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#Post#: 5112--------------------------------------------------
awareness consciousness
DIR By: jacoba
Date: December 25, 2021, 9:43 am
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hi all,
I feel a bit like butting in a private conversation but here it
is,
I have a question: would you describe for me the difference
between awareness and consciousness?
I'm not interested in knowledge, theory or what someone else
said (e.g I am that page 256) I'm asking for your experience.
and - one last thing- I like short answers best, just a
paragraph if you please ;)
for Frits: I translate awareness as 'gewaarzijn' en
consciousness as 'bewustzijn' not really helpful to translate,
just trying to be on the same page. Words are a nuisance in any
language.
Why this question? God knows ..
thank you,
Jacoba
#Post#: 5113--------------------------------------------------
Re: awareness consciousness
DIR By: Frits Snips
Date: December 25, 2021, 11:38 am
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Hi Jacoba,
It's difficult to explain what is what, because words aren't
made to do that. As far as I see it, there is Consciousness
(with a big C), consciousness (with a small c) and awareness.
Big C Consciousness is what is (a.k.a. God, The Absolute, etc.)
small c consciousness is what we have as a human being and
awareness is what we are aware of.
So big C Consciousness uses our small c consciousness to be
conscious of what we are aware of. At least, this is what I can
come up with. But it's of no use to know this or to be able to
formulate it, whatever we think it is, doesn't change what it is
and how it operates.
Just for the record:
Big C Consciousness is true, the rest is untrue and part of the
dreamworld that apparently appears within Big C Consciousness.
#Post#: 5114--------------------------------------------------
Re: awareness consciousness
DIR By: jacoba
Date: December 25, 2021, 12:26 pm
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sorry Frits, but no, your answer is not an answer and makes
something which I guess to be simple too complicated; your
answer sounds like something your told yourself a long time ago
- and I'm not asking for that.
Maybe I shouldn't have asked, ah well, thanks for bothering
the question will evaporate like they all do
jac.
#Post#: 5115--------------------------------------------------
Re: awareness consciousness
DIR By: Frits Snips
Date: December 25, 2021, 5:27 pm
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It's not the answer you want to get, I'm sure, but that is
actually your problem.
#Post#: 5116--------------------------------------------------
Re: awareness consciousness
DIR By: Frits Snips
Date: December 25, 2021, 5:29 pm
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If you don't trust me answering from experience, don't ask the
question... but I did answer from experience.
#Post#: 5119--------------------------------------------------
Re: awareness consciousness
DIR By: biisuto
Date: December 25, 2021, 11:08 pm
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--- Quote from: jacoba link ---
>
> I have a question: would you describe for me the difference
between awareness and consciousness?
>
> I'm not interested in knowledge, theory or what someone else
said (e.g I am that page 256) I'm asking for your experience.
--- End Quote ---
I'm curious about the "no" of your response to Frits, given you
literally asked about our experience ... it reminds me so much
and so nostalgically of someone... :P ...but no matter. It still
seems a good stone upon which to try and sharpen our collective
wits ...if that's what we're doing here... and I'm keen to know
where you're heading, so in the spirit of anteing up, I'll
happily bite.
I confess to not being entirely sure as to what constitutes an
absolute, so it seems a good idea to zero-out anybody but my own
experiential definition of the terms. I am fairly clear in my
own mind about that to which the words point as I understand
them, though in practice admit to a tendency to use them
interchangeably, like overlapping circles in a Venn diagram (for
the reasons below).
Consciousness: the entire field (whatever that might be),
including (perhaps) that which is not located in awareness, in
ways analogous to a computer hard drive + CPU. This is not to be
confused with either space, capacity, contents or any
limitations in or of awareness. The reason for this disclaimer
is I claim no understanding as to the actual nature of
consciousness nor any properties, but am only actually able to
infer consciousness from where it intersects with awareness,
which is far more accommodating of interrogation.
Awareness: that which seems to be the activating/activated
aspect of consciousness...in ways analogous to RAM... that
contains content and (like radar) mirrors back to itself its own
'is'ness in all that registers within its field - including
content, memory, cognition, prognostication and notions of field
boundaries. Where awareness bleeds most obviously into
consciousness is when awareness becomes aware of itself and the
falseness in (perhaps) naturally accreting ideas of identity and
allowing for the recognition of the greater by the lesser. It
also alludes to consciousness in the most exquisite meditations,
which are timeless, formless and yet utterly vivifying.
Now it's your turn, questioner, to edify us with whatever makes
your experience a 'yes' that trump Frits's (and presumably my
own) 'no'.
#Post#: 5120--------------------------------------------------
Re: awareness consciousness
DIR By: jacoba
Date: December 26, 2021, 8:50 am
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--- Quote from: Frits Snips link ---
>
> If you don't trust me answering from experience, don't ask the
question... but I did answer from experience.
>
--- End Quote ---
I accept that you answer from experience, it didn't feel like
that and you didn't say so but no matter - my problem as you
say.
#Post#: 5121--------------------------------------------------
Re: awareness consciousness
DIR By: jacoba
Date: December 26, 2021, 10:04 am
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biisuto:"I'm keen to know where you're heading" -
I'll explain a bit; years ago I had the same question; what's
the difference between consciousness and awareness and this
bothered/irritated me because it seemed to be sometimes used
interchangeably and at other times not. In those days I wanted
things to be 'tidy'. I've read Nisargadatta, McKenna and very
few others in english only.
In Dutch there's only one word for both awareness and
consciousness: 'bewustzijn' and the other word I mentioned
(gewaarzijn) is too oldfashioned and rarely used.
So there it is. I let go of the question, or stopped wanting to
understand things and then I knew in my own non-wordy way what
they seemed to be writing about.
It came up again recently - reading Nisargadatta - remembered
this kave and so I asked.
In my experience consciousness is the unmoving silence always at
the background of my I am - awareness and awareness of
awareness. Sure Frits, there's just this unmoving silence, you
call it Consciousness and Biisuto the Absolute, if I got that
correctly.
and Bissuto: thank you for your explanation. I'll not go all
Nessa on you.
I like the words "entire field (whatever that might be)" which
says it all, and am interested in the point "where awareness
bleeds (..) into consciousness " or the other way round ? - and
I get the vivifying aspect of meditation - Consciousness as the
thing that gives life.
You have a way with words which I can't emulate, being the blunt
Dutch I am.
Jacoba
#Post#: 5124--------------------------------------------------
Re: awareness consciousness
DIR By: biisuto
Date: December 26, 2021, 9:45 pm
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--- Quote from: jacoba link ---
>
> I ...am interested in the point "where awareness bleeds (..)
into consciousness " or the other way round ? - and I get the
vivifying aspect of meditation - Consciousness as the thing that
gives life.
--- End Quote ---
When awareness is aware of itself, there are a few (what I
understand to be) metaphorical sensations. 'Metaphorical'
because they definitely aren't of the body but nevertheless
familiarity with the body makes them intelligible (...does that
make sense? In another way, and - I hypothesise - when seen from
the POV of spirit, the body is itself only a metaphor, but
that's a slightly other tangent*). When I am aware of what is
aware, I gradually become aware of a sensation of that awareness
itself being just a face (or such relative 'hardpoint')
protruding from a much larger, very nebulous ...something. My
mind calls it 'void', but having chewed on this for some time
now, it seems more like what (say) an iPhone might see if it was
trying to parse an Android OS... kinda thing.
*For me, the whole experience I'll call 'all this and everything
I ever thought ever was' is rendered perfectly intelligible if I
just pull back the boundary of the dream to include all my
(ideas of) self. ie., "My" and "self" are both such aspects.
About meditation at its most sublime, it renders the walls of
the egoic soap bubble into a semi-permeable membrane...allowing
me to be enthused by the thoughts of God SHe shares with the
trapped shard of Him/Her I came to think of as 'me' - and would
share with me to the extent I'm willing to receive them. Like
the iPhone/Android thing, the human-y mind sees only empty space
yet is vivified because it is literally the source of its life.
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