Posts tagged consciousness
Tragic?
Apr 28th
Beyond belief?
“In Madrid, the father looks up, and then replies to his son: “That’s the Milky Way. Don’t you remember learning about it?” “Yeah…,” the boy answers. “I just didn’t know that you could actually see it.” The father looks back up, then removes his glasses. They both stare and stare.” David Abram – In the Ground of Our Unknowing
We ARE the Planet
Aug 8th
“Professor Johan Rockström, a co-author of the new paper from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, told BBC News. ‘What we are saying is that when we reach 2C of warming, we may be at a point where we hand over the control mechanism to Planet Earth herself.’”
Carbon Brief Daily | 07/08/2018
I don’t seem to be on the same page here. When did anyone ever dare to think that (1) That we were ever “in control” of Earth’s survival mechanisms and (2) That we have anything to “hand over” to “Planet Earth.” We and all our brethren are first and foremost “Earthlings.” We are not “on” this planet, we ARE the planet – inseparable.
We have not “lost” our connection. That’s impossible. We have either lost consciousness of it or perhaps never were conscious of being part of the, so to speak, eyes, ears, nose and throat of our greater beingness, the marvellous planet Earth.
Incarnational Opportunity and Creativity
Sep 27th
Incarnational Opportunity and Creativity
27 September, 2016
Sky McCain
“It is the testimony of the wisdom bearers that we come here from the realm of the unconditional in order to experience the conditional. Our original spirit nature is unconditional love, but apparently we set that aside temporarily in order to fully participate in the human experience. We are typically attracted to such an incarnational opportunity because it represents something so different than our actual state as light being souls, and hence is intriguing to us in our natural curiosity and trajectory towards infinitely expanding Self-awareness.”
From Bob O’Hearn “Self and Other”
The clarity of the description above has stimulated me to inflate my ego enough to offer an idea that has resided within me for many years. Firstly, I suggest that we are, among many other attributes, “reality structurers.” Reading Seth from Jane Roberts and in later years Vadim Zeland about Transurfing has supported my view that we not only in great part “make” our reality but actually can “choose” our reality in the sense of the life-path we are following. From Lynn Margolis I learned about the symbiotic theory of evolution that points to a basis of love and cooperation rather than random chance and deadly competition. From here, sprinkled with other bits and pieces of pertinent information my vision manifested as follows:
Creative development is a fundamental attribute of Consciousness. All of what we call “things” shine with some amount of this Consciousness and all things express Consciousness to the extent of their abilities. Parallel to the realm of what modern science calls aliveness has come a renewal of the Panpsychism or minds in a world of mind. I can now proceed to my hypothesis. Large organisms, such as a planet, contain almost unlimited potential and are largely limited by the level of consciousness they are expressed through. Lower order levels of consciousness strive, through what we call creativity, to expand their awareness and consciousness channels. To cut to the chase, we may desire to be a planet, our next higher holon in the holarchy of our known existence. Our experience must be immense and our ability to channel love greatly deepened. Our power is in the present, the dance, and it is dance all the way up and down.
Looking for Consciousness
Jun 21st
“Looking for consciousness in the world is a bit like studying a movie, looking for the source of its light. Nowhere would we find it. The light is not in the movie. The movie is made of light.”
The Reality of Consciousness by Peter Russell http://www.peterrussell.com/Odds/RealityConsc.pdf
Similarly, one cannot find “the self” because what we are is not a thing “out there” to be found. We are what we are looking for. Also, there is nobody doing the looking for again there is only “the seeing, the hearing, the sensing, etc.” and nobody doing it. Many call this unity consciousness. I call it being lived by Earth or Gaia. All we can detect is the consciousness of Gaia. Cosmic consciousness is too far removed and may be set aside as pure speculation and most probably unknowable. Gaia consciousness can be known and realised because it is we; there is no other.
Are We Guardians of the Planet?
Jan 18th
Are we Guardians of the Planet?
guardian
n
1. one who looks after, protects, or defends: the guardian of public morals.
Darkening of the Light
Witnessing the End of an Era
by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
In the Introduction to Darkening of the Light by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, we find:
“But this gift of light was also a test for humanity…and has forgotten our ancient purpose as guardians of the planet.”
Not only do I have no idea who or what religion, spirituality or movement decided that we have this ancient purpose. It certainly was not Jewish or Christian. According to Genesis, God has given us the planet to have dominion over. I am aware of my ignorance and will try to find out.
We just cannot have it both ways. Either we see the oneness, the non-dual in our beingness as the Earth, or we see the duality as we, creatures of the Earth protecting the other that we choose to call Earth. The bark is the tree, there is not the bark and the tree as a duality. Yes, our language allows us to split and divide, carve up things so that we can speak of the tree roots, the tree bark, tree limbs, tree leaves, but still without these what we call parts, what we observe wouldn’t be a tree. It is our thinking function that gets hung up on dichotomys. Our science rips living things apart and then pronounces on what “it is.”
Guardianship may have ancient beginnings, but our science supports a non-dual understanding of how we are in the world. Even to see ourselves as IN a world out there is to err.
There is no duality, no “out there” and “in here.” As Vadim Zeland has said, the world is a mirror of your attitude towards it. The Gnostic text The Gospel of St. Thomas that didn’t make the cut by the early “holy” fathers of the church, remarks something like: When the inner becomes as the outer, there is the Kingdom of God. Another biblical source says that the Kingdom of God is within you. [Luke 17:21] So, we may see that actually, the world is also within you, not “out there.” So, if there is no “out there” and “out there” is really within us and we are “within” the planet both physically and spirituality, then what we have is oneness, true oneness. From the perspective of planets, stars and galaxies, they are not “out there” either, so they are a oneness. From here it is not too far out for those who speak of oneness with the Universe.
Now this is my thinking function rattling on. How do I feel? Can I sense oneness in my everyday interaction with what I think of as out there? Well, since I cannot and do not want to part with my mate and buddy, the thinking function, I’ll just call it a both/and and leave it for now as I set forth for my daily bread walking among the birds, insects, grass, trees, bushes, clouds and feeling joyful knowing that I know and I am known.
Ashtavakra Gita (8.1-4)
Apr 14th
The mind desires this,
And grieves for that.
It embraces one thing,
And spurns another.
Now it feels anger,
Now happiness.
In this way you are bound.
But when the mind desires nothing
And grieves for nothing,
When it is without joy or anger
And, grasping nothing,
Turns nothing away. . .
Then you are free.
When the mind is attracted
To anything it senses,
You are bound.
When there is no attraction,
You are free.
Where there is no I,
You are free.
Where there is I,
You are bound.
Consider this.
It is easy.
Embrace nothing,
Turn nothing away.
~ Ashtavakra Gita (8.1-4)
This is really the essence of Advaita. Another beautiful expression is within the Hsin Hsin Ming. You can find a copy on the WWW. I understand that this sounds like a plea to be joyless; however, perhaps joy and pleasure are not the same. Also, perhaps the word “mind” may not accurately capture the non-duality message. It is the thinking function that discriminates and fuels the judgement that in the end results in pain and suffering. The message is based on the fact that there are NO dualities, just the Dao, just the moment.
All this is clearly expressed in the wonderful treasure which is the Hsin Hsin Ming. It may take you years of pondering, re-reading, looking at again, asking the universe for understanding – all that before you begin to “get it.” Then perhaps you’ll lose it again and at one and the same time know and despair that you don’t know, don’t understand. What might help or maybe put you over the edge of being able to relate is that you cannot “know” yourself, the Dao simply because it does not exist as an object. You cannot separate it – you- out in an effort to “know” it because you are it. You are a person looking for eyes to see. I must put in a word for the late Jean Klein. If you can obtain any of his books of dialogues, you may find that his clarity may tip you over the edge with the “oh, now I get it” moment. Oh there is so much that lies around the fringe of Advaita. Some say that you “get it” when you quit looking. Others, like The Maharshi tell us that our impediment is thinking that we can’t find “it” when actually we are what we seek.
Lastly, you will never know why you either care about these ideas or just can’t be bothered. “It” either calls you relentlessly until you don’t feel the need to “be bothered” or will always sound just too weird and you will never “be bothered.” Either way, you may rest assured, in my not so humble opinion, that there is no separate “you” inside your head looking out onto a separate world.
Death and Consciousness
Feb 10th
This Category, *Pagan Ethics, contains a series of posts that are a commentary on a book – Living with Honour – written by Emma Restall Orr. My interest in Pagan ethics emerges out of a need to capture in words the attitudes and behaviour that might manifest out of a person’s love of Gaia and dedication to an Earthen Spirituality. Emma’s beautiful book, which I at first eagerly skimmed, then read slowly and carefully and now enjoy re-reading has stimulated my thinking and inspired the comments in these posts. I obviously highly recommend the book and hope that my commentary serves the spirit of *Pagan Ethics and challenges the reader to examine their attitudes and world view toward a greater reverence for our place within and among the life of Gaia. As my one-time friend Wolf says, may Gaia bless.
Death, Dualism, Consciousness and Panexperientialism
Why the long word panexperientialism? Probably because narrowing down aspects of a previous long word often results in even longer words. This one is a refinement of panpsychism, a view that all matter has a mental aspect. I suspect a lot of Pagans would agree with this proposition and it may be closely related to what Emma has in mind when she says: “*Paganism is non-dual.” “Panexperientialism, as espoused by Alfred North Whitehead, is a less bold variation, which credits all entities with phenomenal consciousness but not with cognition, and therefore not necessarily with full-fledged minds.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism
Now, I don’t have the faintest idea of what a less than full-fledged mind looks like. However, I do have vast respect and stand in awe of Alfred North Whitehead. An aside, I’ll probably never forget a moment the first or second time I sat in the Depauw University library at the tender and seriously ignorant age of 18 and picked up a book by Whitehead. I couldn’t get through the first page! I thought, holy smoke, what have I got myself into here. Then a couple of three years ago I tried again and managed a few pages but oh my, what a mind.
I’ve introduced the subject of death in my first blog and promised to follow up with the next one. But first, let me talk a little about dualism. The *Pagan attitude towards dualism colours attitudes about death. The subjects dualism and consciousness have been analysed, rationalised and categorised such to make all but the most experienced philosophers swoon with a splitting headache. Simply and historically, dualism depicts reality as divided into two separate, fundamental aspects – mind and physicality or spirit and matter. *Paganism is non-dual. In a non-dual world there are only manifestations of energy, spirit, song or essence; whatever or however one chooses to name it. *Pagans don’t hold that a separate spirit leaves the body after death. To me, death is the start of a change of path and identity for all bodily materiality. Consciousness channelled by the organism stops coordinating a coherence of multiple parts the manifestation of which we term life. Transfiguration and changes that we call decay set in and materiality breaks down often into its constituent parts. Dust to dust so to speak.
Considered from a distance, so to speak, Earthly life is cyclical, tremendously diverse and the material constituents constantly recycled from organism to organism. Assuming, for a moment, that all life-forms are actually limbs and sensory faculties of Gaia expressing according to their ability Gaia’s consciousness, again I ask, who dies? Now, from a human being perspective, which is the only embodied perspective open to us, the above only makes sense is when we realise that we ARE the planet. Jean Klein, speaking from a Hindu Advaita Vedanta, non-dualistic viewpoint, might say that we can never observe our consciousness because we are what we are looking for. Our consciousness is not a separate object that we can perceive. One might as well expect the eye to be able to see itself seeing. Further, there is no separate “me” in here seeing something, there is only the seeing.
Let me follow on at this point with a perspective that is gaining acceptance. Our dualistic science and scientific method tends to trap us into an either/or research outcome. I expect many scientists continue to ignore the results of the famous Schrodinger’s cat thought paradox. The results of the experiment contradicts common sense. In case you are not familiar with it, “A cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly quantum superposition ends and reality collapses into one possibility or the other.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger’s_cat
Situations such as the one above lead us to amend our either/or expectations to the realisation that many situations are actually both/ and. Now of course, in our everyday reality, a cat cannot be both dead and alive according to the instrument{s} observing reality at the time. However, at another level of consciousness and another type of observing instrument at an extremely smaller or larger physical size, such might be the case.
A carbon element, for example, has 6 electrons, 2 electrons in its inner shell and 4 in its outer shell. Carbon is very brittle, and cannot be rolled into wires or pounded into sheets. Yet, at nanometer sizes and a cylindrical shape, they become 10 times the tensil strength of graphite or coal. They also exhibit high conductivity and heat conductance properties. I cite this example of carbon to illustrate that carbon has both high and low tensil strength according to its size and shape. More and more we are finding that our differences of opinion and belief are subject to a both/and result due to different world views and levels of consciousness held by the contending parties. Further, concepts such as ultimate reality, absolute truth and perfect repeatability may be unobtainable when considering a living planet and a living Universe. The problem of convincing argumentation as to the anthropogenic responsibility for global warming is largely due to the limitations of the worldview of a majority of people. Instrumentation designed for machines just are NOT VALID for measuring the behaviour of a huge, intelligent, living being. I leave you with these quotes:
“No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.” Albert Einstein
“The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there” Roshi, Yasutani
An Update
Jan 19th
I’ve just posted an update to my start page, What is Earthen Spirituality? Please have a look at the new content at the bottom.
How much is the planet worth to you?
Dec 1st
Some parts of this are stunningly beautiful and others will stop your heart in painful grief.
This is a non-commercial attempt from http://www.sanctuaryasia.com/ to highlight the fact that world leaders, irresponsible corporates and mindless ‘consumers’ are combining to destroy life on earth. It is dedicated to all who died fighting for the planet and those whose lives are on the line today. The cut was put together by Vivek Chauhan, a young film maker, together with naturalists working with the Sanctuary Asia network (http://www.sanctuaryasia.com/).
“For millions of years the earth has drifted thought space. Through that time she has taken many forms. Many different forms of life evolved and some still exist and more than could be counted are no more. The time of the human race is but a mere tick in the time of the earth. If by our actions we destroy the fragile conditions needed for our survival. The earth is not the one that will be no more.”
Only after the last tree has been cut down.
Only after the last river has been poisoned.
Only after the last fish has been caught.
Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.”
– Cree Indian Prophecy –
Cree are one of the largest group of indigenous peoples of North America, located mainly across Canada, and historically in the United States from Minnesota westward but are found today in Montana.