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.