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.

Pieces Of Consciousness

While evidence of our intellectual and technological genius is all around us, there is growing concern that in other ways we have seriously underestimated ourselves. In part because of the blinding brilliance of our technological triumphs, we have distracted and dissociated ourselves from our inner world, sought outside for answers that can only be found within, denied the subjective and the sacred, overlooked latent capacities of mind, imperiled our planet and lived in a collective trance, a contracted, distorted state of mind that goes unrecognized because we share it and take it to be “normality.”

Francis Vaughn and Roger Walsh wrote those thoughts in their 1993 book, Paths Beyond Ego. Our reality is anchored to a dock of dogmas, beliefs and creeds, and we consider that information the foundation for all of our experiences. We don’t realize it, but we only use a slice of our consciousness to perceive our reality. We actually methodically choose to cut our consciousness into pieces, and then feed the pieces to the ego self as we move through the consciousness of time.

Walsh and Vaughan identify other pieces of our consciousness using a method called Transpersonal Integration. Transpersonal Integration opens avenues of thought that have been covered with the sludge of our own though-filled backwater. We begin to untangle ourselves from this bay of distorted beliefs when recognize our dualistic nature. When that happens, our polluted beliefs are overhauled in a diverse mixture, which contains other slices of consciousness. We sense these additions in unique ways.

We create our world of duplicity, and we shape it like a puzzle board. We use thoughts to put some of the pieces of consciousness together, and then feel them physically. These feeling thoughts and ideas have their own electromagnetic reality, and they generate emotions. The ego tries to maintain stability and a clear sense of focus while absorbing this information. As a new focus forms another identity develops. This inner identity becomes a composite of different characteristics and personality traits.

The new identity becomes another aspect of the self in our psychological structure. New tendencies and abilities continue to emerge from this structure. Even though we think the ego is permanent it is constantly changing as it adapts to new characteristics of the whole self. Every piece contains the whole even when we function as a piece of consciousness.

The Sound Of Consciousness

Human beings have three spiritual states. In the first, a person pays no attention whatsoever to God and worships anything. Sex, money, rank; anything but God. When he starts to learn something deeper, then he will serve no one and nothing but God. And when he progresses in this state he grows silent; he doesn’t claim: “I don’t serve God,” nor does he boast: “I do serve God;” he has gone beyond these two positions. From such beings, no sound comes into the world.

Rumi, the 13th century poet and mystic, is explaining ego consciousness in spiritual terms. Although Rumi is considered the father of Sufism he never called his spiritual beliefs by that name. He respected all religions during his lifetime. Rumi was all about connection. He was able to connect his ego consciousness and his body consciousness with the stream of consciousness that flows through all life.

Rumi also said that we are taught to believe:

The angel is free because of his knowledge, The beast because of his ignorance. Between the two remains the son of man to struggle.

Most of us believe in angels. They are qualities of our inner consciousness, and they are around and in us to help us sense our inner consciousness. The stages or states that Rumi identifies are choices that enhance our awareness with our conscious mind. The beast and other forms of consciousness are not ignorant; they are experiencing life to feel their own consciousness physically. They did not develop an ego consciousness so they are already in the state where no sound comes into their world. When we feel the bond that seals all forms of consciousness as one, we reach the state where no sound comes into the world. The ego works in tandem with the conscious mind. In that state the only sound we hear is the sound of consciousness expanding in a stream of knowing.

Aliquant Consciousness

Aliquant Consciousness

In the beginning, which is really no beginning and which has no spiritual meaning except in our finite life, the will wants to know itself, and consciousness is awakened and with the awakening of consciousness the will is split in two. The one will, whole and complete in itself is now at once actor and observer. Conflict is inevitable; for the actor now wants to be free from limitations under which he has been obliged to put himself in his desire for consciousness. He has in one sense been enabled to see, but at the same time there is something which he, as observer, cannot see.

D.T Suzuki wrote those thoughts in his 1927 book, Essays in Zen Buddhism. Defining consciousness is a difficult task. Consciousness is not just the awareness of our reality; it is in and around everything that exists physically as well as non-physically. Understanding consciousness takes more than rational thought so there are aspects and regions of consciousness that exist and function in ways that boggle our understanding. Our conscious mind paints a picture of our reality. Our ego focuses on that picture. Just like a flower that has many parts, our consciousness is composed of parts as well. Each part is a whole within a whole. The inner self, the conscious mind, and the ego are all designed to create the reality we believe we want.

Each aspect of our consciousness functions within a family of consciousness. The family is constantly changing based on our beliefs about it. We are products of a family of consciousness that forms individual aspects of itself in order to experience its own interpretation of an aliquant consciousness in physical form. Other qualities of consciousness interact with our family, and the result is a diverse reality.

That reality is our focused reality. Just outside of that focus is a plethora of realities that exist within the ever-changing regions of consciousness. There are fluctuations and gradations within this activity that go unnoticed since we rely on our ego to identify what is real. What is real extends outward with each thought we have so the result is an ever blooming consciousness that senses other parts of itself, but may not be in any hurry to accept them.

Reconfigured Ideas

If the doors of perception were cleansed Everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, til he sees all things thro’ narrow chunks of his own cavern.

William Blake uses his poetic prowess to open a mental window, and we begin to see the creative power we have within us. In the present, our conscious mind chooses a particular theme for our physical existence, and within that theme there are individual patterns filled with infinite resources that create our personal reality. The conscious mind embarks on this journey to translate reality into physical manifestations. The conscious mind is acutely tuned to physical reality. When the conscious mind accepts too many external generated beliefs, it chooses using the ego rather than the inner self. Our present perceptions are no longer pure input from the inner self; they are homogenized ideas that create a feeling that this reality is greater than our inner reality.

Our self-image is not unconscious; the present ego creates a physical image of us in relation to the world we actually perceive for ourselves. We are trained to perceive the ego or our own cavern, as Blake calls it, as a villain that taints our view of the inner self, but the ego is not equipped to negatively impact the inner self. The inner self is the force that changes the ego. Our present ego has a tendency to dwell on limitations, and when it does, we experience them. The inner self is always projecting a new image for the ego, but the physical senses may be so tuned into the negative results of past experiences we tune out our own inner projections.

The conscious mind can turn the ego in endless directions if the information from the inner self is accepted as real. The present ego has the ability to turn inward and observe its own content and change if it accepts its connection with the inner self and the conscious mind. There are graduations and fluctuations within this activity, so the ego is far more flexible than we believe it is. The present ego has the ability to use the conscious mind to perceive distorted internal as well as external realties using embedded beliefs. That action causes the inner self to reconfigure ideas and present them in a way that short-circuits those distorted beliefs. Some people call that process an awakening or enlightenment. Others call it mind over matter.