In this chapter zandtao wants to establish a relationship with consciousness. Everything revolves around consciousness or Dhamma or sunnata - whatever word you are using to describe this. Now consciousness is a mystery - a useful spiritual word to have concerning consciousness. .zandtao first met the use of mystery and consciousness with Eckhart, and it was a study for him - see addon.
Eckhart described the mystery of consciousness as having 2 characteristics, and using these 2 mystery characteristics zandtao is going to structure this chapter.
Eckhart’s First Mystery
This is the mystery of “knowing consciousness” The first understanding of this is to understand that as a spiritual mystery there is no definitive answer. As seekers investigate the mystery there might well be commonality but there is no definitive conclusion or set of defined characteristics that will arrive through the seeker’s investigation.
But the investigation of consciousness and the seeker’s relationship with consciousness is an ongoing aspect of path.
Is self consciousness?
There is a received understanding as part of conditioning and upbringing that self and consciousness are connected, the phrase “I think therefore I am” might be considered part of that received understanding.
For zandtao there is a strong understanding that we need to unlearn this connection between self and consciousness. In the first chapter LINK we saw a connection between self-esteem and conditioning, zandtao is now asking that in the investigation of the mystery of consciousness leave self behind.
Listening to some of the interviews with Batgap left me wondering why seekers cling to terms involving self. With anatta from Buddhism consciousness and ego seem easier to grasp when you include khandhas - and include self only as a collection of egos.
zandtao finds the way of leaving self behind easier to understand but then it is his way. If we leave self behind then there is consciousness and identification with ego - nothing else consciousness and identification with ego. What happens to ego in awakening? The restrictions become less and less as you see ego and let it go. So you look for restrictions that arise as attachments, suffering and clinging and let them go. As you lose the restrictions egoic attachment to whichever khandha becomes less and less but there must always be some attachment to khandha whilst there is life - when this is simply consciousness enabling the khandha to function and no egoic attachment or suffering that is perhaps the ideal we might aim for.
And we replace all the egoic attachments with consciousness - directions and skills (love, wisdom, sila and truth and mindfulness, focus and embodiment).
There can be contortions over self-realisation and self-actualisation. Once there has been some sort of awakening then the seeker develops the directions and skills of consciousness and applies the consciousness the seeker has found to daily life as best s/he can. The fewer restrictions there are the easier they will be able to build the directions and skills of consciousness and apply them. Where are the contortions in that approach?
Recognising Consciousness
Nothing else - consciousness and identification with ego and releasing restrictions. This becomes clearer with the recognition of 2 aspects of practice. We have looked at the first aspect of our practice in the earlier chapters of the zeer by looking at the restrictions that arose as a consequence of conditioning and conformity, But within the practice of MwB there was always the 4th tetrad - integration that led to the characteristics of Buddhism and a recognition of Dhamma - consciousness.
With the transcendence of autonomy the emphasis becomes more on the recognition of consciousness. Starting from MwB this recognition took the shape of considering the 4 Dhamma comrades - mindfulness, focus, wisdom and sampajanna. In autonomy this recognition started equanimity - love-wisdom balance. What leads up to transcendence is a releasing of restrictions that come from conditioning and conformity, so after transcendence there is less and less emphasis on this. What becomes more important is the recognition of consciousness and the replacement of conditioning and conformity with consciousness.
For Eckhart this process of recognition led to knowing consciousness, and from there zandtao wants to take the recognition to loving consciousness - zandtao is not saying Eckhart didn’t do that (if you want to know, investigate Eckhart’s wonderful teachings to find where loving consciousness fits in).
gabiK’s Unpacking our Story
This is how gabiK starts to love consciousness. “To begin unpacking the story of who we are”, …., “and what we must understand about our true selves to learn how to live in love, peace, and unity, we must first unwind the story of our upbringing and come to understand and respect our own lineage, because whatever was suppressed in our lineage becomes something that we inherit. This is what creates the shadow which hides within it the negative features we want to transcend in our lives. Let's assume you want to understand how to love yourself, but you are unable to determine the origin of your lack of self-love. You may reflect on your early childhood and recall that one or more of your parents found it difficult to connect emotionally. Perhaps one of your parents was more distant than the other. They may have demonstrated a lack of nurturing or embodied an absence of self-compassion, which you can then trace back to their predecessors to reveal the chain of generational events that incited the root of your traumatic experience. As you zoom out further, you can connect more dots to understand that the basis of your pain is a collective pain of both men and women experiencing a timeline created by those who came before them…a timeline during which grief, pain, struggle, and insufficiency accumulated to produce certain adaptive mechanisms which allowed those individuals to survive in the matrix. We must also realize that the programs you are inheriting are archaic programs built during different chapters of civilization’s history, perhaps times of famine, war, arduous survival, or tumultuous change, which forced migration, evolutionary change, or other forms of adaptation. Although the world scene could have changed dramatically since those evolutionary programs were created, their design is reflected in the genetic predisposition that later generations received. (pp. 23-24)..” This very much fits in with the two best books of Nicola and Teal, and in addition we could study all of ch2 of gabiK’s book to improve your love of consciousness
“Without the painful evolutionary task of women surrendering their feminine softness, creativity, and nurturing capacity to become more tough and masculinized versions of themselves, procreation during challenging times may not have been possible, and if men hadn't desensitized themselves to be resilient and have unwavering faith in their survival, the lineage might not have perpetuated. In retrospect, those qualities that led to survival are also some of the deepest and most unsettling roots of separation still prevalent in society today. Those are the same roots of feminine disempowerment and the disassociation from feminine wisdom, softness, creativity, and surrender, as well as masculine over-dominance—the exertion of masculine energy in such a way that suffocates the emotional, intuitive, and loving essence of the divine masculine's presence.(pp. 24-25).” .zandtao is not at all surprised that women teachers are directing us to love - this is part of zandtao’s autonomy, love-wisdom balance, and the first mystery of consciousness - loving consciousness.
Shadow as Purpose in Life’s journey
When we see this aspect of interbeing then we can see that our own lack of integration reflects in societal integration; our shadow is part of the collective shadow. Failure to follow our paths impacts on others if our own fruition is not enough motivation.
“The only way to integrate the shadow is to add another dimension—that of feeling—to your worldly experience. This allows a golden thread to form between every experience you're witnessing on the external front of reality and the perceptions of your inner world. How you feel about the world holds a great deal of significance for your identity. Only deep feeling, compassion, and symbiosis allow for an experience of unity consciousness, which is the epitome of life on Earth” [p19 ln310].
This is why patriarchy’s conditioning does not include feeling. Decking men react to feeling by decking or abuse. “The shadow may present as an oppressive energy because it keeps away from you everything that you are unwilling and unable to see about yourself, including traumatic memories, encounters with karma, and pain that you may not want to understand” [p19 ln310]. And the nature of society that patriarchy does not want you to understand. Purpose - “The reason for your pain, your trauma, your limiting beliefs, and all locked-away parts of you that may be hidden in your shadow is an opportunity for transformation and collective growth” [p19 ln310]. The collective growth of consciously loving and evolving consciousness.
“Ultimately, our mission is to transcend our shadow’s hold and understand that there was no reason to fear it all along. Our shadow is simply an aspect of ourselves that emulates the soul and the higher self that we are here to love by choosing to willfully include it in our physical experience. The difficulty, however, is that we may feel there is no place for this sacred essence in a world filled with so dense a collective shadow, which gives rise to the painful separation that so many of us experience as children who become divided from their own authentic truth” [p20 ln324]. This shadow arises in our upbringing intentionally through our Sacred Wound but as we let go of conditioning and conformity we begin to integrate who we are. Using shadow as purpose we can begin to integrate that then leads to loving consciousness.
Second aspect of practice
As we unpack our story and integrate our shadow, this leads us to an emphasis on the second aspect of practice - developing consciousness. Here gabiK describes it as “a form of integration that brightens the spirit and provides a permission slip for authentic embodiment. This kind of healing honors the primordial essence by awakening the opportunity for pure being and diminishment of the shadow’s experience of separation, fear, repression, and alienation. Such healing entails holding space for your soul in physical form by choosing to commit to joyful and truthful expansion” [p20 ln324]. Holding space for consciousness as we release restrictions. For zandtao this is what happened with MwB but it is now something he is consciously doing as loving consciousness.
These 2 aspects are releasing ego and holding space for consciousness the graces. When zandtao considers his history of his practice he thinks of consciously releasing egos that eventually led to the 3 freedoms. But at the same time he connected to Dhamma. When he connected to Dhamma there was a feeling of space that early on was filled with mindfulness - the 4th tetrad. When one talks only of releasing attachments we are not being completely honest and circumspect, the reality is that the release of ego was not all that was going on. We were building the connection with Dhamma - letting in the graces, holding space for the graces.
Nyanga
Nyanga was an excellent release but practice was not just releasing nyangas. “Regardless of how old you are, how many traumatic experiences you have endured, or how dense you believe your shadow to be, you can begin exploring its characteristics by experiencing a radical form of healing that is inspiring and awakening. Spiritual teachings do not traditionally advocate this form of healing because the connotation embedded in the collective mind surrounding healing is difficult, arduous, painful, and evoking suffering through the self-scrutiny of reliving prior pain”[p20 ln324]. Nyanga was powerful but practice was never just the conscious process of releasing egos - even though that might have been how it was often described. That is the “difficult, arduous, painful, and evoking suffering through the self-scrutiny of reliving prior pain”, but that was never what was just going on. Connecting with the Muse was always developing space and after autonomy holding space for love-wisdom became a priority. In the end that has now become consciousness - directions and skills. Bringing in grace is that space for the soul - and has always been an aspect of practice, even though the 2 aspects were not recognised.
You need both. You can’t just release egos, there will be replacement - either “new” conditioning or consciousness. Tradition talks about awareness and mindfulness but practice tends to be seen as releasing egos. But without holding space - bringing in mindfulness and awareness - then conditioning comes back in . This can be seen as reconditioning, but is better thought of as holding space for the soul - bringing in the graces.
CENTRE - Loving consciousness
This is the centre of the zeer; it is the point where you see, know and feel you love consciousness - or you don’t. This loving of consciousness arises through working to love yourself (with integration), and to truly love yourself you work with the best books - putting each page into practice step-by-step (through journalling or otherwise). Up to this point the zeer can help you to be ready for love - maybe you can be ready for love in other ways - your journey. How you deal with loving consciousness through the best books is again your journey but this central point is the same - loving consciousness - seeing, knowing and feeling you love consciousness - unleashing love LINK through loving yourself LINK. Work with the books/teachings.
Loving consciousness is the first mystery - we move on.
gabiK’s model of human infrastructure
“This means we have to break apart a few very important concepts , including the concept of your physical self , which is the vessel that houses the thoughts , emotions , and feelings that it animates into real - world decisions and actions ; the emotional body of your consciousness , which holds this energy in the physical field outside of your body that you can contact to give rise to different emotional states ; your consciousness , which is the network of multiple layers of thinking , feeling , and conscious experience that you connect to by becoming aware of yourself and by using multiple faculties of awareness to move outside of the mind's control ; and your awareness, which is the placement of your consciousness into a state of observation in which you hold space for all sensations occurring within and outside of you without exerting an emotional charge” [p32 ln504].
Physical self
Emotional body
Consciousness
Awareness
Physical self - the vessel that houses the thoughts, emotions, and feelings that it animates into real-world decisions and actions
Emotional body of your consciousness - holds this energy in the physical field outside of your body that you can contact to give rise to different emotional states
Consciousness - network of multiple layers of thinking, feeling, and conscious experience that you connect to by becoming aware of yourself and by using multiple faculties of awareness to move outside of the mind's control
Multiple layers? Faculties of awareness?
awareness- placement of your consciousness into a state of observation in which you hold space for all sensations occurring within and outside of you without exerting an emotional charge
“If consciousness is the sea of awareness that encapsulates all observable matter as well as the unobservable, metaphysical features that create the energetic soup of reality, then awareness is any point within this matrix. Awareness exists at every scale of reality. Every being with awareness brings a unique pixel into the experiential screen of a conscious universe, although we often don't perceive our own awareness as a vector” [p40 ln612].
So we have reached the centre of the zeer, and there is the potential for development through greater understanding and practice with gabiK’s model of human infrastructure. zandtao leaves this open for his - some first thoughts in Addon 10 - and your consideration.
Ageing and Consciousness
How does the relationship between consciousness and ageing change during a lifetime?
zandtao is writing this as an insight, he would not write it if he did not consider it true but life is all things to all people. zandtao is not all of consciousness nor is he all of karma - the life-giving aspect of consciousness - there are many things we are not meant to know.
At conception consciousness enters the mother’s womb and during pregnancy establishes mother-love - pure unconditional love. During upbringing consciousness as vinnana is building up the khandhas - kaya - body, vedana - emotions, sanna - memories and perceptions, and sankhara - mental processes. At this stage consciousness goes through a survival process strengthening these khandhas. At the same time consciousness builds up self-esteem to survive society but sadly and paradoxically this self esteem blocks path connection with restrictions of attachments, suffering and clinging - the paradox being that these restrictions come from a consciousness process.
For zandtao because of his Sacred Wound he did not have self-esteem so as an adult there were not those restrictions to overcome. But the suffering of his Sacred Wound and the clinging to that suffering dominated his path connection during his working life. But he did gain much experience during this time that he refers to as 2nd childhood, and this experience was essential for his later path connection. He also got together sufficient money as pensions and savings that he could retire early with his half of his parents’ house that was another benefit of the Sacred Wound. This 2nd childhood meant he only found practice just before his early retirement - through his mid-life review and then conversion to Buddhism.
These restrictions or marks of consciousness attach or cling to our khandhas and cause suffering to our khandhas. But consciousness as vinnana has a life-cycle connected to the khandhas. From conception vinnana builds up the khandhas as part of survival but later in life eg typically during retirement consciousness slowly detaches from the khandhas eventually leading to death. But with the changing emphasis from khandhas and societal experience humans can process consciousness after transcending conditioning (atammayata) - in autonomy not having any of the khandhas being conditioned. As ageing progresses we can end restrictions allowing our paths to include the skills and directions of consciousness - skills of mindfulness, focus and embodiment and directions of love, wisdom, sila and truth. With these skills and directions comes vision that enables us to consciously-love-and-evolve-consciousness, the ultimate purpose of human processing.
Sadly the joy of this final stage of life is lost to many because they are controlled by the egos of their restrictions. As such they try to maintain connections to the khandhas going against the natural process of ageing - vinnana leaving the khandhas. Consciousness that could be used to consciously-love-and-evolve-consciousness is instead redirected to maintaining the egos in the khandhas - in the vihara. What could be the best joy in life - the joy of later life that has fewer restrictions and a life free from wage-slavery hopefully - is replaced by an unnatural attempt to cling to khandhas; in the worst of old men this shows in attempting to maintain sexual relationships with young women.
Purpose - Evolving consciousness
If we can see this ageing process then purpose becomes straightforward - evolving consciousness. We learn about life, we transcend conditioning becoming autonomy, we love consciousness and as karma intends we then evolve consciousness based on our life’s learning. This evolving can happen unconsciously but as purpose consciously evolving consciousness brings joy especially in old age.
During our lives different aspects of our being search for purpose often within the societal infrastructure. This “societal” purpose is part of life’s journey, and contributes to our learning but is at best part of life’s journey that leads to the purpose of evolving consciousness. Evolving consciousness arises from loving consciousness, and develops understanding from life’s journey that can include many different purposes. The ultimate life’s purpose of consciously evolving consciousness is perhaps best not sought, let it evolve from loving consciousness. Look at this addon based on Teal’s discussion of purpose in life’s journey.
Consciously Loving and Evolving consciousness
Loving consciousness begins with Unity-consciousness - no separation, extending “self-love” to Unity-consciousness. For self-love we need to know and love ourselves in a non-egoic (not narcissism) way, and through unleashing that love there is alignment as Unity-consciousness. This leads us to making our self-love and Unity-consciousness more conscious - consciously loving consciousness.
At a certain stage - what zandtao calls autonomy, the seeker recognises purpose - to consciously love and evolve consciousness. The seeker follows their path through their practice, learns to love themselves - unleashes love, and through unleashing love they recognise Unity-consciousness - loving consciousness. In this love they see that their love and wisdom evolves consciousness. This all connects with purpose. Why is there manifestation? So that we can evolve consciousness.
This understanding of purpose gives us our lessons for pathtivism. Wherever we are with our consciousness is part of the collective consciousness - no matter who we are, no matter how developed we are as humans. Being mathematical our collective societal delusion would appear to be the sum total of individual delusions - zandtao uses the word appear because the gestalt process adds or detracts, that is not for zandtao to know. What is important to understand is that each individual contributes to the gestalt consciousness, how beneficial is your contribution? Each bit of wisdom we gain in life becomes part of the wisdom of consciousness - thus evolving consciousness.
And by recognising purpose we not only contribute to consciousness but we consciously want to contribute to consciousness; the seeker wants to consciously evolve consciousness - that becomes path and purpose.
If we accept this understanding of path and purpose then we connect our own paths to societal-consciousness; conscious action evolves consciousness. Spiritual bypassing is not pathtivism (if there is no embodiment of spiritual development in daily life). It is all connected.
Human Processor
Processing is part of human nature - maybe add to infrastructure. Purpose is consciously-loving-and-evolving-consciousness, and this loving and evolving occurs through the processing of the human being. Consciousness enters the processor as one of the khandhas - vinnana, and is processed. This processing can lead to love and evolving but it can also lead to attachment, suffering and clinging. Ideally processing would just lead to love and evolving but because of conditioning egos that arise through upbringing and social conditioning from attachment suffering and clinging process this vinnana into supporting the egos.
Through practice we can learn to control this processing. Vinnana can enter as graces thus beginning love and evolving but they can also leave residues of attachment, suffering and clinging that need to be released. The practice ends the conditioning of upbringing, and in autonomy there can develop this state of atammayata that releases any attachment, suffering and clinging. For zandtao once crossing the threshold of autonomy his meditation has become the release of the marks of vinnana so hopefully his processing develops love and evolving consciousness.
Starting to Understand Karma
Starting to understand the visions that is karmic vision - the ways of consciousness are such a thing to love; Teal, Nicola and gabiK push towards this loving vision.
Seeing Karma in this way is so complete, it is a wonder to love. Seeing the completeness of Karma requires a stepping back from received understandings of karma as connected with payback and past lives. Seeing Karma in its true completion brings together what your life is and how it comes together. Karma is destiny or divine plan but it is not obscure in this, it is a complete description of how life can be lived to the full.
The first Karmic agency comes before we are born. Consciousness decides how our lives are to consciously love and evolve consciousness - our bit of loving evolution. Then Karma provides us with our Sacred Wound - basically our personal karmic agent. Mainly Karma’s agency is our parents, and our path includes trying to love our parents - as we love consciousness.
But we need to understand that karmic consciousness has given us our parents to learn from, and in that learning there might well be suffering - dukkha is an agent of karma that teaches us. But the suffering from our parents is real, on our paths we do not hide from that suffering, and the circle of life brings us back to loving our parents as agents of Karma. Through conception we are born with mother-love, and we are also born with love for Karmic consciousness that begins with our nuclear families and home.
Our upbringing brings with it the survival attachments of self-esteem, and these Karmic attachments primarily arise through our parents and early childhood. This tends to be our Sacred Wound that is to teach us for the whole of our lives. At some stage we let go of the surviving self-esteem, learn from our Sacred Wound and follow our paths. Once we can overcome the clinging pain that grows in childhood we can begin to see our Sacred Wound as teacher and start to love - consciousness.
Through understanding our upbringing by inner child reconciliation LINK to Thay, we examine the attachment and suffering and release them re-integrating the ego into our completeness - complete love. What is so important in seeing this vision of Karma is that it is all planned to bring us joy when we have released it all. There is no greater joy or love than the love that comes from consciously loving and evolving consciousness. And that arises through our practice that basically releases the suffering and attachment we cling to as self-esteem in our upbringing. Our path is to see through the conditioning and conformity of upbringing so that we can consciously love and evolve consciousness. Seeing Karma for its plan means that we see the three aspects of consciousness of anatta, dukkha and anicca - clinging to attachment and suffering - as teachers, teachers that have come from Karma - karmic consciousness. So we can then love the source of our attachments and suffering - on a personal level in full circle we can come to love our parents. For some families there is an attachment that is parental love, we love our parents because they are our parents; this is unconscious and is not the love of karmic consciousness that is the Sacred Wound of which our parents were planned to be a central source of learning. The 3 aspects of consciousness that came from our upbringing - attaching and clinging to egos and suffering - are with us until we mature - until inthe transcending of atammayata we release all the conditioning and conformity that arose in upbringing.
But this does not mean that there is an end to these 3 aspects because our karma still has us vulnerable to the conditions in society that created our conditioning and conformity - that created our Sacred Wound - that created our parents. These conditioning factors that include generational trauma still remain within society, and if we do not use the consciousness skills of mindfulness, focus and embodiment to be aware of these ongoing factors there will still be a level of conditioning and conformity. Through these consciousness skills we embody that awareness by embodying a life that is free from conditioning. This is the stage of non-concoctability, much better remembered by the word Buddhadasa used - atammayata. This is the freedom of autonomy where we are not conditioned by he conditioning factors prevalent in society.
With atammayata comes the recognition of loving consciousness and the arising purpose - we are here to consciously love and evolve consciousness, by that stage we have learnt what our path is. We may not have the level of attaching and clinging to egos and suffering that came with our Sacred Wound in our upbringing, but there are still residual aspects of consciousness that come from daily life. .zandtao does not know but perhaps at this stage if a seeker forgets what they have learnt these residues would likely produce the attachment and clinging to egos and suffering that occurred in upbringing. So in the stage of atammayata the autonomous seeker is mindful of releasing this residue of daily life. Then the seeker can pursue the purpose of the karmic plan - to consciously love and evolve consciousness.
Consciousness as a mystery
“The mystery of consciousness we have begun unpacking is so elusive because it isn’t possible to package consciousness, weigh it, or examine it” [p40 ln611]. But there is a purpose in the mystery, the more we try to unpack the more we can learn; the purpose is the learning.
As a child bill learnt in school of the atom consisting of a nucleus of protons and neutrons with electrons flying around the nucleus. As a young adult soon after upheaval bill was fascinated by Gary Zukav’s “Dancing Wu-Li Masters” and Fritjov Capra’s “Turning Point” in which momentum (as mass and velocity) meant that the viewpoint of the observer gave different understandings by particle or wave. As measuring instruments became more powerful, there were postulated and found new particles in the atom to explain properties. And from there has come the scifi reality of the quantum popularised by Brian Cox explaining quantum physics in 22 minutes. Also early on bill came across Annie Besant discussing the consciousness of an atom, and that was sufficient for bill not to examine with a rational mind. There is that which science can grasp that pales into insignificance to consciousness. Relegating the atom to part of the mystery of consciousness bill left the scientific mind behind ….
Mostly left behind. There was a time when zandtao considered mandtao the spiritual path of scientific enquiry; there was more than contained here in a lost wordpress account. The intention was that if science were genuine enquiry, then it would be the same as any spiritual path because of the mysteries and the way it would impact mind. However his scientific knowledge was too limited.
Annie Besant’s consciousness meant a universe to explore, and that expanse was reinforced by Buddhism with emptiness including Buddhadasa’s sunnata. And then the mystery of consciousness was opened up by Eckhart with his two aspects of consciousness in awakening of inner light. Initially he only accepted the first mystery but now the second mystery is integral to chapter 5. And he comes to trying to learn from gabiK’s consciousness. All of this expands on his point that consciousness is there to learn about. It is there to evolve and there is no end.
It is for the individual to learn. By this zandtao means that as far as he can see learning about consciousness is limitless. If zandtao were ever able to understand all that gabiK talks of in her book, she would have moved on. Maybe he tries to catch her up but there would still be a never-ending journey of learning. It is necessary to consider how far he writes about it and with what intention? Might a seeker say there is the limit of what zandtao finds or more challenging what Eckhart or gabiK find - in which case just point to their wisdom. Learning about consciousness is an individual journey - it is part of an individual seeker’s path; is more than this necessary to be said in thezeer?
In line with this learning has been zandtao’s consideration of human infrastructure. In the intro he put forward an introductory infrastructure, yet with his studies for ch 5 he came across gabiK’s human infrastructure - see addon; zandtao felt the need to incorporate this in his practice. gabiK discusses the vector of human awareness - the magnitude and direction of awareness. In terms of magnitude “You build the bridge of coherence through curiosity and a willingness to assimilate more universal intelligence into your own field of intelligence, which creates your mindset and overall awareness in life. To expand your consciousness is not just to learn new things mentally by acquiring new definitions or examples of meaning in the world around you, but to learn to apply these meanings by becoming more in touch with your inner world” [p41 ln626]. It is not the education that fills the contents of consciousness with facts and theories that are merely quoted in dissertations and theses but this is knowledge growing into wisdom that is internalised through grappling and understanding - building a magnitude of conscious awareness.
The other part of our vector awareness is the direction that leads to the purposive direction - consciously loving and evolving consciousness. To love consciousness first means to begin to love oneself as a preparation to love consciousness. At birth in mother-love we have the openness that is the potential for loving consciousness but in our upbringing we meet our Sacred Wound - the learning map of our karmic intention. As we survive into adulthood that learning map can teach us if we are open to it because as our Sacred Wound it is inside ready to teach us to love ourselves and then to love consciousness. “one very important element of awareness is somatic awareness, that is, your connection to your own body. The body is a mirror of our consciousness, constantly projecting different cues and signals to show us where we are creating energetic obstruction rather than coherence and where we need to bring our awareness in order to avoid obstruction” [p43 ln667]. When we bring our awareness to the clues and indicators of our somatic awareness of our Sacred Wound - the learning map developed in upbringing, we can begin to integrate these restrictions into a love of ourselves. Loving ourselves can oscillate with loving consciousness, and this oscillation can eventually lead to a transcendence from our conditioning into loving consciousness - and then into the purpose of evolving consciousness. Our inner world holds all the clues and indicators for transcendence into purpose because that Sacred Wound - the learning map built by our upbringing - is what was our karmic intention at birth. The magnitude and direction of our vector awareness is that intention vector - our intention for being born. Our lives can also oscillate between the inner and the outer worlds as we process outer experience into internalised wisdom - building awareness, but that building of awareness needs to transcend - harmonise the direction of loving ourselves in order to love consciousness by using the learning map of our Sacred Wounds to overcome restrictions. As our upbringing builds our learning map our bodies then reflect that learning so that as adults we can follow that path of learning that we carry within us through somatic awareness. The outer journey can only aid the inner journey, what we learn from great teachers is not an objective bank of knowledge that is needed to fill the contents of our consciousness, it is the teachers’ understanding that can advise on your own ability to understand and integrate your learning map - a map that grew from your upbringing - a map that was intended.
That learning map does not end. There can always be an increased awareness of ourselves - we can always learn to love ourselves more. And the more we love ourselves the more we can love consciousness. Loving ourselves ends restrictions, and awareness can then take us into the directions of consciousness - wisdom and truth. Love enables the seeking of wisdom and truth.
Relationship with Consciousness 