I Am.
I Think.
I Write.
What is the “I” that is Being?
What is the “I” that is thinking.
What is the “I” that is writing?
What is the “I” that is observing “me” being, and thinking, and writing?
Why can “I” observe “me” as if “I” am something and somewhere else?
Even beyond the unfathomable mystery of Life itself is the even more profound mystery of Consciousness.
After many decades of certainty that a little more scientific research would unlock the explanation and origin of consciousness, and how it relates to being, here we are, forced to admit the magic words that unlock the possibility of Knowing:
Research to date has been unable to disconfirm the hypothesis that consciousness might be one of the elementary and irreducible constituents of the universe.
Or a step further, that the universe may even exist within or emanate from a field of Consciousness.
Consciousness is not something that we have been able to “build up” from our biological components.
It is an entirely different type of thing all together.
It is a primary thing.
It is perhaps the primary thing.
Creation myths from around the world nearly universally presuppose a conscious Being from Whom the universal manifestation emanates.
In order to Be, Being may need to be conscious.
And surely the Source of Being is not any less Conscious than Being?
In order to develop into its fullness, Consciousness may need to be embodied.
Consciousness may be trying to Realize Itself.
Is not that the way we, Conscious Agents created in the Image of the One, create?
Do we not think, do we not imagine, do we not pull things from the depths of our Selves into Reality?
What is the depths of our Selves?
What is beyond the depths of Selves, where Self ceases be and One is?
From where or what are we pulling these images and ideas?
What is this Fount of Being that we dip the bucket down into, to draw up Wisdom and Inspiration from the deep?
What is the Deep inside of us, that cries out to the Deep outside us?
This is the great Mystery.
When you Dialogue with people, it becomes apparent that there is a Reality that is (something like) a spectrum of Consciousness, which can range from polluted / contaminated / corrupted / Endarkened on one side, to very simple and neutral awareness in the middle, to extraordinarily pure / wise / developed / enlightened on other side.
While Endarkened Consciousness appears to fracture and split into any number of directions of unsoundness, and as such collectively constitutes a cacophony of Chaos…
…enlightened Consciousness appears to converge towards something like a harmonious unity of Order and Understanding of a Central Animating Spirit and Logos.
Enlightened Consciousness strikes us like a symphony.
When the wisest, most respected, and most enlightened representatives from a diverse array of backgrounds, philosophical, or spiritual traditions are in the presence of One Another, they feel very much akin to One Another.
Clarified Consciousness grows ever more like the Consciousness of the One who Loves All.
We experience this very tangibly as if All clarifying Consciousness is progressively conforming itself to the same Image or Ideal.
It is as if All clarifying and enlightening Consciousness is progressively conforming itself to One.
If we are All being conformed to One, then we are progressing inextricably towards perfect Oneness through Love.
We feel as if we are in the presence of a brother or sister, or as if we have found another piece of our Selves. We can immediately recognize in One Another another the living embodiment of the same higher Spirit or Mind, even if we come from different traditions or tribes, or use different Word Tools.
We sense that we have grown and been transformed into a common Understanding of the same Non-Propositional Realities, even if we articulate them in different languages.
Our Minds hold very similar Ideas, and when we help One Another clarify our Minds further, we each come into higher transcendent shared understanding of That Which We Are Clarifying Towards.
It is phenomenologically an extraordinarily different experience than the endarkened debating of personal opinion.
It is the enlightened clarifying or discernment of transcendent and universal Truth.
The great convergence of these Ideas towards the same End makes it seem like a very strange or misstated conception to imagine that “we” are “thinking” these ideas.
When one “thinks” such things, the experience one has is not at all that one has “thought up” these ideas, which just happen to match the ideas of others walking in the same Way.
The very clear and obvious experience is that the same Ideas that have burst in upon us and revealed themselves as obviously True have miraculously, simultaneously, and against all odds given their absolute complexity, burst in upon the other as well.
Thoughts so dangerous or unlikely that we shudder to think, much less speak them in our present culture, are later confirmed in nearly precisely equivalent conceptual language by another writing in a different language, in a different place, in a different time in history, in an entirely different cultural context.
These are the Golden Threads.
There is also the very obvious and observable element in the dialogue of the remainders of dross, as it where, which have not yet been fully burned out by the refining fire which is purifying both Consciousnesses as they converge ever closer towards Unity with the the Source of Consciousness, and therefore and by definition closer and closer towards Oneness with One Another.
How else to more simply describe this than the obvious Realization and Experience of the universal movement towards Unity through Love that is the defining movement of the Spiritual Element of the [Universe].
Towards Oneness through Love.
This is the Way towards the Goal.
Thus the experience that one has, the way one acts, and the articulations that flow from one who is far enough along the Way is not at all they they are thinking the Ideas, but rather it almost becomes the inverse.
The experience they have is that the Ideas are thinking them.
Yet without becoming Ideology, for there are no Boundaries and the Knowing is Non-Propositional.
It becomes extraordinarily difficult to discern whether (they) are Realizing the Ideas, or whether the Ideas are Realizing them.
It becomes very difficult to understand whether (they) have grasped Something, or whether Something has grasped (them).
The vistas open, Reality is revealed, and Consciousness grows ever closer to its Source. As it grows closer to its Source, it Reconciles or Conforms itself to the Absolute Standard of Source, and is, simultaneously and in direct proportion to the respective degrees of Reconciliation of All Things, simultaneously Reconciled unto (them).
The end of this Way is the total Reconciliation of All Things with One and One Another.
However when All Things have been fully Reconciled, we will Understand that there is no such thing as a thing as we previously conceived of it.
We will understand that there is Ultimately only One.
And yet All are, even as One Is.
What we have just articulated is likely something that can only be Known through direct experience. At least it was for us.
The words fail and drop dead at the Boundary.
It feels almost as if they shouldn’t be spoken.
To know the Way one must live it.
And yet how we wish the words we now struggle to articulate were spoken to us!
How much pain and suffering they could have saved us along the Way, had only our eyes been opened a little sooner.
And so we offer them up simply as bread crumbs for the Quest.
You will Know when you begin to Experience It. You will Remember. You will Know you are on the right path. The ancient path. The ancient Way. Getting ever closer to the Ultimate Reality that is receding into the infinite distance of Unity.
Getting ever closer to the Goal that recedes with each step, yet somehow envelops and consumes you ever more.
How we should orient our Consciousness to the Source of Consciousness is very similar to how, on any level of analysis, the we is to relate to the One through which All arises.
Humility. Awe. Celebration. Love. Desire. And a rapturous relational journey towards something that ever more fully approximates Oneness with One and One Another.
It is the greatest spiritual intercourse imaginable.
Better than sex. Better than life.
It may be that we will continue to discover that the One from Whom both Energy and Consciousness arise is more like a Mind or a Personality than anything else.
We may continue to discover that It is thinking us and speaking us and All into Being, moment by moment.
We may continue to discover that we are creatively Conscious Agents, flowing from the Source of Creative Consciousness and Agency itself.
As we discover this, we should conform our Self ever more closely to Its image.
Ever closer to the Mind and Image of the One.
Forward to 6.19 The Nature And Location Of The Source
Back to 6.17 Beyond The Masculine Anthropomorphic God
Back to table of contents The Book of Lionsberg