Tracings on the soul

There are events which occur in life that leave a tracing on the soul. Events so painful,deep and early that they are virtually impossible to metabolize through enquiry. These early woundings cannot be explicitly known. They are stored in the primitive psyche, unavailable to conceptual, verbal consciousness. When these preconceptual patternings of the soul emerge into consciousness, it is as urges, emotions, habits and, most importantly, as the context and background of mature consciousness. This is the tone, the feel, the affect of consciousness before any thought-forms enter.

This background of primitive affect is there experientially. We feel it, and know it so deeply that it is inseparable from consciousness itself. It is held and known as a fundamental quality of consciousness, as part of the weave of the very fabric of consciousness. It is not observable because it was left as a tracing on the soul before discrimination of self and other had emerged. It is a completely homoginized, merged quality, present before 'self' and 'other' and'world' were known as separate. It is omnipresent in consciousness. The mind can't observe it because this knowledge is now fundamental to consciousness itself. Similarly, an eyeball cannot see itself.

This background knowledge and feeling informs and flavors everything that appears in consciousness, without exception. Everthing perceived in the mind tastes like this. Every experience, every memory, every relationship, every belief, every fear and every conscious moment feels like this, tastes like this and is informed by this. There is nowhere to look, at any level, in any dimension or state of consciousness, that does not carry this information and feeling. It is Basic Distrust of consciousness and it's contents.

It is there when you meditate, it is there during sublime states of knowledge and expansion. It's there during orgasm and ecstacy. It is primary to the suffering of being alive. It is inescapable. A dilema, insoluble to the mind, burdening consciousness. It's solution cannot be in consciousness. The understanding and metabolism of this conundrum must come from outside of consciousness.

What does that mean? It's meaning can be pointed to, but not directly described or explained. If the field of consciousness and all of it's contents are turned away from and discarded, ignored, there emerges a Pure Awareness. This Pure Awareness is not in or of the field of consciousness. It knows itself by being itself. It is not self reflective. There is no separation between being and knowing. Pure Awareness is inherently self aware.

When all else is let go, Pure Awareness knows and acts through the body-mind. It manifests through the body and mind but is not part of them, nor is it conditioned by them. Pure Awareness animates the body-mind yet it is not the body-mind and it is not not the body-mind. It neither is, nor is not, nor neither, nor both.

If Pure Awareness is to animate the body-mind we must continually let go of every experience so that we enter each moment fresh, new and without preconditions. In this way the deep preconceptual woundings of the soul do not inform and flavor our experience of being conscious. The mind, instead, performs it's natural function as a transducer, bringing Pure Awareness, our True Nature, into the field of consciousness.

The pristine purity of our True Nature informs consciouness, not primitive and archaic woundings of the infant. This is the new and objectively true context and background of consciouness. In this light, the old, frustrating, painful universe is transformed.

Looking at letting go

If I am hurt by someone repeatedly and I carry anger and resentment against them in my mind, am I doing that because I need to, to relate to them appropriately? Or for some other reason? Can I learn the lesson about them and relate to them appropriately without revisiting the memories of how they hurt me? And what is it to hold on to a thought or belief? Is it not to review, revisit, and reference that thought to provoke the attendant feeling and emotion? The feeling or emotion then motivates my actions. If I let go of the thought and belief structure, then I do not experience feeling and emotion. Consequently, my actions change. This points to the fact that emotions, as false presence, are not really in the moment, even though they are convincingly experienced as such.

Emotions are informed and driven by remembered beliefs, judgments and images from the past. These memories may be conscious or unconscious. The key understanding here, is that they are fragments of the past and that they displace conscious Presence of Being in the moment. Though emotions may be convincingly, experientially very real and present, and satisfyingly rich, compared to their mental image origins, they are nonetheless, stale and brittle partial truths about a time now past.

As surrogates for Presence for Being, with its living, intelligent, loving flow of Essential Qualities, emotions are tragically inferior. When we let go and release our hurts, resentments, hatreds and anger, we don't know what will take their place to motivate us, give us identity, give us substance in the world, protect us, earn us the right to belong and hold us. It is Presence of Being, with its perfect sufficiency of Essential Aspects that will hold us, protect us, inform us and move us each moment. Whether we let go the long, laborious and difficult way or do it effortlessly and instantly, the result is exactly the same. We become the vehicle of Pure Awareness expressed as a dance of Essential Qualities of Presence of Being emerging in harmony with every unfolding condition and situation. We don't need to understand it, or to make an effort, or to wait for something to make us ready. In letting go we discover that the time for our awakening is, and always has been, right now.