Why "Consciousness"

Last week I wrote about truth, or pure consciousness, rising to conscious awareness. I mentioned how the Christian labels (God, Christ, Holy Spirit) used in A Course in Miracles, though never used here (this conscious awareness) in the traditional Christian way (Christ never meant Jesus, for example) have fallen away as special words are found unnecessary for something so delightfully ordinary and simply present. There has been a long journey here with the word “consciousness”, accepted, rejected, and accepted again, this time because it has been found to be distinctly apt.

The word consciousness in the context of spiritual experience and aspiration seemed to have developed in Eastern religious philosophy rather than in the West. While Liz here recognized the truth of nonduality teachings, she was never moved to pursue them. There was an attempt here sometimes to translate what was said about consciousness in those teachings into the Christian symbols of God, Christ, and Holy Spirit, but in the end, the Chrisitan symbols won out as the significance of consciousness was not yet experienced and, frankly, was not special enough for ego. Another obstacle was thinking of the word psychologically rather than factually. But as it turns out, experience, rather than the intellect, reveals the word consciousness to be the most suitable.

A while back, the significance of conscious awareness began to niggle here. Liz here would say, and hear others say, about spiritual insights or mystical experiences, “It was here and then it left.” Where was the “here” that truth had risen to only to leave? When The Enlightened Mind showed up here years ago—where was this “here”? It was conscious awareness—one’s immediate awareness. It is the space that holds appearances—what the body’s eyes see, thoughts, feelings, and experiences. It isn’t enough to know that there is a truth beyond appearances. What spiritual seekers want is for it to be in their immediate awareness, or, at least, just out of awareness in the subconscious, with easy access to it. Having truth in conscious awareness is what the spiritual journey is about. After seeing this, it began to be understood here that ego was the reason for consciousness seeming to be divided up into conscious awareness, the subconscious, and the unconscious.

When this began to be seen here, the loftier spiritual terms still prevailed. And then they fell away in a wonderful deflation of ego’s spirituality. What was left was the awareness that what is, is right here and always has been and it is ordinary, not distant, not lofty, not special. It is plain, everyday consciousness. The Enlightened Mind coming to conscious awareness to stay was merely the fullness of consciousness rising to immediate awareness and never slipping further away than the subconscious again.

Of course, consciousness is just a word—a symbol. It is the word given to the space, or field, in which appearances—the material world, thoughts, feelings, experiences—appear. Space and field are just symbols, too, meant to convey an experience of something limitless. It’s been called here by labels other than the Christian ones, like hereness and everpresence. And some say the infinite, the eternal, or the vastness. It is what is. But consciousness is an apt symbol, far more than ever could’ve been imagined before it was experienced, because it is what is here, directly in experience. It is easy to understand the significance of conscious awareness, one’s immediate awareness. Anyone would say “this is where I am, this is my reality”. And once it is seen that ego, the interloper in consciousness, splits conscious awareness off from the rest of consciousness, it can be understood that conscious awareness is part of (one with) consciousness. And that is something right here, ordinary and everyday, not some lofty, distant “God”.

Does this mean you should dump Christian symbols? Not if they have meaning for you. The experience, not the labels, is important. Nothing experienced here now is different from what was seen when Christian symbols were used. What changed is the experience of truth came and turned out to be ordinary, everyday consciousness that special words imply is something else. Those special words are bloated with connotations derived from fear.

I still use those symbols with my clients if they prefer them. The experience I share is the same either way. What is meant to be conveyed in this article is that any sense of distance between your conscious awareness and truth is an illusion because your conscious awareness is truth—consciousness. It does not matter if ego blocks this awareness and turns the rest of consciousness beyond your conscious awareness into something lofty and distant. This, too, is just something appearing in consciousness and has no effect on it whatsoever. You are always in truth, whether you see it or not.

 

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