Ideation and Awareness

All mental imaging and thought processes are configurations of awareness. It is as if a mist would concentrate it's self to create identifiable forms. This self-same mist can concentrate its self into any form imaginable, and yet the mist does not depart from its nature. This is an extremely powerful ability (its called consciousness), but it has a downside in that it is by sensing forms present in the mist that the mist knows anything at all. And when the mist is busy configuring some self determined form it is less available for pure sensing of the not-self.

In the act of meditation the mist of pure awareness is at rest; unformed and completely aware.

Notes on Imagination

"Use your imagination" oft heard phrase: seldom done. In most cases it is the imagination which does the using. This is responsible for much personal difficulty and cultural unpleasantness.

With the emergence of awakened awareness by the practice of meditation it is not difficult to see if one's consciousness is dominated by imagination, or if one's imagination serves consciousness. The implications are obvious.

We all have a figurine collection: a glass menagerie of projections of imagination. We tend to be fiercely protective of our projections because they are "us" in the same way as our fingers and toes. Albeit in a less physically generative way.

It must be remembered that all ideas are imaginary, and when we are identified with the projections of our imagination we live in the shadow of our imagination. When imagination serves awakened awareness it is a magic lamp.

Intentional Being

Very few people are capable of making a decision. We "opt" all over the place, but opting is not the same thing as deciding.

Let me explain. The normal human creature is one for whom the animal core of the psyche is wholly invisible. It is categorically impossible for this creature to recognize the weight of undiluted great ape influencing its behavior, and since its core animal responses are taken as personal volition to say that this creature is capable of "deciding" as opposed to "opting" is doing it a decided disfavor.

Deciding and opting share the same territory in that they both reflect the resonance of the external within the domain of the internal. The point being that if the interior of our being is an unexplored mystery our responses to the external demands of life will be in large measure that of an automaton.

Self control is a necessary social discipline, but it is miles away from the ability to decide ones state of being. And since most people are in large measure automatons that respond in predictable and inevitable ways there is great value in being able to decide what to be.

The what determines the how. If we are capable of being what we need to be in a given situation the how takes care of it's self. This is a skill that makes life better for all that it touches: initiates and ordinary people alike, and meditation is the exercise which makes possible this magic

That cultivation of pure awareness which we practice in meditation gently pulls back the curtain behind which our animal nature operates. When awareness recognizes and befriends the natural animal, the animal is no longer a slave to the millions of years of darkness from which it has emerged: there is a metamorphosis; it has become the wand, the magic carpet, the wish fulfilling gem.

Of the many fruits of meditation one of the sweetest is intentional being, as the children of the earth are reborn as the children of the universe.

Transcendent Awareness

The synthetic abilities of the modern English language make possible shades of meaning that would have been impossible to convey a mere hundred years ago. The advent of psychology and the popularization of meditation have enriched the descriptive power of words to a remarkable degree. With such tools at our disposal let us revisit the relationship of consciousness to awareness.

The word "Consciousness" is used rather broadly and loosely and it makes no sense to try to sort that out. "Awareness" is less abused and therefore more easily used succinctly. That which is "Transcendent" is that without apparent limitations.

There is no such thing as transcendent consciousness. Consciousness is a configuration of Awareness. Anything that is configured is limited, and its limits are its value.

Awareness, simple, un-fixated, awareness is by nature transcendent. Consciousness is the surface of our being, and Transcendent Awareness is the substance of our being.

In meditation simply let consciousness contemplate Awareness. Nature will take its course.

The Carpet, the Wand, and the Gem

Someone recently asked me "Well, if awareness awakens as you say, what then about life?"

The Magic Carpet

The Magic Wand

The Magic Wish Fulfilling Gem


This is our creaturely life.

The Hand We Are Dealt

There is no-one on the surface of the earth who is not subject to the person that they are. And by and large we all have a head full of ideas. For the most part these ideas are historical artifacts of a by-gone age. We are all playing the hand we've been dealt.

History's game has played its self out.

If there is any future for humanity it will come only from laying the cards on the table and admitting that the deck has been stacked, and that all ideas are imaginary.

It is not to be expected that humanity at large should awaken. But those of us who are awake must recognize the hand we've been dealt.

For instance: the patriarchal murder form of problem-solving is something that can only be put in the past by recognizing it for what it is. In our supposed modern superiority we have lost the ever present truth of mere existence.

The wild card is that the Universe might awaken in its progeny.

Endless Sleep

It is not uncommon that dreams are remembered. And of course dreams forgotten are dreams not futile but ephemeral. There are those dreams that on awakening drift away even as we grab pen to rope them down, but what can be said of those dreams never remembered. They can not be thought of because they did not enter into consciousness. We know they exist because we know they must exist.

We wake in a sweat, and know not why. It seems a taste of lingering dream is bitter on our soul's tongue but all images are occult. Do any imagine that they are immune to the sway of human nature? Those dreams to which we cannot admit are the dross of the possible and the inevitable sway of the mind of the animal.

Various systems have come up with various colorful metaphors. From the Hindu "mad monkey", to Gurdjieff's "It" those who see "IT" have tried to lead others to the trough of truth. The most amusing element of the whole bit is that seeing clearly broaches no exemption. Should the iron of the casting awaken it will not be exempt from its form.

The shallow promises of religious tropes short circuit any hope for enlightenment. It is a nightclub where all phantasies are respected.

Bring your metaphor, your belief, your desperate hope, your tradition, you will not be turned away.

Dangerous Operators

There is no operators manual for the awareness inhabiting a human animal. These awareness are born into the jungle to sleeping progenitors and fed a diet of ideas guaranteed to cost them half a lifetime to digest (let alone evacuate).

When Chuang Tzu remarked that teachings of diligence and reverence lead to indolence and debauchery he made note of the clever way idea has of replacing intuition. The obvious has been apparent (to those for whom it is apparent) for thousands of years, but it has yet to become fashionable.

There seems to be no way to explain to the mad monkey that all it is identified with is just monkey business, no more, no less.

I guess calculus is not for the average six year old. And they should be protected from operating dangerous machines such as governments.

Really Exercising

A pole barn is an exercise in Aristotelian logic

A hamburger is an exercise in Platonic ideal form

Zen has no problem with any of this



because Zen is the exercise of reality

Love in the Time of the Kali Yuga

How is one to have a sense of well being in the time of plague? Even if one is not directly subject to the tide of evil sweeping the world, the suffering innocent and the futility of good will break hearts.

It takes courage to be of good cheer when you recognize the world is run by fools and knaves; courage and self knowledge. To have some relative resistance to sorrow when sorrow is so justified is a tall (yet necessary) order. Anger is the child of sorrow, and it is important not to become the womb of the next oppression.

Only enlightenment can stem the plague. Only enlightenment can stem the sickness and inner darkness made inevitable by knowledge of the world of man. Only enlightenment can make man's place in the Universe so small. Only enlightenment can make the small good one can do so good. Only enlightenment can speak the truth without rancor.

A Simple Truth Simply Stated

Being is a multidimensional fabric. There is not a thing which is not a part of that fabric and as an elemental thick spot in the gelatinous fabric of being if anything moves the movement ripples through existence. This is the way anything is known.

The river is the water, not the ditch. If the river were a river of awareness it would recognize every spring and creek and gutter.

And in knowing its self it would also know the ditch.

Validation

I believe it was Lin Chi who said to his followers "If in your travels you meet the Buddha, slay him." What he was pointing out is; if you require validation your identity is second hand. The fact of existence is first person singular. And though knowing things like "the world is round" can and must be accepted as valid second-hand information, it is only the unnecessary complexity of the modern world (for all it's charm) that gives such information value.

Being a living breathing thinking creature has no explanation.

Know thy self.

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall

In the on going search for metaphors that will succinctly express the relationship of Awareness to Consciousness the "mirror" comes up. The eye can not see its self without benefit of a reflective surface. Consciousness is the mirror enabling the awakening of Awareness. It is to be expected that a naive creature would think its self to be its reflection.

Self realization is the water's utility. The death of Narcissus is the water's revenge.

Ten Bulls Eat Chocolate Buddhas

Metaphor, analogy, and parable are the poetic tools necessary to descriptions of enlightenment. Enlightenment is not something that happens to the personality. Enlightenment is rather like the electricity in a TV set waking up. Suddenly the personality doesn't matter much anymore. Its not about the picture.

Pure awareness of it's self does not have color or flavor. It is the very bland emptiness of awareness that is it's supreme value. It is emptiness that makes sound and color possible. Awareness is that emptiness necessary as the womb of form. Form is knowable. Awareness has no form, and yet awareness is the ultimate truth of individual being. So long as we are hypnotized by form we are barred from any approach to the identity of the universe. The Buddhist parable of "The Ten Bulls" is an allegory elucidating an Awareness awakening within it's creature and the subsequent domestication of animal nature by an awakened Awareness.

I suppose it happens that there are cases of spontaneous enlightenment. Some limit is breached and awareness transcends consciousness. If the individual has no experience in and practice of meditation it is inevitable that the personality seize the moment and define the event to it's own satisfaction; thereby thwarting (probably forever) the opportunity of a lifetime. The parable of "The Chocolate Buddha Box" is the appropriate allegory in this tragic case. This kind of case often results in a sincere religious fanatic.

Meditation is the touchstone. Meditation is way. Meditation is the key, and meditation is the door. Simply let consciousness contemplate awareness; nature will take it's course. It is no more necessary to stop one's thoughts than it is to remove the butterflies from a meadow; let them go their way. Awareness is all.

The obvious will become apparent.

The children of the earth will be reborn as the children of the Universe

The Savor of Enlightened Being

If you are properly aware you will notice that every moment has a flavor. Every moment without exception has a flavor. Some are like water, and it must be admitted that some water taste better than others. Some are like high cheese; one must develop a taste for them. Some are sweet and some are bitter. Some are retched. Some sweet moments are poisonous, and some bitter moments are nourishing. Through meditation we develop the ability to become truly aware. It is obvious to those who are truly aware that we taste our way through life the same way a salmon finds it's way to the stream in which it was born.

The ordinary state of being is one in which the creature is wholly identified with it's affective states. An awareness wholly identified with the nature of the animal has no separation from instinct or impulse or the flavor of inner state. The ancients referred to this as Maya: illusion: awareness believes its self to be its states. Enlightenment is the spiritual equivalent to awakening from a hypnotic trance.

Many years ago discussing such matters with a friend he said "Well, enlightenment won't help you pick out a head of lettuce." This is not true. The awakened awareness is acutely conscious of the flavor of its state. It is by induced states that we know anything, and the very flow of thought is a self induce state.

Thoughts About Intuition

One extremely valuable side benefit of meditation is that meditation enables one to taste the difference between intuition and thought.

Thought requires the exercise of imagination. Intuition is perception.

It is not difficult to see that the difference between tailoring our thoughts to support our perceptions and tailoring our perceptions to support our thoughts is the difference between day and night.

Genghis Kahn's Horses

Genghis Kahn's horses 

the steeds escorting death across the steppes

fire

arrow

sword 

war axe 

gift to all the living

restoring to an earth

the silent restless plain

did not outlive their riders

Xerxes' horses at Thermopylae

those of the Crusaders and Conquistadors

survive blood shed 

as blood flows through progeny

wives and children weep 

the riders

ride on

Labyrinth

We are the Labyrinth. We are the savage beast confined within the Labyrinth. We are the tender virgin abandoned to be devoured within the Labyrinth. The hero capable of dismembering the beast, redeeming the virgin, and finding a place in light of the real world is our Self.

The daughter of the King is indeed Wisdom. It is Wisdom that knows the way and will lead Self to the light.

Meditation is the womb of wisdom.

Material Questions: this and that

For a very long time it has interested me that no one is particularly interested in the relationship of awareness to matter. The awareness that results in what we refer to as our "self" is made inevitable by certain arrangements of atoms. These arrangements of atoms are constellated according to cookie cutter preprograms that have refined themselves over a period of hundreds of millions of years. The expression of these preprograms has led to a creature whose awareness is capable of transcending its animal existence, and awakening to the fact of existence its self. This is a remarkable occurrence in the fabric of the universe. This is the universe awakening to its self.

And this all has to do with merely stacking atoms properly.


Why should that be?

Powers

One of the things that is mentioned quite a bit from India sources and not so much from China and Japan is "powers". As one's meditation matures and awareness can actually control the mind one has the ability to form artifacts of consciousness and project them. This has a certain appeal especially if the personality is still in control, but there is the element of unintended consequences to be concerned with. Personally I think that it is valid and even important to experiment with transference of will because it is undeniable evidence of awareness as a field phenomenon, but these techniques should be treated with the same respect as a loaded gun.

Its OK

It's OK to be a human being. It's OK to have idiosyncrasies and imperfections. It's OK to simply be what you are. We are not our personalities. Most folks are wholly identified with their personality and that's OK.

The personality is a behavioral tool kit. The human is a social animal born into a cultural matrix, and it will spontaneously create a persona chipped from the flint of cultural norms and shaped by native powers of invention. There is no other way to be, but it can be noticed that the personality is a necessary creation of and not the core of our being.

Meditation is a tool. One ancient master described it as "the brick with which one knocks at the door". The door at which one knocks is opacity concerning the human condition. The human condition is a manifestation of the awareness which is the universe. With the practice of meditation it is possible that the human condition become translucent to the awareness which is its progenitor. The door opens. This is called enlightenment.

It's OK to be a human being, but it is preferred to be an enlightened human being for enlightenment enables the abandonment of all pretense. The abandonment of pretense results in a remarkably quickened faculty of intuition. Intuition is the inner voice of clairvoyance, and could be likened to seeing in the infra-red: the things seen are made obvious by their presence.

There is no sense in making distinctions of red and green to the color blind. There are no black-and-white answers to questions that come in colors. A lot of people are color blind and that's OK.

It's All Very Nice

It's all very nice to know something. Every one knows something about something or other. One of the things that I find very interesting is that the modern versions of psychology and neurology and brain slicing have not yet found the who. If we describe the "who" as an epiphenomenon of the existence of tissue of course that is true so far as it goes. But an epiphenomenon does not explain the experience which is the fact of our existence.

Off the Leash

The leash is the inner monitor that keeps us in check. Why do we need to be kept in check....because we are animals. What is the leash...consciousness. What is the one tool of consciousness....awareness. So why not just be aware and let it off the leash.

The Contemplation of Awareness

The difficulty that I have with most systems of meditation is that they work through and appeal to the consciousness. All religious systems work through the personality and seek to engage mind in a scenario that includes a world view. None of this is necessary and all of it to a greater or lesser degree entangles awareness in the fabrications of the mind.

If you want to cross the Atlantic Ocean you can board a sailing ship or take a jet liner. There is nothing wrong with the scenic route so long as you make it. If you want to meet the substrate of your being and know your actual place in the universe I suggest "The Contemplation of Awareness". No window dressing is needed, no system, no ideas: only the will to awaken.

All systems that deal with consciousness have the cart squarely before the horse. Awareness is the horse that pulls the cart of consciousness down the road of time. Awareness is the ultimate truth of our being, and consciousness and the personality are crystallizations of awareness. Most meditations train the consciousness to be silent by tying it to some mental pole and telling it to be quiet. Like most dogs, consciousness does not like this: it takes a lot of discipline and quite a bit of practice. "The Contemplation of Awareness" requires about the same discipline as watching a movie, because consciousness finds "The Contemplation of Awareness" relaxing and spontaneously engaging.

Consciousness finds and holds: consciousness is limited, and this is its purpose and its value. Awareness is ever one with the living changing moment; the limit of awareness is the fact of our being. If we set our consciousness to find and hold our awareness we are suddenly alive to everything around us. If the mind seizes upon some thing the spell is broken and once again we are trapped in our limited consciousness. There is a knack to this, but once one has tasted the simple magic of pure awareness it is not difficult to go back and forth from a focus of consciousness to expanded awareness.

Anyone who will try this will find the door open to them. And I would be very surprised if something very interesting did not happen to their mind before long.






One With God



it is a fish

and the water in which it swims

The Dance of the Butterflies

I at 68 have been a meditator for 55 years. Self Realization Fellowship found me when I was 13 years old, I was initiated into the Nichiren Shoshu sect while in Japan at age 24, and I discovered Zen as described by D T Suzuki at age 30. The eye of my spirit opened in my 32nd year. Though I find myself not able to be a joiner, and though I have known other meditators and found their practice subtly misguided; the benefits of meditation cannot be overstated, and any meditation for any reason and under any system will bear fruit.

The fragmentation of Buddhism into a prism of views is an example of a lapse of rigor in the pursuit of enlightenment. Ultimately no systems are necessary. A system is a key that one person puts in the hand of another. This is not a bad thing, but the door is not locked.

If the individual consciousness will simply contemplate the awareness which is it's essence, nature will take its course. It is time to take the ribbons and bows and the pretty wrapping paper off of the treasure of unity of awareness. Let the chrysalis of civilization split open. Let the dance of the butterflies begin.

A Drive Through the Animal Farm

Private college graduation ceremony: the students and parents and staff all doing what they do. The institution is venerable, the degree is esteemed. And pretty much everyone present could not be more asleep.

It is not a crime that there is no appreciation of awareness within the halls of academia. Humanity for all its intelligence is stuck in the consciousness of the animal. It is not a crime but it is tragic, for each individual consciousness will go its way unaware of it's true place in the universe and therefore full of a self that is unrealized.

Many of those graduates will go on to do good and important things. Most will be successful, and have good and productive lives. But my sincerest hope is that they might become aware, and therefore have a part in awakening the world, for in this world even the best and brightest are asleep at the wheel.

Archetype and Psyche

Archetypes are by definition not mutable. The psyche (being psychological) is not only mutable...it is evolving. Psyche vines on the stakes of archetype and usually claims volition. This made the invention of the gods inevitable because obviously there exist tides of being beyond the limits of intellectual and emotional volition and these somehow had to be accounted for.

Oddly enough awareness existing of it's self seems just too "out there" for your garden-variety paramecium. There must be something more personal to it.

Old Wine....New Casks

It seems to me that the legends of Zen should shed the shell of Buddhism and begin a new life as liberated truth. The historical Buddha would not have come into being were it not for the culture that made his existence inevitable. The extremely advanced technologies of being of 500 BC India should embarrass any modern fast-track psych-track guru. It is only the vast emptiness of modernity that stands between us and the people of those times.

Mind Like a Mirror

Let us imagine a pond. The pond is in a quiet hollow and the water is still. The surrounding trees and the flight of the birds are perfectly reflected on the mirror-like surface. The sixth patriarch of Zen had trouble with the mirror metaphor, but that doesn't mean he didn't understand what was meant.

It seems that he objected to any intellectual moment between subject and object. He was a true student of meditation and in a monastic environment: there was no reason to resort to the intellect.....only the fact of existence will suffice.

There is no mirror. There is only awareness: aware in a fabric of existence...and that existence is aware.

The Waves are the Water

Awareness is substance. Consciousness is motion.

The Culture of Enlightenment

The person who became the historical Buddha spent his life preaching in an attempt to give others access to the clarity he had achieved. The Sutras are a record of these efforts. Although Zen claims a direct transmission of enlightenment going back to Sakyamuni, and existing outside of the Sutras, the "Lankavatara Sutra" is considered to contain the core principles of Zen. In the "Lankavatara" we find:

"O Mahamati, it is because the Sutras are preached to all beings in accordance with their modes of thinking, and do not hit the mark as far as the true sense is concerned; words cannot reinstate the truth as it is. It is like a mirage. deceived by which the animals make an erroneous judgment as to the presence of water where there is really none, even so, all the doctrines in the Sutras are intended to satisfy the imagination of the masses. They do not reveal the truth which is the object of the noble understanding. Therefore O Mahamati, conform yourself to the sense, and do not be engrossed in words and doctrines."

The problem facing the Buddha was that the culture of language had not evolved to the point that what needed to be expressed could be said in words. The Koan exercise and the occasional bizarre treatment of Zen acolytes are attempts to overcome this difficulty.

The brilliance of Shakespeare is his ability to convey with words things that can not be said with words. Looking for an evolution in the power of language one need look no further than the extraordinary difference between the English of Shakespeare and modern English. Many years ago a social anthropologist noted that some primitive peoples could not express their feelings because the necessary words did not exist in their native tongue.

Of all the advances of modernity one of the most remarkable is the emergence of modern English. As a nuts-and-bolts language that will take shades of meaning where it finds them, modern English is the language of enlightenment par excellence.


All ideas are imaginary.

Simple awareness is the ultimate truth of personhood.

Saving the World

Serious people often think that if others just had the right ideas things would be different. If this is true the right kind of propaganda will save the world. Consciousness will find more pleasing forms. Consciousness will expand.

Consciousness is malleable, and all appeals to consciousness are a treating of symptom. Consciousness has qualities beyond number and limitless potential form.
Consciousness tends to subvert awareness.

Awareness has only one quality: awareness. Awareness has no form.

Only awareness can save the world.

Orwell and Huxley and Enlightenment

"Oh brave new world that has such people in it" Huxley borrowed a phrase from Shakespeare to title his image of a world shaped by genetic engineering. Orwell's "1984" envisions a world equally constrained, but constrained by coercion rather than co-option. The forces necessary to the fruition of either outcome are fully at work. The future is not "either-or": it is "both-and". It is not necessary or recommended to resist the inertia of these social forces, for ultimately they will come under the sway of enlightenment.

It is not that enlightenment will become fashionable, but rather that enlightenment is humanities only hope: and therefore its last resort. Eventually the obvious will become apparent even to the hopelessly occluded, and it can not happen a moment too soon.

The center will hold. And that center is the awakening of the universe in it's individuated droplets.

Politics and Ethics

                                                                     ?

Awareness and the Real

The wish to escape from creature-hood pretty much defines what we think of as saints. Those to whom we ascribe the saint-hood thing tend to be those who in our estimation are more evolved than ourselves. There is no evolution of awareness. Consciousness is formal. Consciousness is informal. Consciousness is complex. Consciousness is evolving. Awareness is not evolving. Awareness is simply aware.

Awareness is the limit of our being. All ideas are created shapes of self and have utility for better or for worse. Ideas are the product of consciousness. Consciousness is the product of awareness.

If our awareness is a mystery to us we have not seen our selves.

Notes on Change: interior decorating

The boulevard of broken dreams is paved with broken hearts. The hungry ghosts of ancient metaphor are simply the shadow cast by un-met yearnings as the light of pure awareness streams through us. In much the same way as bones and tumors stop an Xray, cysts of longing absorb the light of being.

Each creature is born with it's requisite appetites. In the best of circumstances nature seamlessly answers appetite and hunger does not pass into longing.

We do not seek that which we possess: seekers seek a change. Some seek social prominence, some seek isolation, some seek simple pleasure, some seek the pleasure of enlightenment; if there were no hunger there would be no seeking. This is problematical because in our seeking we want to change something that we do not understand: a sapient alarm clock might find annoying the alignment of its gears.

Many of us who hunger for a translucent perception of existence try to get there by rearranging the furniture. Just find a reasonably comfortable place to sit, and explore if there might exist an awareness that is uncolored by expression. If you haven't found that, then its probably best not to mess with the furniture just yet.

Savage Luxuries

There is no nation whose soil is not soaked in blood. There are those individuals who have lived pacific lives, and there have been local periods of peace and prosperity, but such history as we have concerning social evolution is a mixed bag of horror and hagiography combined with steady progress in manipulating nature. There is, however, a small golden thread running through all this that we could perhaps call the "pursuit of enlightenment". Quite naturally this thread has been caught up in, and spun out of, religious forms. In just the same way as myth charged descriptions of the cosmos have given way to the observations of astronomy, the pursuit of enlightenment must shed its shell of historical decoration. Pragmatic fact based descriptions of reality may have distanced the gods, but they have brought us closer to that reality of which the gods are a legitimate symbol. The mystery of being is immediate when we have no symbols to hide behind.

There are many technologies of meditation: technologies of posture, breathing, imaging, and so forth. It seems to me that these aids can be a hinderance to that opening of awareness which is the fact of enlightenment. If we simply set our consciousness to the contemplation of awareness nothing more is necessary. Enlightenment comes of its self with the maturation of awareness.

Ideologies, secular and religious, are savage luxuries that the world can ill afford considering our woefully advanced technologies of destruction. Enlightenment is the universal solvent that can dissolve historical incrustations and free once and for all the spirit which has invigorated seekers since the dawn of time.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Imagination is the magic wand of being: something comes into being where nothing existed before: a configuration is wafted out of the latent potential of non-existence: an idea. The power of idea to reconfigure reality has made the world as we know it.  Unlike human beings; of themselves ideas are inanimate and amoral.

Imagination is perfectly described as a mythic wish-fullfilling demon. Mythic demons are not inherently good or evil, they are merely an extension of their master's ch'i. In Goethe's charming little tale an unenlightened being dons the sorcerer's cap and takes up the sorcerer's wand and sets in motion forces he can not control and that (barring intervention) will ultimately destroy him. This perfectly describes the situation of contemporary humanity.

The apprentice (identified with his limited consciousness) celebrates power and is unaware of his limitations. If his identity were in the awareness he would be conscious of his un-evolved state, and perhaps have some defense against the seductive sway of idea.

The guiding principle in meditation is for the apprentice to consult the master: for consciousness to consult awareness. Do not paper over awareness with ideas, rather let awareness be master of all. Imagination will then find it's proper place in making a better world as consciousness bends knee to awareness.

Phase Shift

Consciousness is properly the facilitator of awareness: awareness is what we are, and consciousness is what we do with it. We are simultaneously aware of being conscious and conscious of being aware; but it matters hugely if the seat of the identity is in one or the other. Since consciousness is peripheral to awareness, the cultivation of consciousness leads to decorating the surface of our being. It is consciousness grooming consciousness.....the cosmic comb-over. When consciousness grooms awareness something beautiful emerges: a consciousness infused with awareness, and an awareness infused with consciousness. Consciousness is most valuable as it serves awareness. When awareness is bond-slave of consciousness chaos is inevitable, and some grotesque crystalline quasi-religious form will inevitably take shape. It seems to me that most systems promising freedom dangle "raising consciousness" as a carrot in front of the awareness donkey. The donkey ends up walking in a circle harnessed to some grinding wheel.

Awareness has no structure. Awareness is simply aware. Awareness is supple by nature and cannot be crystallized: awareness draws no conclusions. Consciousness is structure. A consciousness not infused with awareness will draw conclusions all over the place, because consciousness simply can not abide ambiguity and will readily embrace rigidity. When consciousness accepts the primacy of awareness it is freed from the need to pin the imaginary tail on the inconceivable donkey. The ambiguity problem is solved because the natural state of awareness is radical pragmatism. It is the difference between ice and limpid water.

Meditation

Awareness is the precursor of consciousness. Awareness is the field in which consciousness operates. In meditation we cultivate that pure awareness which is the core of life its self: the most rudimentary fact our our being. In cultivating pure awareness we expand the opportunities of consciousness, and our everyday consciousness is increasingly infused with awareness.

Secrets in Plain Sight: Awareness and Consciousness

A distinction can be made between awareness and consciousness. Awareness is the fact of existence, and consciousness is the movement of existence. If we are identified with our consciousness we can never be properly aware.