Humanity is one of countless creative expressions of consciousness. We are all living lives as outcroppings on the cutting edge of consciousness. Consciousness is constantly providing experiences intended to aid us, as human beings, toward being aware of this. Experiencing a life as consciousness itself is the ultimate human achievement because it provides for beautifully lived expressions.
As human beings who are aware of consciousness, we are ultimately creative. This creativity expresses itself not only in the form of artistic works, although it does that as well, but it expresses itself in every aspect, in every experience of our lives. When we are unaware of consciousness we are like leaves being blown randomly in reaction to whatever direction the wind moves us. As conscious creators, however, we create lives to love and enjoy and can choose, in unity with consciousness, the direction of our movements.
Logic begs the question “What is consciousness”? Yet, logic is an action of circular reasoning that is self-canceling. It is self-canceling in that it realizes that it can never truly “know” anything. Philosophy, which is based entirely upon logical reasoning, begins in Philosophy 101 by stating that we will most likely never really know the answers to the questions being considered. This ultimately relegates Philosophy to being a meaningless exercise in intellectualization. Logic roughly applies directly to humanistic concerns because it is generally applicable to day-to-day experiences based upon an agreed upon set of reasonable superficial assumptions that have been evolving throughout eons of human development. However, it obviously falls short of any substantial contribution in the discussion of consciousness and so asking what consciousness is can be realized as a meaningless pursuit.
On the other hand, the relationship of humanity to consciousness can be alluded to by analogy… for instance using the lives of mushrooms. A mushroom is the fruit of a web of white fibrous fungal filaments that extends throughout large areas underground. When the conditions are right, these filaments sprout outcroppings we know as mushrooms. Consciousness is very much like the fibrous filaments lying unseen beneath the surface. It is an energy that extends to every where and to every when… into every dimension and beyond. It is the energy of which every thing consists and from which every thing is conceived. Our lives as human beings are much like the mushrooms that come and go as expressions of the filaments. Here one day… gone in the next. They sprout again and then fall back into the filaments. They rise beautifully above the surface and shine their radiant form throughout the forest and then wither and fade into the ground. But shine they do while they exist. And yet, they always exist within the potential of the filaments.
So what can one human being, one mushroom, do to become aware of its source… to become aware of the filaments from whence it came? It may be a more appropriate question to ask what it is that we do to block an awareness of our infinite being and, perhaps more importantly ask, why would we do such a thing? At a certain point we have to assume responsibility for the predicament in which we find ourselves and in so doing we begin to wriggle free of it. When we point to circumstance for reasons of our apparent deficiencies we remove our conscious volition from the equation and acquiesce to a life of servitude to the miserable existence in which we find ourselves. We become slaves to the imagined, and self-made, nails that hold our hands and feet to the cross we bear in the name of futility. Such a lowly expression of the infinite consciousness we truly are is an unworthy pursuit.
Over the centuries, as the reasoning mind began being developed and continued to evolve, human beings have become more and more dependent upon its resultant perspective. When pain was experienced, we immediately set to work in reasoning a construct to assure that the pain would be relieved and further that it would not return. These constructs applied to physical as well as psychological pain. Instead of facing pain directly and experiencing it as an aspect of human existence, we looked for ways to avoid and to deny it. By so doing we anesthetized ourselves, through reason, and also all but eliminated our ability to feel the positive aspects of our humanity. It is the very action of basing our entire humanistic perspective upon reason and logic that precludes our ability to experience our lives as the infinite consciousness we are.
One could describe this action as “fear avoidance”. Surely, when anything happens that involves pain of any sort we immediately react to it on an emotional level thus amplifying the pain exponentially. We want the pain to go away! In the split second that is required to experience pain and to react in the ways that have been passed down through countless generations, we have cut ourselves off from our source. As we mature, a term used loosely here, we have developed a multitude of systems; layer upon layer of obscuring ourselves from our feelings. So much so that it would seem there is no hope of escaping such a lifestyle. Further, it is nearly impossible at this point to even conceive of the idea that an ending of this paradigm is something to be considered… let alone practical. We have accepted that pain and the subsequent avoidance and denial of it is the only choice for us as human beings. In fact it seems like a necessity required to maintain some semblance of sanity. However, nothing could be further from the truth.
While fear avoidance is a major factor in the multi-level blockade to the awareness of consciousness, there is a deeper and more inherent aspect to humanity that plays an even more pervasive role in our self-deceit. While fear avoidance is based upon circumstance, there is a more basic root fear that seems to be hard wired into the human experience. This is a major challenge that needs to be addressed and faced in order to proceed toward an awareness of consciousness. While it is not clear that this basic root fear can be altogether eliminated, it is necessary for us to be aware of it and all of the forms it takes within our human experience in order to be able to allow consciousness to work with it. The next level up from this basic root fear is a basic root guilt factor that is also intrinsic to our denial of consciousness. Fear is a reaction based upon the reasoned anticipation of future events and guilt is a reasoned response to events of the past. Between these two primary motivators we find the basis for our reasonable perspective of dealing with our humanity as a defense mechanism that pervades our every action. Our reason has separated us from the present in fear of the future and in regret of the past. From this stance was devised the ego.
The ego is an imagined sense of self based upon an image we hold of who we are. It is another layer of abstraction that further bolsters the blocks to our awareness of consciousness. The ego supports a lifestyle that is based upon objectification of everything we experience. Using words, we create meaning of our experiences based upon the ideas of objects rather than the direct perception of the object itself. The symbols we use to communicate with have become the basis for our perceptions. By thinking with ideas and representations of our experiences we have further separated ourselves from a connection with consciousness that is intrinsic to our nature. This symbolic thinking is a humanistic perspective that aids our communications but it is also one that distracts us from clear perceptions.
The primary and relentless goal of the ego is to preserve this sense of self at all costs. It would rather kill or die than to relinquish its hold on our perceptions. It is the cause of all mischief in the world both minor and cataclysmic. Because it causes us pain, whenever something happens that demonstrates that this sense of self is indeed false, we immediately set about rearranging our thinking to accommodate and assimilate this new information. It is inevitable that this sense of self is in a constant state of threat due to the fact that everything is in constant flux… everything is always changing. There is no one personal view of ourselves that will serve us for very long before something comes along that changes it. We expend great amounts of energy in support of the ego’s view and it is this expenditure that further clouds our ability to be aware of consciousness. We are so consumed by the constant struggle to maintain our identity that we miss the very cutting edge conscious experience entirely.
As can be seen, we cut ourselves off from source consciousness because of fear. It is that simple and yet by layers of obfuscation and complexity it seems like an immovable and insurmountable structure. From this life perspective, we cut ourselves off from our inheritance as infinitely creative beings on the cutting edge of consciousness. It is through the awareness of the underlying root causes of this grand mistake that we have a chance in recovering our true heritage. Through awareness of the predicament in which we find ourselves we find a pathway through the dense fog of our perceptions and begin to sense the light behind it. The very act of awareness is enough to guide us. One cannot fight fog. That would be a waste of energy… flailing away at something that has no substance. So instead, through awareness of the nature of the humanistic perspective we have developed we move forward toward the light with a quiet mind and a light heart. In such action we are at one with consciousness and have begun transcending humanity as we know it. We have become consciousness in motion.