Being Conscious

            For over seven years now, since The Break when the ontological aspect of ego, the experience of ego as a being, the “I”, which was conflated with the person, fell away in a moment, the psychological ego, the ego thought system, has been falling away in a process. This started off as very dark and uncomfortable, disorienting, and unclear. It eventually became obvious that what was occurring was the ego thought system was rising fully to conscious awareness before falling away. It was as though ego was a tree which had been slowly chopped down since the enlightened mind (pure consciousness) came to stay in conscious awareness seven years before The Break, and since The Break what has been occurring is the stump and roots have been pulled out, bringing it all to the surface to be disposed of.

In time, the intensity of the darkness and discomfort eased off a bit and later in larger chunks. During that time, there was a curious experience that occurred on and off. But before going into that, let’s backtrack a bit.

Throughout the life of Liz, there occurred in this conscious awareness (this mind) moments when a sense of being very conscious was revealed to be possible. How to describe being very conscious? Very here, very present, with amazing clarity is close. These experiences, of course, indicated that the rest of the time, which really meant all the time because these experiences were a matter of moments on very rare occasion, what was occurring in this mind was being not very conscious. It made it seem this mind was “numbed out” but there was no way to change that, no way to force that experience of being very conscious. And what exactly was this mind supposed to be conscious of that it wasn’t the rest of the time? This question, of course, was shaped by ego. And ego supplied an answer to itself: To be very conscious means to face the darkness, evil, and nastiness lurking in this mind. Best to stay away from that. So, what occurred here was a conflation of that very conscious feeling and darkness so that they seemed to be the same thing. This meant the experience of truth, of pure consciousness, must be something different.

To be clear: These experiences were not on this mind, not consciously, anyway. If thought about soon after an experience of feeling very conscious happened, it and the “numbing out” were considered psychological, not ontological. Liz must be afraid of looking at something about herself. And since that experience of being very conscious could not be evoked, each rare time it occurred it was soon forgotten.

Now, fast-forward to the years after The Break and those curious experiences. The darkness had eased off a bit and occasionally there were fleeting experiences here that felt like something had either arrived or returned. What was this? Was this truth, pure consciousness, rising fully to conscious awareness for a moment, or ego asserting itself after an episode of quiet and peace? They were too brief to grasp although there were episodes of them happening daily.

Lately, experiences of feeling very conscious have become everpresent. It is something this mind can now consciously turn to. This came on slowly and at first this mind did not recognize what was occurring. But once understood, one of the first things seen was that another kind of “numbing out” that this mind has been aware of all along was not what it thought. When fear rose here back in the day, it was always with a story for its source, something occurring in Liz’s life or some neurotic glitch in Liz’s psychology, never that it was just the experience of ego. So, this mind was aware of choosing to “numb out” at times, like fantasize or watch TV or read a book or get distracted with, well, anything. (Liz was never into using chemical substances to escape.) What is seen here now, though, is that those activities were not really any different from the rest of the ego experience, the ultimate “numbing out”. That whole previous experience of ego as the center of this mind, of this conscious awareness, was being “numbed out” or denying truth, pure consciousness, which is what was experienced in those moments of being “very conscious”.

Being “very conscious”, it turns out, is not being conscious to darkness in this mind or even to being present to things in the world. It means pure consciousness—truth—is in conscious awareness. Those fleeting experiences of “arrived/returned” were truth breaking into conscious awareness when the remnants of ego were still here and conflated itself with every experience, which is why I wasn’t sure what they were. In a way, ego was right that those experiences of very consciousness meant facing the darkness in this mind, not because truth is dark, but because ego is, and this is fully exposed as truth rises fully to conscious awareness.

Right after The Break, this mind felt it was in a “new context”. What it used to call the Holy Spirit (pure consciousness) was no longer its companion but that new context. It could sense the new context all around but could not access it during the long, dark haul of ego rising fully to conscious awareness. But now it is here. It is “very conscious”, not conscious of something; it is consciousness itself. 

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