Consciousness

Consciousness is amazing. Nearly all our life experience arrives via consciousness, the background screen of pure awareness, on which all our senses play out. The wonderful qualities of consciousness include wholeness, peace, and boundlessness, all arising from its relative freedom from time and space. Because consciousness is timeless, it is always here in us, though we are not always here with it. We get caught by and identified with the contents of consciousness, with the captivating story of our life playing out in our senses, on the stage of consciousness. In that state of identification with the goings-on of life, we stay on the surface, in our senses, missing the depth in consciousness.

This is the subtlety: that consciousness remains behind all our experience, behind thoughts and mental images, behind emotions, and behind all our other senses. We cannot readily turn off all that ongoing experience to make consciousness more obvious. Yet we can with practice learn to go behind our senses, behind our thoughts. We learn that the problem is not that consciousness is hidden under our senses and thoughts, but rather that we, our attention, stay on the content, on the surface, and ignore the depth. We can learn to reside in the depth and purity of consciousness.

Yet even that can be misleading. When we do come into consciousness, into that pure awareness, that peace and wholeness without boundaries, we believe that this is who we are. It is, after all, our very awareness and it seems to be us. That is a very alluring, seemingly self-evident conclusion, yet it is mistaken. We are no more our consciousness than we are the digital screens in our life: the TV, the computer screen, the tablet, and the phone. We may get identified, lost in what’s happening on those screens, but we know that the screen itself is not us, it is only a display mechanism. Like those digital screens, consciousness, the energy of pure awareness, is inherently empty, ready to display whatever comes to it. This emptiness gives consciousness its qualities of peace, wholeness, and boundlessness. It is truly wondrous. Yet we are not an energy, we are the user of energies, the seer of what we see. We are will.

Yes, spiritual teachings indicate that there is no seer, that subject and object merge into one. This truth belongs to a later stage, a deeper reality than consciousness, which we will discuss in a future weekly inner work. For now, we should not misinterpret that truth as implying that consciousness is the be all and end all. We should not let the truth of no-self obscure the fact that we are not our consciousness.

This is a further subtlety. We distinguish between attention and consciousness. Attention moves consciousness. When we focus on something, we bring consciousness to that thing. Attention has power over consciousness. We choose where to direct our attention. The we that chooses is our will. Sometimes, this choice is not made intentionally, for example when something draws our attention or when we are living a habit. But voluntary attention is another matter: the intentional directing of our attention, which in turn directs consciousness as well as our senses. If we are anything, we are the one who chooses what we do, the one who sees what we see, the one who cognizes what our consciousness and senses present. In short, we are our will, not our body, not our senses, and not consciousness.

The act of conflating consciousness and will, of not distinguishing between consciousness and will, or relegating will to be a part of consciousness, a function of consciousness, rather than an equal and independent aspect of reality, is a common error among spiritual teachers and consciousness researchers today. A related common error is not recognizing that consciousness, though amazing, is but one member of a hierarchy of spiritual energies and not the highest member at that.

Nevertheless, this emptiness of consciousness is key to showing us the way into it, enabling us to recognize it. What is pure, empty awareness, prior to any content, prior to thoughts, emotions, and sensory impressions? This points us, for example, to look for consciousness between our thoughts. Practicing that, recognizing the cognizant stillness between thoughts, we acquire the taste of consciousness. With that, we can come to see it behind our thoughts, behind our senses, and come toward the point that these contents of consciousness no longer hide it from us. We can be in consciousness at any time and do not need to try to silence our thoughts to open into that cognizant space.

The emptiness of consciousness shows us our own emptiness and the great value of that. Just as the emptiness of consciousness enables it to be boundless, our own emptiness allows us to rejoin a greater whole, a higher will.

We can approach the recognition of consciousness in many ways. One common and specific type of situation for that is listening. When we listen to someone, we focus our attention as completely as possible on them, on what they are saying. This degree of focus can seemingly slow or even stop our thoughts. We are just there listening, thoughts receding into the background, consciousness to the foreground. In those moments, we are conscious. Without a futile attempt to stop our thoughts directly, our attention, our focused reality shifts away from them and into the field of consciousness itself.

Whenever we really focus, whenever we are fully present, the inner noise, the random thoughts, and the reactive emotions fall away, emptying consciousness of its contents, enabling us to abide in consciousness, allowing consciousness to take its true place as a deeper aspect of our inner body, of our inner experience.

For this week, please practice being in the stillness of consciousness.

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