Ego and the "Presence" of Pure Consciousness

           Back in January there was an article here, Being Conscious, about the experience in this mind of pure consciousness in conscious awareness. This has continued to advance, and it is refreshing. And I see now clearly what ego did with those experiences before.

Before ego fell away in this mind, when pure consciousness (truth) rose to conscious awareness (rare), leading to an experience of feeling very conscious (very present, very clear), ego did one of two things with it: If it felt it was going to be judged by this “presence” (which was how ego experienced it), it feared it, so when it passed, ego quickly “forgot” it (denied it) with one distraction or another. But other times, it used it for itself, it became part of its own story. This presence, which was benevolent and strong, had arrived, to ego’s way of thinking, for the sake of ego, like for comfort, or it meant something about ego, for example, that it was ego’s “true self”. Because in ego’s world, ego is reality, it is the default experience of existence because ego cannot imagine existence without it, so everything in consciousness is about it and for it.

This attempt by ego to claim the “presence” for itself had the same effect as distracting from it: It covered it up. Pure consciousness does not rise to conscious awareness for ego. It just inevitably rises to conscious awareness because conscious awareness is part of consciousness. Ego’s activity always had the effect of blocking pure consciousness from conscious awareness, so ego getting busy with the presence of pure consciousness by making it about itself ended up blocking pure consciousness from conscious awareness. But while the experience was now gone—really, blocked by ego—ego felt it had come to learn something about or for itself. At minimum, it had new information. At most, its perceptions shifted to include truth in its view of its own existence.

Experiences of pure consciousness were rare, but the sense of a “presence” eventually came to happen more often. The distinction is a matter of perspective. Feeling very conscious is conscious awareness registering the presence of pure consciousness. In other words, consciousness experiencing itself purely, without ego. This is why it is so clear. Feeling a “presence” is ego aware of pure consciousness in conscious awareness. But just the movement of pure consciousness toward conscious awareness without breaking all the way through resulted in ego’s “spiritual journey” as ego was affected by pure consciousness and misunderstood the experience to be for and about ego.

This very conscious experience is what A Course in Miracles calls the real world. It is not the world of form. It is not about the world of form. Only ego concerns itself with the world of form, the “screen” made to receive its projections. Consciousness is simply here, not for or about anything. It is here all the time now and when it is noticed by this mind, the first sensation is that this is exactly what ego didn’t want, this is what it meant to avoid. That recognition is a conditioned reflex, still sensing what was here, but the block of fear doesn’t arise.

 

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