(Source: Stillness in the Roar of Experience)
6. One could easily have gone through life and be mostly unaware of consciousness. Then, difficulties arise. When one is sick, for example, one becomes something of a blind mole and must discover an internal source of light while ferreting a way out of darkness.
7. Some may have a problem seeing what consciousness is. Ask them if they sometimes feel as if they are playing a role. That may help. Or ask them if they do not think, at least now and then, that they are watching themselves from behind.
8. I needed dialysis to survive. To dialyze, I had to needle myself. Every other day, my wife unpacked the necessary supplies: gauzes, disinfecting wipes, saline flushes, and 16-gauge needles, all laid out before me like an invitation to a feast.
Then, when I pushed the needles in, my thinking was summarily stopped and purged—the needling demanded all my attention. Any frivolous thoughts that had been flowing through my mind were already ashes.
As I watched myself needle, I also watched myself watching myself needle. And it kept receding until my sense of self came loose, then was erased, like so many pencil sketches of monkeys.
9. Pain and distress are hard to abide by, but sometimes, they are all we have. If pain is part of life, how painless must we be? Is it heartless to say that? I don’t want any pain, but I can see that it has its place.
Pain and discomfort are often useful. They don’t allow us to sleepwalk for long. They keep us awake when we least want to be.
Pain speaks the truth. Joy often crystallizes along the lines of pain. Pain is a name, a marker. One can sometimes cut joy from a cloth of pain.
10. Reality is not a wishing well. It isn’t a storehouse of goods to meet our needs. It isn’t something to be dissected or peeled like an onion. Reality includes people, nature, the universe, and all we can and cannot see and feel. But, to our minds, reality is only a list of things (though a daily growing list), a mere enumeration, until we bring our fear, anxiety, and awareness to it. At that point, it becomes something else—both potent and difficult to fathom. What is mundane is now suddenly awe-inspiring through our awareness.
As awareness, we both arbitrate and are arbitrated.
No amount of false humility can erase our role in reality.
Equally, no amount of pride can hide our insignificance.
11. In the end, our understanding is more psychological than philosophical. We have no access to the larger meanings of existence. In other words, we cannot confidently say what our purposes are. We can only access our feelings on the subject.
I am not even sure who or what I am. Even in the bright light of consciousness, it eludes me. Maybe there is nothing to know. The notion of being an independent entity is an illusion; our sense of self, which we so treasure, is but debris scattered in the light of consciousness. Maybe I am only a habit of perception.
I don’t want to go any further in my speculation.
I am wary of those who go about mapping everything in sight and believe that they can get to the promised land with enough diligence or by following a detailed rendering of some map.
One cannot, of course, when we are so finite and small and caught up in a reality that runs away from us. And the more we hope to frame it in words, the more we know it is beyond capture.
12. When I gaze within, I am still. Being still, I am unobstructed. Consciousness can only be reliably found inwardly. It is as if all the difficulties in life have the cumulative effect of turning our gaze inward.
When I collapse in sleep, sickness, or, one day, death, all that I think I am, my notion of duty and obligation, my sense of who I am, or my purposes or missions come to a halt. Not only have I withdrawn all my tentacles and feelers, but I have, in fact, neither tentacles nor feelers.
When I simply breathe, does what is all around me, its concrete appearance, and my experience of it wilt a little and become more penetrable?
13. Indian philosopher Ramana Maharshi said (from The Spiritual Teaching of Ramana Maharshi), “There is no happiness in any object of the world. We imagine through our ignorance that we derive happiness from objects. When the mind goes out, it experiences misery.”
14. In sickness, one becomes acutely aware that no hard boundaries exist. One may even suspect that the substance that purportedly makes up those boundaries is not as it appears.
I once wrote elsewhere that a sick person can come across as strange. Unlike someone healthy, her wants will have transmuted. They still take the forms of ordinary desires, but they have subtly changed. Their constituent parts may still fit together well, but there is now a slight discordance. The heart isn’t a heart anymore but a slow-moving fire. The bright lights are no longer as welcoming and are, in fact, showing all the flaws. They are too bright. Even one’s loved ones have altered. They are no longer individuals but classes of concern.
Her senses, moreover, seem to have less regard for borders or demarcations. She may even be able to transgress those at will. For a sick person, this is necessary. Unlike others, she is running out of time, and there is a pressing need to feel more, hear more, and do so with greater understanding.
15. Life viewed within life is full of lurches and insults. When viewed from deep in consciousness, does life become serene, even radiant?
(To be continued in part 3)
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