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#Post#: 36706--------------------------------------------------
More from Lazarus - Consciousness Isn't Personal
DIR By: Jed McKenna
Date: December 26, 2018, 11:06 pm
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Here's tonight's Lazy Rant. This one wasn't written with an
audience in mind, so it's not quite as user friendly. It's just
me writing to try to give language to what I think Nis is
saying. It could become something more at some point. Feel
free to read or not to!
---
As a Westerner and a scientist and a sort of Occam's
materialist, I can look at the brain and human development
objectively, and I can tell a story about how the self comes
into being. From this perspective, consciousness seems to be a
byproduct of a complex neural network and self-consciousness an
overlay of culture into that biological matrix. Even here,
however, we have to admit that some mysteries remain, and that
no scientist yet really understands how consciousness springs
from matter. That leads us back in to the subjective to seek
additional data. From the subjective viewpoint, I can concede
that some evidence may exist in support of an explanation that
our current level of material understanding is insufficient for.
For instance, when you think back, can you remember the moment
you started? Most people would say no. At some point, as you
reach back, memory fades or blurs into a fog, a sort of memory
horizon beyond which you can't see. For the few who would claim
to remember their birth or the womb, I think they're just
fantasizing. Nothing wrong with that, but even so, it would be
impossible for them to remember a moment when something
coalesced from nothing. Whenever that could have been, whatever
was storing the memory of that moment couldn't have had the
cognitive infrastructure to select which elements of the
experience to record or to construct a narrative frame in which
to record them. Regardless, most of us would say that there is
no memory of a beginning. It is as if you have always existed.
Your inability to remember when you began may be an accurate
reflection of reality. You may not have ever begun. Your
consciousness may have no beginning. If this is true, calling it
"your" consciousness may be misleading. What you are could be
thought of as consciousness that has been accessed by your brain
and your body at some point in your biological and cultural
development. That was a temporal event. It required a level of
maturity that occurred at some vaguely identifiable moment in
your body's history. From there, a tangle of affects, drives,
and neuro-motivational feedback loops interfaced with the
familial and cultural features of your social environment to
teach you a language and structure you an ego with which to
navigate your world. You, as a cultural-biological being with a
developmental history, managed to make contact with the
non-temporal consciousness without which you could never know
you were having experiences, could never have formed an ego in
the first place.
So there are two levels of youness in this model. Most of us,
most of the time, identify with the egoic self, attached as it
is to the arbitrary accumulation of memories that distinguish
you from other people who have their own random knot of memories
to attach to. But that ego, the one who gives meaning to those
memories, could not exist but for the matrix of consciousness
that brought it to life. That consciousness, which isn't
precisely yours, and which seems to have begun before your body
was born, is also you. It's the other level of youness.
This consciousness is not the same as witnessing awareness.
Learning to identify with the witness is a valuable step in
ceasing to identify with the body, emotions, and thoughts. All
these transient phenomena can be witnessed with equanimity by
witnessing awareness. But even the witness can be observed
doing its thing from a higher perspective, from that of
consciousness itself. Identifying with the witness expands your
scope, but only to a wider personal scope. Consciousness,
because it isn't "yours", isn't personal. It's a wider scope by
far than that of the witness.
Consciousness isn't personal, but it is you. You're made of it.
There is no you separate from it. But whatever this mysterious
medium of consciousness is doesn't end at the semi-permeable
edges of your personal self. It includes that self and it
includes everything that self could ever perceive or experience.
So this second, transpersonal level of youness doesn't seem
like "you" at all, at least not from any viewpoint inside the
egoic self. It seems like everything. But this seeming is
correct. It is everything. You are everything.
Self level one is the personal self - body, memories, ego,
witness, time-bound perspective, and vague boundaries
distinguishing itself from other selves. Self level two is the
consciousness that preceded your individuality, that permeates
every aspect of your individuality, and that transcends
experience, including all things.
Some people manage to successfully navigate the maze of the ego.
They find the exit and emerge with a comprehensive realization
that what they are is not the maze but the eternal infinite
consciousness within which the finite maze arose. We variously
call these folks enlightened or awakened. Many of them teach
that this second level is more real than the first. What they
mean is that from the perspective of the second level, the first
level is just a trance, or a dream, or a cluster of relatively
ignorant beliefs. Identifying with your developed adult
personality is no different than identifying with the unformed
blob of protoplasm you were as a newborn baby. Nether one is
what "you" "really" are. Both were just bio-cultural bridges
linking your time-bound body self with something you've always
been and will always be, even as everything time-bound about you
changes and dies.
Eternal-consciousness you isn't actually more real than ego you.
In the same sense, daytime-waking you isn't more real than
sleeping-dreamtime you, and adult-developed you isn't more real
than infant-undeveloped you. Each reality makes sense on its
own terms from within its own frame. But each frame is subsumed
within a larger one. Larger frames can see the smaller frames
within them and so can comment on the scope of the reality
they're playing out. And the frame of eternal-consciousness, or
so I've been told, is the ultimate frame. It's the background
behind all frames. So its got the ultimate privileged
perspective from which to view the finite games and dream-like
realities of all little ego self frames. And from that
perspective, eternal consciousness is the only game going and
the only thing that matters, though, of course, it's not a thing
at all. It's the "real" you because its the only you that
matters.
#Post#: 36708--------------------------------------------------
Re: Jed Rant: More from Lazy
DIR By: guest1055
Date: December 27, 2018, 4:54 am
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Thank you, this post was really great for contemplating the "I
am" feeling. Almost felt like reading meditation at some point.
Cheers
#Post#: 36709--------------------------------------------------
Re: Jed Rant: More from Lazy
DIR By: guest1170
Date: December 27, 2018, 6:15 am
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Was reading Nis and found something interesting there...
"Ultimately even the observer you are not. You are the Ultimate
potentiality of which the all-embracing consciousness is the
manifestation and expression"
I didnt realize this yet...
#Post#: 36713--------------------------------------------------
Re: Jed Rant: More from Lazy
DIR By: guest1293
Date: December 27, 2018, 8:03 am
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Jed please keep it to the 200 word limit in the interest of
time.
Ps. I just love knowing that I am "the Ultimate potentiality of
which the all-embracing consciousness is the manifestation and
expression." But then the wife asks me to go to work and make
money so our family can have food and shelter...Ugh!! The nerve
of some people ::)
#Post#: 36714--------------------------------------------------
Re: Jed Rant: More from Lazy
DIR By: guest1170
Date: December 27, 2018, 8:21 am
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I used to have a job and responsabilities before realization
too, but now everything is taken care of by the Universe... If
the Universe gives me a job and a wife, then good...
Otherwise... Ill just keep doing what I do at the moment
Yes, I know, It all sounds like crazy metaphysical talk... But
It is my experience
#Post#: 36715--------------------------------------------------
Re: Jed Rant: More from Lazy
DIR By: guest1293
Date: December 27, 2018, 9:07 am
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In terms of realization and out of respect for where you
currently are, I'll point out that there is a major difference
between what I thought was realization and the Realization. One
involves mystical and enchanted stories that placed me in a
position of being the ultimate thing for which all this is
contained while simultaneously waiting for the universe to
kindly provide (scratches head) but never mind that making any
sense because it's just what sounded better at the time.
Growing up and settling in. Who the fuck wants that? Getting
real? Without a head full of shit to fall back on? The truth is
that the universe doesn't provide you anything but a slow death.
You have an opportunity to grow up and get on with it and
possibly make some improvements before that or you stay in never
never land never to grow older or having to face the reality of
your situation. The universe would unprovide me a wife and
family too if that's how I went about my business. But I got
real. Took a good HONEST look at things. It's not always as cool
as envisioning my supreme enlightened being status of the days
past but it's real and authentic and I do what needs to be done
without hesistation because it's simple after you clear your
head of all the shit and stop relying on the guru to direct your
next step. But that's just my experience.
#Post#: 36716--------------------------------------------------
Re: Jed Rant: More from Lazy
DIR By: guest1170
Date: December 27, 2018, 9:21 am
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No...
"My" "enlightenment" is "supreme" and "complete". It is
Absolute, not relative, does not obey time, space and all that
good stuff you can find in Maya's Land
The big difference between "you" and "me" is that I speak from
Ultimate Reality, and you speak from conventional , relative
reality
You can jump into Ultimate Reality too, nothing special in doing
this... But I dont think you are ready for It now
#Post#: 36717--------------------------------------------------
Re: Jed Rant: More from Lazy
DIR By: guest1293
Date: December 27, 2018, 9:30 am
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Its all good. You said it best yourself in the other thread. "No
one wants enlightenment." This is true. Its about as pleasant as
the day you found out there was no Santa Clause. Most people
dont want Truth Realization. They want to stay in their warm and
cozy worlds of make believe and I cant blame them. About the
only benefit to taking this thing all the way is that you get
more clear. Life becomes simpler when you accept the reality.
Experience gets more streamlined because you attend to the tasks
at hand rather than getting lost in your mental masturbation
sessions. Its not always pleasant but its direct and I wouldnt
have it any other way. Quite literally.
#Post#: 36719--------------------------------------------------
Re: Jed Rant: More from Lazy
DIR By: guest1293
Date: December 27, 2018, 9:57 am
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Done.
#Post#: 36720--------------------------------------------------
Re: Jed Rant: More from Lazy
DIR By: guest1170
Date: December 27, 2018, 10:16 am
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I'm happy you are content with the level of realization you are
in... If It works for you, by all means stay there
I never "believed" in enlightenment... I literally had no choice
in the matter at all. An energy forced me to do inquiry and If I
didnt do It I would start suffering a LOT... So I didnt do It
because I wanted to be an "enlightened man"... It was either
enlightenment or suicide for me, and I didnt have the courage to
do the latter
Then the enlightenment "event" fell over my head like a nuclear
bomb and destroyed everything... Time, space, self, misery,
memory, family, "life"... I was "born" into a completely new
reality...and the statement "enlightenment is a myth" became
laughble to me... Thats all
I am satisfied
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