10th June, 2007

Ellaeenah:

This is in continuation of last week’s sharing…the difference between knowingness and consciousness.

R, how many steps did you take from the gate to the hall?

I don’t know.

But you did know that you were walking?

Yes, that was on auto-pilot.

Perfect description.

Yes, I did it unconsciously.

No… that was CONSCIOUSLY… not unconsciously. Because you are conscious of the activity of walking, you walk. When you climb the flight of stairs you are not deliberately counting one, two, three, four, and you are not deliberately looking down at the stairs either….in fact you might be lost in thought, but you still know when to stop climbing….you are conscious that you have climbed the entire flight of stairs.

Involuntarily?

There is nothing involuntary about this. ‘Involuntary’ signifies that personal WILL is non existent, when in fact just the contrary is true. It is Will that makes you climb those stairs and it Will that guides you when to stop. This is due to the functioning of the state of consciousness which you ironically call ‘unconscious’ because you are not aware of it.

Ellaeenah now got up and walked up to S with a very naughty twinkle in her eyes. S, seeing the look, flinched back. Everyone began to laugh.

Did you see S’s reaction? Even before I could do anything S flinched, because she recognized by the look in my eyes that I would come up to her and maybe give her hair a tug. She knew I would do this.

Knowingness is the ability to be aware of an experience or an element of an experience. Somewhere during our interaction S has become aware that that naughty look in my eyes spells ‘trouble’ for her and this knowingness made her flinch.

We react from our knowingness. So I repeat…knowingness is to be aware of, and to learn though our awareness, an experience or an element of the experience. Perception comes before knowingness. So through our interaction in the past S perceived Ell’s mischievous twinkle and her mind has given her a message connected with it. Our mind often does not experience the full situation but only elements of the experience.

After perception comes the stage of differentiation or discrimination. Do you now better understand the phrase ‘complete the experience’? Let us take an example. You are having a disagreement with someone and you are told words you do not wish to hear. Hearing is also a form of perception, and because you hear something unpleasant your perception of this unpleasantness leads the mind to experience only one element of the experience…the criticism. But if you had experienced fully, you would have gone beyond the criticism to discover an important area of truth. This fullness of the experience would have led to discrimination instead of differentiation which is the result of a partial experience.

Partial experience leading to differentiation result in mental beliefs being established and reactions that then ensue from them. This leads you to knowing ‘rejection’, abandonment’, humiliation’, and so on.

In consciousness you are fully aware that you are aware of only an element of the experience and thus in discrimination you will not label the interaction as a ‘quarrel’, as the perceived criticism only brings to you a harsh truth you may not want to face.

The three stages thus are perception….differentiation/discrimination….knowingness. When this knowingness is complete it expands into the realm of consciousness. E.g. if you were climbing a flight of stairs of a strange building you would look down and your movements would be more deliberate. But if you were to climb these stairs every day, you would soon be able to climb them through ‘consciousness’ and your knowingness would be directed to a completely unrelated thought process. Thus your ‘knowing reality’ might be the ‘planning for a meeting’ that is taking place in your thoughts, but the ‘conscious reality’ is in full awareness of the stairs AND the unrelated thoughts crossing your mind.

You must choose whether you wish to live your life only in the realm of the ‘knowing reality’ or whether you wish to make your conscious reality the realm of your every day existence. In that conscious reality you will always know where you have placed your car keys, instead of hunting for them. When you misplace or forget where you placed something it is because you do not KNOW where you put them…..but you are always CONSCIOUS of where you placed them.

‘Conscious’ means to be in a state of LIFE. When you put the car keys down the realm of consciousness instantly and naturally registers this experience… for every word, thought and action is an experience. It goes beyond attention, to moment to moment awareness.

We tend to use awareness and consciousness as meaning the same…

Yes, I agree, but the two do not mean the same. Consciousness brings the awareness of the universal truth….there is only one fish in the tank!!!! All others are mirrors that are ‘known’ through the act of perception. When our knowingness does not extend to a reality that is a part of our conscious reality, we tend to believe that it does not exist.

Our memories of the past which are still caught in lack of self-worth are the tools we use to ‘know’ self and others. Reactions spring from ‘knowingness’, and ‘knowingness’ often comes from the memories of the elements of experiences that have caused lack of self-esteem, or which are now not serving our higher purposes.  We have to unlock these memories and to do this we have to attempt to live in the realm of consciousness for longer and longer periods of time. Each time you doubt your self, each time you negate your self, you must be aware that your memory is locked in a past experience that you have not completed.

Every time you unlock a memory, you convert its energy to a positive one that enables you to bridge the gap between knowingness and consciousness. Do not let this lead you into believing that knowingness is ‘not good’. Knowingness is what helps you create knowledge. Consciousness is of nothing else but self. Spirit dwells in consciousness. But for the embodied spirit to know what Spirit in consciousness is already aware of, consciousness leads to knowingness and knowingness leads to knowledge. Thus knowingness is vital, but the gap between what we know and what we are conscious of must be reduced by deliberate and consistent effort.

How is this gap reduced? Let us take an example. S has a fear of heights. He has already uncovered the first layer of perception…he perceives heights as a ‘threat’. The second stage is obviously one of differentiation because the perception of threat is evidence that the experience was not completed and that only an element of the full experience was perceived. His memory is locked into a partial experience. How does he complete the experience now? He sits with his fear and experience the feeling of threat completely… in today’s reality. What does he KNOW of the threat?  He knows the rejection through the many experiences he faces today and has faced in this life. When the experiences are re-lived completely S moves into consciousness and the feelings of inadequacy, rejection, fear of heights disappear.

Could heightened imagination cause such fears?

Let me explain imagination. Imagination is not something that is false or untrue. Imagination is not fantasy… and fantasy can never cause fear. One fantasizes as an insulation or escape from fear. Imagination is a knowingness of the mind that has not become manifested reality. So a heightened imagination is actually a deep-seated knowingness. Thus the child’s fear of a monster under the bed is a knowingness that arises from a reality that has not manifested in the Now. The fear of the monster may relate to a threat perceived by something entirely different, but because the mind has only perceived an element of the experience, the threat is manifested as fear of monsters.  E.g. S has today uncovered that fear of heights is the threat of rejection. The two seem to have no co-relation, but there is a connection which he, at present, cannot observe, because though he KNOWS the fear, his knowingness has not expanded to the realm of complete consciousness. His consciousness holds all the answers.

Whatever you have experienced is held within the realm of personal consciousness thus R’s realm of consciousness would be different from my own. But, do not forget……….there is only one fish in the tank……so personal consciousness is a stepping stone to the cosmic consciousness. When the gap between knowingness and personal consciousness is significantly bridged, personal consciousness is experienced as limiting when placed in the wide embrace of cosmic consciousness.

Initially your focus will necessarily be on personal consciousness. But do not make that your final goal and be satisfied with it. I AM THAT I AM……that is cosmic consciousness. Yes, your memories do get locked in to the past at times, but move on. Shift the focus as soon as you are able to and move on back to cosmic consciousness. The longer you dwell in cosmic consciousness and in the undeniable truth ‘there is only one fish in the tank’, the memories unlock by themselves and you do not have to undergo the painful and slow process of ‘peeling the onion’. Let your reality, your goal, your IS-NESS be cosmic consciousness.

Our consciousness is converting itself into knowingness and knowledge all the time. You perform several actions through the day without ‘knowing’ that you are doing them. Though your mind may not be focused on the mundane activity of brushing your teeth, your consciousness is.  You experience your consciousness far more than you think you do. It is a natural state of beingness. We live our lives more from the realm of consciousness than from the realm of knowingness and yet we are not aware of this because our focus is on the reactions that arise from knowingness.

Breathing, digestion, internal organ functioning, mental processes….all these are the realm of consciousness. We know what we eat………it is consciousness of the food that begins the process of digestion. You truly do not KNOW how to digest the food, but being CONSCIOUS of this, the process is natural. If your realm of personal consciousness did not hold within it the truth of digestion, you would not be able to undertake this human process. But our focus is limited to the fifteen minutes spent in eating, but there is no focus on the long, complex and important process of digestion. Similarly we focus on the short lived experiences of reactions but do not focus on the reality of consciousness where our essence dwells. 

Thus this limited knowledge forms a belief system… I know only what I can hear, feel, see, and touch. What belief do you have about your consciousness? If you believed that consciousness is a vital, real, strong, significant, continuing part of you, this talk would not have been your created reality because you would already KNOW it.

You are living in consciousness already. You don’t have to try to do this. If you can re-create your belief system to include consciousness, your realm of knowledge will expand automatically and the gap will reduce.

Where does intuition fit in?

Intuition is the realm of pure consciousness. Intuition dwells beyond the realm of knowledge.

I once read that scientists do not understand how birds can fly because their bodies are not at all aero-dynamic. Their bodies defy the laws of physics and contrary to all rules of aero-dynamics BIRDS DO FLY…ALL THE TIME. Why? Because birds do not know that their bodies are not made for flight!!!!! Its flight is not restricted by its knowledge.

So if the conscious mind is at rest….

The Conscious Mind can never be at rest for the conscious mind is the realm of IS-NESS. Its evolving all the time.

What do I need to do to dwell in Consciousness?

BELIEVE. I believe is the only mantra that you need. What you believe, IS.

Consciousness is evolving, ever-flowing, dynamic. Often knowledge tends to be static. It is caught in the hooks of our belief system; the hooks are sharpened by our fears. If there is a belief system that you find hard to let go of, identify and recognize the hooks that are keeping it in place. Believe that you live consciously.

So I should not focus on the day to day experiences?

No, R, you have to focus on them, but don’t get caught in them. If you do not focus on them you will learn through one or a few elements of the experience and the remaining will become locked-in memories. Focus on the experience FULLY. In trying not to get caught in the experience, we must not suppress vital elements of it. Yes, initially you will get caught in it… but even that is an experience which you cannot deny yourself. Complete every experience.

Thank you for your love and support each week.