On Consciousness Of Self

Hello Judit.

No need to apologize. It’s always good to hear from you. 

I’m glad you find this dialogue inspiring. Me too. It’s like you said about how one integrates and reinterprets. It’s a key thing and one people forget. For a long time Negro discouraged people from reproducing meetings with him by reading from extensive notes, or playing recordings of him. He said that we should metabolize the content and then reproduce it in our words. Unfortunately, that required more “level” than that which we were collectively capable.It reminds me that  I heard him say on more than one occasion that in a real situation of teaching you can’t identify who is teaching and who is learning. I think you know that register; you are trying to explain something and as you are doin that you integrate it in a new way suddenly “understanding” it. It’s a fantastic and mysterious register than occurs not uncommonly in our lives and which (if you are like me) it’s one of the many things that too often we don’t examine more deeply.

I remember very well talking to you in that pizzeria. What a wonderful retreat that was (if I can call it that). There’s something I’d like to do again and I look forward to our next conversation in the non-virtual world!

Perhaps there’s a relationship between the problem of liberating sufficient charge, or finding that inspiration, and observing what’s happening in daily life. Speaking of consciousness of self you say…”And Strangely, although I feel very very but very far from raeching such state, or even aspiring to it, strangely I can relate to it, and these images create in me a great commotion”. Perhaps that is a clue worth investigating. Do you not aspire to it or is it that you continue to tell yourself you aren’t the person that could attain to that? Whatever, it seems you hear something calling you. 

Since we are friends and even confidants (I hope I’m not presuming too much), may I suggest you review that theme a bit). Consciousness of self is not something alien to us (in that sense it is not a transcendental state). It is a level of consciousness we touch on frequently. Experience however proves that the path to “permanence” in that level is both very elusive (as history and our own efforts prove) and very natural. I use the term natural intentionally. My experience is that as in many other things it is a question of accumulation of many kinds of things over time. In this case an accumulation of intention, of unitive acts, and attention. I know you have strived to live with internal unity. And when we speak of things like unitive acts I think we have to be careful to leave aside false humility here that’s just as bad as delusions of grandeur. As we were saying earlier in these things non-judgmental, internal honesty is necessary. No bull shit. No forcing. So what’s lacking? The intention? Or related to that the actual attentional effort that links to that level.

As for that last I will only add for the moment that works with attention are key but they can be very misleading. Did you ever learn the old ADMI exercises — they had nothing to do with the Admi sector but were a system of works with attention. Or perhaps in Psychophysics did some other attentional exercises? All those can be very useful for becoming familiar with registers. But when we apply them with tension they are distractions (at best). Negro explained that in the end (after reviewing all these approaches) the best exercise is being in theme. It’s like in Principle Seven where it tells us that if we liberate ourselves when everything we do is done as an end in itself, we make the effort to be in theme, to do what we are doing, nothing more is necessary (but other things can help). I am writing you this email, I don’t have to struggle to pay attention, I do it with attention because it’s the theme, it’s what I’m doing at the moment. I don’t have to worry about what I’ll do next, or who I have to call later, or anything. Thanks to the magic of the copresence (a very deep magic) those things will take care of themselves. When they push on my consciousness, distracting me from the theme at hand, I recognize them, let go, and focus back on this theme (of sharing ideas and experiences with my friend Judit). The copresence not only sorts out those other issues, but it is what transforms everything. So for example when I attend because my attention (act) is mechanically drawn by something (object) my attention remains a natural phenomena like my dog attending to me when I pick up her food. But if I have copresent my purpose of raising my level of consciousness then the copresent act turns the attention to an object and in that way transcends the previous situation.

Nonetheless, I’d say that this consciousness of self, so easy to experience, so difficult to maintain, is a part of our natural equipment. 

Gentley and without any effort look at the computer screen, and continuing with effortless effort (doing without doing) simultaneously become aware that you are looking. For the moment you are conscious of self. 

Is that all it is? Yes…well, and no!

Of course like other levels of consciousness this one admits states degrees of intensity, and permanence. The fact is that many people find themselves in this level off and on through the day, but usually it goes unnoticed. Like someone waking from sleep to vigil and quickly falling back to sleep. But once one has accumulated enough of those registers, vigil and more importantly its absence become more increasingly present. Then gradually, “naturally”,  one drifts up towards vigil. That can happen because these levels are natural levels of work of the psychism. So is consciousness of self — despite its elusive nature and the difficulty of shifting the consciousness’ centre of gravity from vigil to this higher level in an increasingly permanent way. And then? Then we might conceive there are levels outside the range of the consciousness that transcend it and nonetheless interact with it. 

So forget about waking to consciousness of self. Notice instead its absence! That’s a much, much more frequent state. And realizing it, not as an idea, but profoundly as a lived reality, as a register, is a wonderful and great accomplishment. And how else would you know that you are not in that level? That is of course why so many people don’t know that there is that possibility. And of course others who do know the possibility exists deny themselves a deeper or more permanent experience of that level for other reasons.’

I await your further thoughts on this and other interesting matters.

With my warmest greetings.

Danny

On Consciousness Of Self II

Dear Judit.

I’m glad you found those comments of interest and delighted some of our other friends did as well. Of course you should feel free to share these discussions as you like.

And I’m very happy that, in the spirit of dialogue, you chose to share your observations with me. I believe that they are very important. I think they are one example of inner revelations at which all arrive who meditate in humble search. The truths we arrive at are the same, but perhaps the most valuable thing is that our perspectives are different hence their nuances, and expression. Let me make a little detour or digression (and who doesn’t like divagations).

I was walking with Negro along a beach in Rio. He started to tell me a long and complex story. At some point I realized that he was drawing together threads of ideas he had explained over the last few years. But now, thanks to this story, I started to see how all the pieces fit together. It was a revelation, but more than anything I was overwhelmed at my stupidity. How had I not seen it? He had given so many clues and waited patiently and while I don’t know how others fared, I know I’d failed to even understand how to make the effort to fit these pieces together. I hadn’t even realized that there was an effort to make! I was devastated. Eventually I explained to him how I was feeling. And though I can’t remember his response word for word I can tell you the gist of it and that it moved me to the verge of tears (and still does). He said that is why each one of us is so valuable, each one has a unique perspective that only they have, their way of seeing things, and in sharing this they open up the way for others to see in new ways, and help complete our vision of reality.

As you note the idea of a register of the absence of consciousness of self is in fact a logical contradiction. If I am aware of consciousness of self it is not absent. It’s a wonderful paradox. You say to me “we think we are awake but really we are asleep” and my attention turns back to examine itself and I think “no here I am awake”. Of course in the next moment I slip back into my normal consciousness and everything once again becomes fantasy and empty words. How can I catch myself asleep if I’m not awake. Like so much of these works it is not as it seems. It is a trick but a useful one. It is as Negro said a matter of the “magic of the copresence”. 

Of course there are elevated experiences where that separation between the worldly and the eternal that you describe vanishes in a greater reality, however it seems to me that there is also a way of living and doing where that division effectively vanishes, not in ecstasy, or rapture but nonetheless in a functional way. Silo spoke of this in different ways at different times or so I understand him. When developing the theme of transference and self-transference for example, he spoke of the possibility of moving through the world with the world as the mind’s point of application. At other times he pointed to a doing (a way of being in the world) that was beyond the cold mechanics of the pendulum or the phantasmal optics of mirrors.

It seems to me that it is in the light of this other way that one can evaluate anew the meaning of the principles of valid action and begin to work with them in a deeper way. It is that possibility that in my own  private “slang” I call the Emerald Path. That’s a sort of mnemonic or mantra that helps me remember: that which is above is like that which is below, and that which is below is like that which above (or if you prefer, that which is outside is like that which is inside, etc). You might ask Roberto V about his take on all this.

Well, we know that all these ideas are connected and meditating on this takes us back to questions of levels of consciousness, and just as much to the themes of purpose and valid action.

So the practical questions you asked me about how I work with the simple meditation in reference to attention or principles is very much part of this theme. To switch the level of the discussion a bit, I’d say that my personal practice varies using different approaches at different times and then returning to them again. All of that I consider as part of my ascesis, this includes all my internal work, my studies, etc. I try to frame everything in reference to my ascesis/purpose. As the axis of that work I have my purpose, attention, the principles and the attempt to weave them into a permanent discipline. 

Around that permanent centre I have the other elements that make up my spiritual practice (to give it a perhaps misleading name). Some are more or less permanent, like my weekly Message meeting and the works connected to it. At times the work with the crafts has been an important element. Not so fixed in my schedule but really the heart of all of it is my ascesis in the sense of a particular kind of internal work where I sit down and carry out certain operations. The ascesis per se so to speak. But then I add on various other works, to clarify or strengthen certain aspects.  I might for example work on the relax over a long time in an attempt to investigate the deep permanent systems of tension, or I might investigate some idea or event. 

For many years I would try to follow a simple framing for all this (long before I knew of ascesis or had practiced a discipline). When I woke I would try, before opening my eyes, to set a tone for the day. I would think about what was coming up, how I would like to be (relaxed, open, attentive) and the difficulties that might arise and how I could  best face them (I was going to get shit at work, I was going to get pressured about paying an overdue bill, etc). I would recall the principle I had given myself to meditate on for this week. 

In the evening before falling asleep I would quickly review the day. I would look for moments of contradiction or confusion and moments of unity, joy, etc. I would try to look without self-criticism as if watching a movie or reading a story about someone. 

I found that if I gave no more than two or three minutes to these works it was sufficient. More and I tended to fall into reverie or divination. Despite, or because of, the brief nature of these meditations I found that after only a few days they changed my life in important ways, beginning but not ending with the fact that I realized that with the exception of really big events I didn’t generally know what I wanted or what had happened to me. It is like when one tries to track the rhythms of the centres through the week. Answering how much energy the various centres were working with is surprisingly hard; was today a 2 or an 8 in terms of happiness, attention or whatever? It should be easy but… I keep ending up with bigger questions: why don’t I know the answers? What kind of creature am I that I seem absent from most of my life as it unfolds? Who am I? 

As you said, there are many interesting themes to talk about in the non-virtual world. However, much as I’d love to see you and other friends in Europe I  have no travel plans at the present. I do hope I will be able to travel to the South for May but even that is far from certain. Mostly I can be found here in my cave. You are of course always welcome to visit. My cave has a room for other hermits and friends who pass this way. And there is always these other forms of interchange with have their own charm.

Warmest greetings and a big hug.

Danny