An Expansive View of Mind

What is the relationship of the mind to the body? How does this play out in awakening? The mind has local powers, capacities and sense perceptions that are oriented to, and dependent upon, the body. The mind is an organized field of locally gathered knowledge assembled from sensory perceptions understood in a context grounded in instinct. Enhancing this perceptual knowledge are powers of image formation, memory, conceptualization, logic, and rational thought. Emotions complete the picture. All prioritized around, and primarily concerned with, the affairs of the physical body. This pretty well describes the societal consensus of beliefs regarding the body-mind, and if it was a complete description of the knowledge sources informing the mind, it would be simple to grasp. As a one dimensional phenomena, this really is what human beings are about.

The complication is that humans are multi-dimensional beings. Other sources contribute direct knowings, sensings, and contexts of intelligence to the mind. Although subtle and seemingly vague or ephemeral in comparison to the five senses, they become distinct and profound when cultivated. Our powers for being complete humans are dependent upon, and reside in these other-dimensional realms. The extra-corporeal perceptions, in fact, are vital, and indispensable to the comprehension and inhabiting of or our true identities.

Regardless of this truth, what we usually wind up with is a multi-dimensional mind display referenced to one dimension , physical reality. Consequently, a lot of mind content seems confusing, out of place or irrelevant. It ends up being ignored, dismissed, and discarded. One's reality closes in and stagnates.

What is lost is nothing less than our humanity. Knowledge, understanding, intelligence and capacity originating in the dimension of Presence are screened out or, at best, misunderstood and undervalued. Essential Aspects of Presence of Being are not allowed to instruct us or to imbue in us the direct experiential wisdom of our identity, our capacity, and our potential.

Non-local, extra-corporeal and trans-dimensional knowledge are part of our birth right; the power of their perception innate to the potential of every human. The key to accessing this treasure lies in the cultivation of our sense of Presence, the most attainable dimension, nearest to, but beyond, physical manifestation.

It must be realized and understood that we substitute mental and emotional states for Essence. The understanding of these states as false and obstructing to our vision, frees the way for us to activate other more authentic and expansive capacities, until then, habitually overlooked.

The Superego: A Two-Edged Sword

Superego attacks of judgement, comparison and criticism are authoritarian power statements that are narrowly referenced, biased and predominantly false. These judgements are given to us to serve as frames of reference in determining the experience of our self identity. The intent is that we find this negative frame of reference to be painful and that we take action to change it.

The action initiated is supposed to be one that will please the superego, and cause it to withdraw its negative judgement. Hopefully, the superego will substitute a positive judgement that we can use as a frame of reference for identity in place of the painful negative one. In a nutshell, superego manipulates the perception of one's identity in order to have power to influence one's actions.

This raises some basic questions. Can one's identity really be known by others? Seen, valued, perceived, and discerned accurately? When judging others as superego, is it our right to say, "This is how you are", or is it more truthful to say, "This is how you appear to me"? Superego judgement of others always wounds them because it always places the power of self knowledge outside themselves.

Doesn't the one acting as judge also lose? They validate the process of superego identity judgements. Superegos are thus acknowledged as empowered to determine identity for others and are simultaneously acknowledged as having the power to assign our own identities. In this way the wound of superego always cuts both ways. Thus, it is true that we can't be free of superego's tyranny over ourselves unless we give up judging and criticising others. Having an active superego is like owning a temperamental and vicious dog. If it isn't kept busy and engaged stalking and biting others, it will turn and bite us.

For us to attack, judge and criticize others is tantamount to attacking ourselves. It may temporarily postpone our wounding, but makes it none the less a certainty. Superego is strengthened, emboldened, nourished and empowered every time we use it internally or externally.

Self-realization, the knowledge and experience of who we really are, is subverted, blocked and denied by superego. Every time the superego is exercised it increases the veil that blocks our awakening.

The Body is a Portal to Other Dimensions

We are multidimensional beings. As Presence, which is self-aware awareness, we can and do inhabit many realms of reality. In order for those dimensions to inform and orient our mind-body manifestation we must activate and unfold our innate powers to perceive, sense, discern, and understand the spectrum of our home dimensions. Since all dimensions are present at all levels, at all times, it is not a matter of moving from one to another in actual location. It seems to be a shift in the content of our sensing perceptions that moves us from dimension to dimension.

Is this shift a change in how the senses are used? Or, is it a shift in which sensing power is utilized? It's both, singly and in combination. Physical senses are necessary to monitor the body and it's environment and for keeping it safe. A portion of the mind is active in this process as well, working out the logistics of problem solving for survival. While these body-mind level processes are going on, attention can be in the dimension of Presence experiencing spontaneously arising Essential Qualities that are naturally appropriate to one's situation. This happens simultaneous to the body and mind doing their parts, when Essence is not blocked. So, the body is a portal to Essence, to Presence.

The powers of the body and the mind protect, nourish, and nurture the body so it can function unimpeded as a portal to Essential Qualities of Presence of Being. The Essential Qualities arise spontaneously in response to circumstances and dynamics of interaction of the body-mind in consciousness. This co-emergent interaction of body-mind and Essence activates senses and empowers intelligent capacities that enable one to experience the universe as a positivity that is loving and lovable without exception. A perfect holding of lightness and goodness.

Experiential knowledge of our physical - mental presence and our Essential Presence, co-emerging in a perfect loving universe opens the dimension of pure Awareness. Awareness has boundless perceptive capacity in all dimensions. Empowered Awareness holds the totality of what can be known and experienced, in perfect equanimity and ease.

In the flawless clarity of its unbounded expanse Awareness finds one unknown. One unknowable. The mystery of it's own origin. The Absolute. Drawn irresistibly, Awareness sheds awareness of itself, thus entering the portal to the Absolute. The infinitely mysterious source of all is, itself, utterly unknowable. As such, it enters all other dimensions, itself remaining implicit as potential; the context, never the content.

Why Life Always Feels the Same

Beginning at the inception of our concept forming mind Mom intervenes and constantly refocuses our attention.

Refocused attention evokes in us the experiences she wants.

Memory of those experiences create anticipation and expectation that they will occur in the future.

Anticipation and expectation focus our attention and evoke our perception of the experiences imagined. Experiences repeat.

Superego messages, judgements, beliefs, criticisms and comparisons continually refocus our attention thus reinforcing and habituating the experiences they predict.

Habits of attention, perception and experience are formed that create continuity and substance for the 'world' anticipated. It is thereby reified.

The universe that Mom focused our attention on, described ,and predicted, is now perceptually and experientially created and inhabited by us.

With some variation of content but not quality, it endlessly repeats. Over time, with repetition, it gets more and more 'real'.

Challenging Our Orientation to Pain

It seems obvious enough. Pain contracts. Pain stagnates. Pain constrains. Pain interrupts flow. Pain takes our power; it defeats us. Pain seems to make us helpless and dependent. It seems that pain takes our will, our strength, our value, and our power. It also seems to cut us off from other qualities of Presence such as appreciation, gratitude, joy, satisfaction, curiosity, contentment, acceptance, forgiveness, and understanding. In sum, pain seems to insist that we focus on pain in the absence of Presence and it's holding qualities of both integrity and bliss.

This seems odd, and very suspicious.One would think that a natural unfolding of events would lead automatically from pain to the arising of those universally possessed, latent but unexpressed, internal powers of Presence best suited for dealing with pain. Survival would be promoted. Why does this not happen? Why does the very opposite occur?

In people firmly committed to their ego self identities, arising Essential qualities of Presence in others near to them begins to evoke their own sense of Presence. But, the immediate focus is on the emptiness and deficiency of their ego state as they begin to move away from it and towards Presence. Thus, Presence in others will make them feel threatened and uncomfortable.

A young child in pain will naturally experience rising Presence in its supporting and holding aspects. This will initiate vague, but definite feelings of inadequacy and emptiness in the ego-identified parent, unable to recognize the child's Presence for what it is, or the estrangement from their own Presence of Being. As a result, without knowing why, the parent is offended and feels wounded by the appearance of their child's powers of Presence. Accordingly the parent both overtly and unconsciously discourages and prevents the arising of, and unfolding of, their child's intrinsic capacities and powers to deal with pain.

For the child, the relationship with the parent supercedes their natural innate relationship to pain and their powers of Presence. The parent's estrangement from their own powers of Presence then results in a serious distortion of the child's developing relationship with his pain, and his identity as Presence. All based on the discomfort exposed when holding powers of Presence threaten to reveal the emptiness of the ego personality.

The child then, with the parents guidance, learns to impede its natural flow, constrain its innate holding powers of Presence, and contract its consciousness around the presence of pain. The natural unfolding of intrinsic powers in the child is blocked. Flowing capacities of evoked powers are thwarted, their development stunted and their ability to provide inner holding for the child in pain, denied.

For this to happen, the hurting child must turn his focus to the pain and the object relationship with the parents, while denying his intrinsic wisdom. This model for experiencing and dealing with pain becomes habituated, internalized and reified. Decades later the dynamic is virtually the same in the adult.

In this framework of reference, pain is to be rejected, turned away from, and gotten rid of by whatever means possible. To go into it is to invite disempowerment, helplessness, and dependency. Pain is seen to take something precious from us. To accept it is unthinkable.

In truth, pain naturally evokes innate powers of Presence capable of deepening the capacity of the one hurting, often while soothing, comforting, and promoting healing.

Quality of life is diminished immensely when the tremendous significance of pain as empowering is lost. In its place, pain is mis-labeled and given significance as an agent of disempowerment. Each time we are hurt, physically or mentally, we activate this distorted framework of references giving orientation and meaning to our pain, our identities and our world. If pain did, in truth, disempower and cut us off from Presence, then we would live an inimical world. In this realm, where pain is ubiquitous, every pain turns us away from our inherent powers. Every pain denies our Essential Presence. Every pain tightens the grip of delusional conditioning on our experience of life.

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.