythm of our consciousness. We feel the need to explore these roots, even though we have a hard time accepting them.

Poetry defies the collective conforming creature in us and shakes us awake. Every poem drenches us in the knowledge of nothing, but the pureness of our own freedom. The freedom to perceive and interpret it in an individual way.

We recognize poetry by its consciousness symptoms. Poems are consciousness seeds that dwell outside the rigid walls of our beliefs. They wait for a crack to appear in that guarded wall, and then they fill it with awareness.

You Are An Eye

Since you have perceived the dust of forms, Perceive the wind that moves them; Since you have perceived the foam, Perceive the ocean of Creative Energy.

Come; perceive it, for in you Insight is all that matters; The rest is just fat and flesh, A weft and warp of bones and muscle.

Your fat never increased the lights in candles; Your flesh never became roast meat For someone drunk with spiritual wine. Dissolve this whole body of yours in vision:

Pass into sight, pass into sight, pass into sight! One sight perceives only two yards ahead; Another sight has beheld the two worlds And the face of the King.

Between these two Is an incalculable difference: Seek the remedy of vision, And God best knows that which is hidden.

Rumi, the 13th century mystic and poet, was actually born in Afghanistan in 1207. He lived most of his life in Konya which is in southern Turkey. Rumi uses 13th century language to describe 21st century concepts. He understood the power that rests within us. We can use our inner senses to experience physical life once we become aware of them.

Silence

A bird delegation came to Solomon complaining, “Why is it you never criticize the nightingale?”

Because my way, the nightingale explained For Solomon is different. Mid-March to mid-June I sing. The other nine months, while you continue chirping, I’m silent.

Rumi, the master mystic and poet, wrote those words over seven hundred years ago. At first glance the story is hard to understand, but given a little focused attention the meaning is clear. Appreciation is the key to happiness, and a positive outlook on life is the door that leads to heaven on earth. Our idle chatter is the noise that blocks the ego from hearing the mind, but silence is the sound of our aware consciousness.

LOVE

Love one another, but make not a bond of Love. Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone, As the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Stand together yet not too near together. For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

The words of Khalil Gibran, the 20th century artist, writer and poet, frames love in poetic verse, and it dances through the soul. Love is the energy of life and the impetus for being. We are filled with it yet we always seek it. We run from it, but it always finds us. We hide it, but it always frees itself. Love is the bark on a tree; the rose next to a thorn, and the calf that drinks its mother's milk. Love is all there is when there is no fear.