Ever since human-kind became aware beings, we have tried to make sense of life, asking questions of why and how. This has led to the creation of science with its measurements and equations, and semantic mediants.
Science insists on physical proofs, based on the Western cultural assumption that we live in a solid physical world. However, quantum physics has shown us that our assumption of a solid, fixed world stands on shaky ground, with quanta, the building blocks of our reality, popping in and out of existence. All we can truly know is that we are Experiencing Something, and we call that something Life.
We individually experience ‘qualia’ or ‘qualities of life’. Put another way, we are consciously aware of life and we each perceive life in different ways. As human beings we are consciously aware of our own thought processes and have the capacity to adapt and change those processes if we so choose.
The one constant in all of this, is Consciousness itself. A new thought in some realms of science is that ‘All of Life stems from Consciousness’, as opposed to previous Western thought that ‘Consciousness arose from Life’. This thought states that Consciousness in its pure form is ‘fundamental’ and without cause. It is the ground state of existence. In the field of pure unchangeable Consciousness exists ‘pure potential’ – the potential for Endless Possibilities.
In a pin point,
All there as one
I am
Still there,
In space, in time
Forever there
Engulfed in nothingness,
Spark igniting
Possibilities
Becoming Everything.
Human beings arise or manifest from this field of pure potential and ‘embody’ conscious awareness (the state of being consciously aware of Oneself), so that we can experience our endless possibilities at a experiential conscious level. At the deeper or unmanifested level, Consciousness has no qualia (or experience of itself). It desires to manifest qualia or qualities of life in order to experience Itself. ‘Human consciousness’ looking at itself is a mirror for the ‘field of Consciousness’ looking at itself.
True evolution is Life evolving in order to have an enhanced qualia experience. The purpose of evolution is to maximise experience of every kind. Genes, epigenes, and neural networks store and remember each step of evolution, following the path traced by Experience. These recording devices are symbolic markers of dynamic qualia networks. Each network is self-organising, because no two species and no two individuals are working from exactly the same qualia program or experience. Each scenario is unique; each works through its own possibilities. And all of this is part of the ‘Flow’ of Life. However, human beings have inhibited the natural Flow of Life by overlaying and mediating their direct experience of this Flow with ‘cultural conditioning’ and language as a ‘semantic reality’. Human culture substitutes a semantic reality for a direct reality ‘experience’, and arises from an embedded fear of ‘death’ as well as a belief in a universal ‘hostility toward life’.
Other sentient beings will respond to imminent death with a flight or fight response and ultimately seem to peacefully accept death should these responses fail. This original flight or fight response comes about due to ‘fright’, which is qualitatively different to ‘fear’. Fright is a biological startle response to danger that kickstarts our body into action and once the physical danger has passed, the body settles back into its original state and attains from each startle ‘experience’ that which it needs for future evaluations. Fear, on the other hand, is a semantic (thinking) concept, we are trained to produce. Fear becomes conceptual, a basic pattern for interpreting reality. Our cultural conditioning has overlaid our original flight or fight response to danger and death with an extra layer of ambiguous fear over the death of ego or perceived self (identity). Our ancestors perceived themselves as struggling with the hostile elements in order to survive, and part of that survival was dependent on the acceptance of their clan, tribe or community. This was because they had forgotten their connection to the all encompassing Flow of life. This most likely happened when homo sapiens developed the capacity for ‘questioning’ life and their place in it. At that point we began to live more in the mind, as opposed to being fully present in our bodies and fully FEELING life. I propose that it was then that a ‘perceived’ split was created between, the world in here (in our minds) and the world out there (everything outside of our minds). Everything ‘out there’ became separate and something that we needed to protect ourselves from.
Pearce (2014) states that “Anxiety and fear are transferred to the child, in spite of all good intentions, precisely because a child has no buffers or screens of any sort. And fear as expressed in anxiety, guilt, resentment, and hostility, constitutes a large portion of the [modern] adult world. These effects in turn, furnish a large portion of the child’s [experience]. ….. Having no buffers to the ‘fear effect’, the child must learn fear in order to protect him/herself from it. Avoidance of fear splits that wholeness, or natural state of communion [with the Flow, that all children are born with]. This is the ‘fall”.
In other words, as we inherit ambiguous fear of the world ‘out there’ from our forebears, we construct further barriers in our mind and lives to protect ourselves from this undefined, yet ubiquitous fear and further isolate ourselves from our true connection to life.
As human beings have evolved, our newer brain functions have given us unique capacities for reflective thinking and creative logic; functions offering an infinitely open possibility. However, in keeping with our fundamental biological drive to maintain homeostasis, a state necessary for continuation of life, our cultural conditioning and semantic reality dictate that we stay within the accepted bounds of our cultural blueprint in order to keep our known or indoctrinated world view and identity intact. This cultural blueprint is underpinned by fear and a belief that we live in a hostile environment, one which we need to constantly guard and protect ourselves from. The cultural death concept that divides life into dead and living particles could only be instilled in a mind split off from its life flow. We have managed to trap ourselves in a self-created prison of sorts. However, this prison is an illusion. The world ‘out-there’ projects back to us, what we believe ‘in-here’ – inside our minds, and then we project back out to the world. We look for what
we believe and therefore find proof for our beliefs. Our reality is a self-created reality. And therein lies the key. If we can suspend our beliefs for a time and simply BE in the world, without any expectations of what it may or may not offer us, then we can once again connect with the natural flow of life. If we can also see, or more importantly FEEL, that death is a natural extension of life, then the world poses no hostility towards us. We will see that life simply IS and all the rest is labels we have fastidiously created in order to quench our desire for understanding the world that we live in. However, that understanding will better come with a quietening of the mind and all its monkey chatter, and simply immersing ourselves in nature and life – being open and grateful for all it has to offer. To do this, one can’t use an independent proxy for life, such as a cultural and semantic reality. One has to see his or her connection to everything, or more importantly, to FEEL that connection. One must recognise the conscious aliveness in ALL of life and feel the interactions that play back and forth as we engage with life. To recognise also the role of culture in this life flow, as a creative tool and natural extension of our true self – the true self that encompasses all things.
“Self-awareness or Consciousness coming to terms with its true nature, that of Endless Possibilities, will be the starting point for the next leap in our creative evolution as a species. That is, a new mind set will emerge, catch fire, reach a tipping point, and finally establish itself as the next human reality. When the layers of aggression, war, poverty, tribalism, fear, deprivation and violence fall away, the qualia that remain will lie closer to their creative source”, (Chopra and Kafatos 2017).
The above writing is a compilation of my own thoughts and those taken from the two latest books I have read. Those being, “You are the Universe – Discovering Your Cosmic Self and Why it Matters” by Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos, and “Exploring the Crack in the Cosmic Egg – Split Minds and Meta-Realities” by Joseph Chilton Pearce.
I wandered today into your glorious garden and saw for the first time your pulsating rhythm, and felt your energy surge through my veins; through my muscle tissue; and through every cell and atom of my body. I delighted in your sweet fragrances and pungent odours. All at once I was at the centre of the Earth and at the farthest corner of the Cosmos – yet both were one in the same. I recognise that I am but a humble human being and yet I am much more.
I am the Alpha and the Omega – the All and the Nothing.
What lessons did I come here to learn? What gifts did I bring to share?
Layer by layer I peel back my cultural conditioning so that I may experience the truth of who I am. Fear and anxiety claw at my chest and abdomen. I acknowledge them and thank them for their gifts. I breathe deep into my core – tensing and releasing. Purposefully and with love I make my way forward, knowing that there is nowhere I need to be. All is as it should be as the unravelling takes place. I smile at my ego and she smiles back at me. She is beautiful and I never knew it.
All around me pulse with the beauty of golden atoms and sun kissed skies.
The wild calls me, while culture whispers of transformational creativity.
The two woven into One is what my broken heart desires, knowing only too well, the split was of my own creation.
A journey taken so that I may feel the smoothness of a river kissed stone.
Catzen 2018 – The year of expedient manifesting.
Catzen's Musings on Life 