Mind and Consciousness

There’s a notable detail about mind that’s useful to understand. I’ve touched on this before but it’s worth going into in a little more detail.

You may need to read this slowly to get it. I’ll try to be as precise as possible.

Mind is the inside surface of consciousness. All experiences arise in mind.

In the beginning
Silence, what we can call fundamental reality, has 2 qualities: liveliness and alertness.
The liveliness of silence stirs the alertness and silence becomes aware.
Awareness stirs and moves within itself.
Awareness curves back on itself and sees itself, becomes self-aware.
Awareness recognizes itself and becomes even more alert and alive.
Seeing that greater alert aliveness causes more stirring and more experience, it stirs the liveliness within itself to experience itself more.
This is the churning. This is Genesis. This is Rig Veda first mandala.
This happens both in the beginning and now, at every point.

We experience this alert aliveness most fundamentally as life, insight, and love. These are the means Self uses to experience itself more deeply.

Remember that awareness has curved back on itself. It has as if created the principle of space. This is enlivened by the process of experience and by the movement across the surface. The surface we experience as mind.

Mind is the event horizon we could say. Beyond mind, it is simply transcendent being. No experiences.

Duality
When we come from a place of Self and other, we see a separate subject and object. The process of experience then reinforces this separation. I see you. We see 2 forms of experience. The experience of the experiencer, the Self. And the experience of apparent objects. Thus, the alive flowing surface of space is experienced 2 ways, subjectively and objectively.

Subjectively we experience mind. The lively alertness. Thoughts, feelings, and the movement of attention “within”.

Objectively, we experience the world of forms and phenomena. The movie screen of experiences. Subtle vibration structuring form, field, and matter.

Same process, 2 sides of the equation, 2 sides of the space of awareness. 2 different viewpoints. One aware being.

If this is too abstract, the important detail is that consciousness is the container of all experiences. Both the objective world and our inner experiences occur within awareness. Yeah  – it’s all in your head but your head is a little bigger than you thought. (laughs)

Non-duality
When we see that the consciousness that contains us and the consciousness that contains the world is the same thing, we see the oneness of being. The mechanics of all experiences become apparent. We can say all experiences arise in the mind. Mind is the inside surface of consciousness, be it in the expression of form or of feelings. All arises in the ripples of being.

Growth
When we make a step up in consciousness, our awareness expands and quite literally our world gets bigger. Our mind expands with consciousness and thus the field of experience expands with it. We move into a bigger house. We broaden how big we see the world.

However, because the mind tends to identify with it’s existing experience, it may grow out with the first wave of expanding awareness, then shrink back to a previous “size”.

If the identification is too strongly held, mind will not let go. It can draw the opening in consciousness back down. Pull itself back in. Recontract.

Or there may be a big opening and grand experience, but the container shrinks back down again to what we can support. Great experiences but the expansion doesn’t stick.

But not a problem. Consciousness and mind are very pliable. And memory is embedded in the process. Once it has opened, it will return again more easily.

At some point, we will be ready to integrate the expansion and it will “stick”. As we settle in to this new expansion, we can let the prior identification go and then the experience range expands into the space. Then, by direct experience we can verify the expansion has stuck more easily.

Self
The I-sense or sense of Self shifts as we reidentify mind with the higher value. The small box we called me grows out to meet the expanded space. Or else the identification as “mine” ends for a time. Until there is reidentification, there may be a period of no-self or no sense of I.

When the old sense of self ends, we may get a sense of a larger value of mind. As it grows, perhaps we’ll say Group mind or Universal mind or Cosmic mind or the mind of God.

For people on a more heart-centric journey, the same could be said of the feeling values. When consciousness expands, the heart grows with it but may pull back and so forth. Same process, different subjective focus. Universal heart, Cosmic heart, Heart of God.

It’s notable to mention that experiences reflect a value of consciousness expansion but are an effect of it and may be out of sync. True depth of awareness is not in the size of the experience container but in the depth to which you have identified with the container itself. That is, with the depths of the awareness that contains everything.

As long as you identify with the obvious experiences of the mind, you will be at the mercy of it’s very changeable nature. When you identify with the container, you will find that it grows and shifts, but this is only the space within it. It’s essential nature remains unchanged.

This also clarifies why the experience of it is not it. We may have experiences of expansion before we become it. We experience liberation but have not yet quite been liberated. Liberation happens when we become it. When we are liberation itself.

Experiences are the play of the surface. Being is the source of all. The aware quality of being is the flag we follow home.
Davidya

PS – Be happy to explore any points here that are not clear. Please ask.