Saturday 4 April 2009

Life is lived within a box.....the identity box....

I have asserted for a long time, that the journey of human being is all about recognising and being able to manage, the lifelong tension between our identity that wants to keep us small and our possibility or Soul that wants us to wake up, and realize that instead of being victim of our lives we are co-creators of our life. I have maintained that the tool the identity uses to keep the consciousness from realizing the Truth of who we are, not who we appear to be, is our point of view. As humans we have points of view/opinions, judgements about everything. This serves the aims of the identity which is to keep the consciousness small, separate alone and feeling disconnected from everyone else. The battle of human existence is the battle for the control of human consciousness.

A couple of days ago I heard the beginning of a radio programme that was interviewing the well known writer Sebastian Faulkes. He spoke about human self-awareness being at the source of the tension experienced as human being. He drew comparisons between animals and the happiness and contentment they experience because they lack this ability to be self-aware. The moment the consciousness became aware of something else, that was the moment of the separation. He likened it to the moment when Adam and Eve in the garden became self-aware. This resonated with me and since then I have been thinking about how the identity with its points of view operates to keep us small and our consciousness blocked from realizing our greatness.

I write in an entry some time ago about the insight I had into a point of view I had formed when I was a young girl. This point of view has been hidden from me for all of my life. The euphoria when I saw this for the first time was immense. For a couple of days I experienced complete freedom. I felt a connection to others and an openness of heart. The world was brighter, sharper. And then last week, all of this had gone and I was back again to feeling small separate and alone. What happened? Why could I not sustain this state of consciousness? What I assert and this is purely from my own observation is that in the moments following the discovery of the insight, my consciousness was freed from the identity which it is normally inextricably bound. It was free and the result of this was joy, bliss and freedom. But the nature of us as human beings is to make everything in life mean something and then to live life from the meaning we have given to it and not the way it really is. Everytime we put meaning onto something that happens in life and then form a view/opinion/judgements we put our consciousness with our identity into a box. Then life is lived from that box. I or more specifically my identity then took something that happened and beneath the level of my awareness imposed a meaning which once again trapped my consciousness.

In my case. I broke out of one box when I saw how my point of view of not being included, gave me a life where I didn't feel included. Being able to see that I was in this box, gave me the access to get out of it and see it from someone standing outside of it. This resulted in the euphoria that comes with the release of consciousness. But then the identity re-asserts itself in its most covert sub-conscious way with something else that happens and wham....the consciousness with the identity is then in another box. This box might be bigger and more powerful. In that in my case it has given me a confidence and self-assuredness but it is still a box. I am in another box and at the moment I am unable to distinguish what that is. There is nothing wrong, maybe a little frustrating but this is the importance of seeing all of this process as a game, something to play with and have fun, given the ultimate reason for the game which is THE ALL playing a game with itself. This is one of the rules of the game, to keep discovering the boxes we are in without getting upset or disheartened.

And I assert that this is the nature of the human condition. From birth to death the consciousness moves through a series of boxes. What there is for each of us to do is to dig deep for and distinguish the box that our consciousness is in at any one time. The box can be identified by looking at what are the points of view I hold, and opinions and judgements I have about things which live for me as the Truth, they are the way that life really is, and not just points of view. Again I come back time and time again to what the Buddha said when he said 'hold fast to nothing at all'. To hold to a point of view or an opinion as being true is to put the consciousness right back into a box and from that moment on life is lived from the rules of the box, not the freedom of an unfettered consciousness.

Enlightenment, or living life from an enlightened state of consciousness is nothing more than being free of all boxes. In another blog entry I wrote about fish my friend has and how I spent some time watching them. There is something still there about that which hasn't left my mind. I was looking at the fish swimming in the water and thought, they are swimming in something that they are totally unaware of i.e. water. Yet if those fish suddenly found themselves on land they might feel the difference. I assert it is the same with the human condition, we are swimming in something that is undistinguished to us and it is only when we can get out of what we are swimming in and look back that we can see what it was. I hope this makes sense. Somehow I know what I want to write in my head but it's not coming out. What I am saying is that what we are swimming in is so taken for granted that no freedom is possible until we can somehow get out.

I start my work experience on a trade magazine tomorrow and I am a bit nervous. Given this blog and how I write I have no idea how I am going to write inspiring articles on pasta! But I am up for giving it my best and who knows maybe I will the first person to put a human interest angle on pasta!....now I have to go and do some shorthand. This is by far the most stressful part of this course. The only way I am going to achieve the qualification is to keep at it....doing it little and often. It is like this blog....when I actually get down to it, it is a joy and a challenge.....

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