the CONSCIOUSNESS series#10

Conclusion and Summary

So, what do we mean by consciousness, by awakening?

This is a question we asked at the beginning of the series.

In short awakening is a being rather than a doing.

It’s not something you need to attain, for you already have it, nor is it something you get by reading the curriculum and passing the required exams, for it is of your nature. By the same token let us not be cavalier about it either, thinking I don’t have to make any effort and things will be fine. For, while you don’t, and they will, (ironically) it’s also part of our nature to go back to sleep.

The busy body

‘I must get busy now’ is just one of the mind’s ways of going back to sleep. We do this in an astonishing amount of ways as we discussed in the series.

For example, like watching a great magician or illusionist at work, we get distracted. Now baffling the mind can be a good ‘clue’ if it causes us to doubt the reality of the “matrix” we’ve constructed around us. But if it merely leads to confusion and dulls the mind then it is counter productive. This is what has happened in the world today and where the consciousness of the vast majority are at.

Confusion.

What is called for here is the ability to see through our own illusions. Along with ACIM, we need to see the illusion, but not believe in it.

Awareness is knowing

This is the starting point. Now there were two kinds of knowledge, knowledge of the senses, and deeper intuitive knowledge. The senses work like a lamp. They show us where we are going, they get us from a to b. But intuitive knowledge is the hand that guides the lamp. It knows where to direct the light. Intuition is your inner tutor.

When you listen to it you are ‘in-tuition’.

Plato was right. There is a perfect form or ideal or everything, but it’s not as he thought out there in the ethereal void. Rather it is inside, in what we might call inner space. You are that form. Only you have covered it up with something that is not real.

Remember awareness includes knowing we’re not awake. In short, the person who knows he is asleep is in fact awake!

Everyone exists in your world for a reason, because you asked for them to be there (this is especially true of the difficult people, by the way!) Harm one and you harm yourself. Extend love and kindness and forgiveness to all and you reap the same in multiples of thousands.

physical sleep and physical wakefulness: an analogy

When we are asleep we appear to be unconscious and unaware of our surroundings. However, despite the semblance of death life has not gone out. The part of you that doesn’t sleep, the autonomic system, continues to beat your heart, regulate your temperature, prevents the blood from clotting, and a million other things. The body is still ‘busy’ during sleep, there just isn’t a conscious awareness of it.

Likewise, there’s something that’s always taking care of you, which you’re equally unaware of. I call it the Higher Self.

Hence is normal awakening to higher consciousness.

Now the more you learn to put your trust in this ‘something’ the more it will show in your life.

Know that it is looking after you, know that it has only your best interests at heart, and know that you will triumph and overcome with its help. Then watch out for the big miracles to happen.

Expect great things to happen to you every day.

Now the ego-mind will try to stop us from realising our greatness. Because it is our greatness, not our smallness that we fear most. It attempts to keep us in the safe comfort of mind-numbing normality. We believe we will have to pay too high a price. But this is a fallacy. There is nothing to give up, and you are not called to sacrifice yourself. If you have heard anything to the contrary you’ve been misinformed.

Sacrifice is another way of trying to be in control, of asserting the dominance of the will.

The world is a thought system. Smash the thought system. Don’t smash the world.

And finally . . .

Consciousness does not change what you are. That cannot be altered.

But awareness of it transforms your life. Then you’re like the man who was asleep, and dreaming, still alive of course, but “dead to the world”, who has now woken and can appreciate the beauty of the dawn, and that he has eyes that can see it, and a mind that understands what he sees. He has remembered who he is.

You are consciousness. You are awareness. Therefore you are all life. You are the beginning and the end. You are your own parents. You are the building you work in, the motor you travel in, the road you walk on. You are God and you are love.

Or rather all that is you.

All we need do is get out off the way.

We have spoken at length on this subject. But sometimes words can drown out their own meaning. What is called for now is a cessation of words.

Silence.

Should you want to explore consciousness further it may be profitable to develop some kind of deep mind practice, such as meditation.

To this end I am in the process of creating a new program which will incorporate meditations and techniques that will help us do this.

This series has come to an end, but the awakening has just begun.

If you’ve enjoyed this series, or wish to comment on it, or tell your own story of awakening, please do so on contact us. I would love you hear your story.

There is only one time when it is essential to awaken. That time is now.
~Buddha.

The Consciousness Series:

What is Awakening?

In the lair of the Ego-Mind.

The Illusionist.

Knowledge.

Subjective and Objective Reality.

Belief and Expectation.

What do you have to sacrifice to be spiritual?

Your Dream World.

Remember Love.

Return from consciousness: conclusion and summary to home page