TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
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CONSCIOUSNESS and AWARENESS
The Foreground and The Background
To further illustrate, consider the view from a window of the flat / apartment used during stays in Tuscany:
In the foreground of the scene, preparation is being made to harvest crops; a new house is being built; some people are driving to work; down the road to the right, people are waiting to catch the local bus to the mercato in nearby Villafranca; someone in a white van approaching from the right is making a delivery.
In the foreground, drivers are conscious of obstacles and intersections and traffic signs and lane markers. It appears that there are do-ers and it seems that they are doing.
In the background there is a portion of the landscape that is covered with trees; then, farther in the distance are mountains and then beyond the mountains there are clouds; finally, the open sky is beyond all of that. Beingness, rather than doingness, is the case in the background.
Now, you’re invited to (a) determine the ways in which the foreground might represent consciousness manifest and (b) determine what the background might reveal about Awareness.
Next, for purposes of illustration, take the foreground in the scene to
represent the I-Amness and the background to be the I AM THAT-ness. Take the
foreground to represent consciousness and the background to represent awareness.
Note that consciousness involves being conscious of (something) so
consciousness is always, ultimately, about duality: “this” is conscious of
“that.”
Thus, the seekers who think that they are “fully realized” (which simply, per Maharaj, refers to a composite unity that is fully free of all belief in all learned ignorance) and who think that they understanding the unicity because they think they know some “True Self” are mistaken. They have been fooled.
There is no self or Self.
Presently . . .
there is a composite unity (that is, there are elements which are coming together and coming apart and - when together - form a temporary space where both air and conscious-energy regularly circulate into and then out of that space and must be constantly "replaced" with more oxygen and more conscious-energy if continuity is to continue.)
Post-manifestation . . .
there will still be the elements and there will still be the air and there will still be the conscious-energy, but the composite unity will not exist and no vestige of the form or space will exist or be conscious of anything. That is not an opinion. That is a scientifically-proven fact.
A seeker might claim to be “Self-Realized,” but “that which truly is” (in this case, eternal elements, air, and conscious-energy) is beyond self-ness, Self-ness, beingness, non-beingness, and even conceptualized “Self-Realization.”
Reality is beyond “conscious of-ness” and is therefore a state of zero concepts and zero awareness. In that “state,” awareness is not even aware. That can only happen in the case of humans if consciousness is manifested within a space and is freed of all of the impurities and blockages which fill a mind and block accurate and clear perceiving as a result of programming, conditioning, etc.
But all of the happenings in the scene's background of unicity (as well as all of the supposed happenings which are occurring via the manifested, dualistic consciousness in the foreground) are only possible because of the energy of the sunlight breaking through the clouds in the background.
Without that background energy manifesting via plants, nothing in the foreground could happen. (Again, Szent-Gyorgyi accurately: “What drives life is . . . a little electric current, set up by the sunshine.”) Consciousness could not happen except for the background of awareness, but awareness IS, whether consciousness is manifested or not and whether consciousness of “this” or “that” happens or not.
At the atomic and sub-atomic levels of matter-energy might generate “clouds” and “mountains” and “trees” in the background. At that point, awareness is, yet there is no “one” that is conscious of anything, much less aware of anything.
So it is when the temporarily-manifested conscious-energy unmanifests and is subsequently “re-absorbed” into that field called “The Absolute.”
Note too that in the foreground, many things seem significant: a delivery must be made on time; people must be at work on time; and food must be purchased in the mercato and consumed in order for the consciousness to remain manifested in the physical space.
In the background, however, it is clearer that everything is merely cycling and nothing matters at all: clouds come and go; mountains that had formed will someday crumble; and trees which are rising will one day fall.
So it is when abidance happens as the Absolute: what happens will happen, yet “the insignificant” is never misperceived as “significant.”
“The foreground of consciousness” begins to unfold in the same way as “the background of awareness.” That leads to peace every day or a way to function sanely even if peace is challenged.
Any faulty perceptions of the type which result in the insignificant being considered significant only happen via the warped consciousness, via the assumption of personas, and via the emotional intoxication which personas (and their persona-generated-personality-disorders) generate.
The Unicity Beyond the Apparent Multiplicity
To continue with the discussion of the scene described, the doingness in the foreground is marked by consciousness and a sense of duality. Persons unaware of the unicity believe that they are conscious of some “vast multiplicity” of things: houses, roads, crops, intersections, buses, mercatos, etc.
Being in the actual background of the scene, which includes trees and clouds and mountains and sky and sunlight, there is no sense of duality. Why? There is no “one” to be conscious of anything, yet there is awareness. In what way is “Awareness without conscious of-ness” present in the background?
Observe that there appears to be a variety of “cloud” formations, but see that
“the clouds” are not “The Real.” What is “real,” for the sake of this example,
is H20. A series of two hydrogen atoms are conscious
of an oxygen atom, but there is no “one” that is present to be conscious of
anything.
Consciousness (that is, pure, non-personalized consciousness) is just
happening, so even though there might be talk of things manifested (clouds, tress,
etc.) awareness is not dualistic in its nature. It is in that fashion,
therefore, that the manifested, re-purified consciousness / conscious-energy can
remain manifested for a time but can function as awareness, allowing a composite unity to abide presently as
the original nature when in the the Absolute rather than confined within a confined space.
The H20 can manifest in various "forms" or "spaces" which
persons try to separate by using such labels as “rain, rivers, lakes, clouds,
vapor, water, snow, snowmen, snowballs, snow cones, snow flurries, snowflakes,
snow piles, slush, ice, steam, pools, waterfalls, streams, fog, ponds, hail,
drizzle, floods, mist, swamps, oceans, seas,” ad
infinitum;
however, those dreamed-up names notwithstanding, those different labels - in truth - are all pointing to one thing only, to H20, which is merely appearing to be different, thus inspiring humans without any accurate understanding to assume that differences exist when they do not and to assume that duality exists when it does not.
(See why persons live in the delusion of duality? See why persons are not “in the world” and why “the world” is in them . . . in their wrongly-perceiving “minds”? See why they take what they think they see to be real and how they try to support “differentiation” through labeling?)
Similarly, conscious-energy can manifest via the spaces labeled as “plants, animals, humans, birds,” etc., and though it’s really all consciousness manifested, it appears to “the non-realized” to be multiple and different things. For any perception of rain, rivers, plants, or animals to happen, conscious of-ness must happen first, and as a result of inaccurate suppositions rooted in distorted perception, the illusion of duality manifests.
As with the “atoms as clouds,” whereby awareness can happen without any “one” being conscious of, so it is as the Absolute. Awareness is, even though there is no “one” to be aware of. Thus awareness involves no duality.
In both the foreground and the background of the scene, everything is merely happening; however, in the foreground where consciousness has been corrupted or blocked, consciousness takes itself to be something it is not and leads persons to believe that they are making things happen and that they are seeing separate things.
Hence, persons are taking themselves to be “do-ers,” are lacking an accurate understanding of the unicity, and are, therefore, strapped with delusional thinking generated by an illusory “mind.”
To be continued.
Please enter the silence of contemplation.
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THE EXPLANATION
Yeshu'a (Jesus) and Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis were spot on:
"No one shall ever see 'the kingdom of heaven.' It is within"
and
"Heaven and earth shall fade away."
and
"Heaven and hell are not geographic places
"There is no hell."
