Consciousness-Intro

Gregg’s Reflection

As a young man, I was haunted by the sad question, “Is this all there is?” I did not grow up in church, I came to faith as an adult. Viet Nam and Watergate broke my faith in institutions of government, education and the church. Why were we being disciples into consumerism, being lied to by our authorities.

And why were we ignoring epidemic issues of racism, injustice, hunger and homelessness, if we were a ’Christian’ country. Was life just about accumulating big houses, cars and toys, enriching yourself and family, and then you die? Drifting into the counter culture showed me a different path, and awakened my consciousness. Yet, for all the passion of my peers for deconstruction, I saw no vision of what would come after. I wanted more. And, as my spiritual journey unfolded, I found more.

Early in my spiritual journey, I stumbled across this image. I was completely drawn to it. It captured my experience. As I went through my ‘better living through chemistry’ phase, I came to see things that weren’t obvious to others. I felt like the man in the illustration, who had poked his head through the clouds and saw the universe beyond.

Science is now telling us why I experienced what I experienced with psilocybin as a young man. Recently, I stumbled across this article: What Psychedelic Mushrooms Are Teaching Us About Human Consciousness, Iris Kulbatski Discover Magazine. 10/ 9/2020

Psychedelic drugs like psilocybin are being tested to treat mental illness. They're also expanding our understanding about human consciousness.

Published in NeuroImage, their breakthrough study used real-time brain scans in humans to show that psilocybin reduces activity in the claustrum by up to 30 percent. This coincides with people's subjective feelings of ego dissolution and oneness with their environment while under the influence of the drug.

Once I had an experience of ‘oneness’, I began a search for a path back to this place. That search led me to Christ, to becoming a Christian, and for decades to seeking a deeper path. You can read more of this path in this post on Divinization.

So, come along and see how the saints and mystics show us the path to deeper levels of consciousness, the discovery of true self and soul. The path of meditation and contemplation opened the doors for me into the depths.

Read the rest of the post here.

Journaling Prompts

Have you ever been plagued by the question, “Is this all there is?” Ever stop to think this might be holy discontent, a prompting of Spirit to look deeper? What would it look like to go deeper in your journey to God?

Scripture

Deep calls unto deep.

Psalm 42:7

In all thy getting, get understanding.

Proverbs 4:7

Son of man, you are living among a rebellious people. They have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear, for they are a rebellious people.

Ezekiel 12:2

Then Jesus said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.” 

Mark 4:9

Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember?

Mark 8:18 

I pray that God may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you and the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.

Ephesians 1:17-19

Ancient Writings

In the contemplation of God, where love is chiefly operative, reason passes into love and is transformed into a certain spiritual and divine understanding which transforms and absorbs all reason.

William of St. Thierry, Flowering of Mysticism, McGinn, Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, p. 82

God is delighted to watch your soul enlarge.

Meister Eckhart

This path of self-knowledge must never be abandoned, nor is there on this journey a soul so much a giant that it has no need to return often to the stage of an infant. Along this path of prayer, self-knowledge and the thought of one’s sins are the bread with which all palates must be fed no matter how delicate they may be; they cannot be sustained without this bread.

St. Teresa of Ávila

Modern Writings

Patient Trust

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually, let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hearts on Fire

Not to accept and love and do God’s will is to refuse the fullness of my existence.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 33

May we undertake the contemplative practices that will nurture our deeper and more inclusive consciousness in the midst of our lives rather than at its edge, and allow ourselves to be offerings of love and hope for those who live contracted in suffering.

Kathleen Singh Grace in Dying p. 273

A wellspring is the source of a stream, the fount of the precious waters of life. From the invisible depths, cool, clear elixir percolates, astonishing us as it flows into our perceptible world, nourishing and sustaining everything. Our deeper life is like a wellspring-welling up from below invisible (unconscious) at its source but rippling into our palpable existence, galvanizing our imagination and endeavors.

Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul, p. 303

Sometimes we meet people who are free from themselves. They express what moves them, and then they take a step back. They play an active part in things, but they don’t think they have a corner on the truth market.

Without this kind of “inner work,” of simultaneously putting ourselves forward and taking a step back, community is doomed to failure. Learning this is really hard. It’s the work of detachment, self-emptying, and “fasting” from the need to be right” the disciplines taught by all great religions. This is what makes someone “conscious.”

Richard Rohr CAC Morning Devotion, 3/1/20

To change people’s consciousness, we have to find a way to reach their unconscious. That’s where our hearts and our real agendas lie, where our mother wounds, father wounds, and cultural wounds reside. The unconscious is where it all lies stored, and this determines a great deal of what we pay attention to and what we ignore.

We can’t get to the unconscious logically, literally, or mechanically. We have to fall into it, I’m sorry to say, and usually by suffering, paradox and the effective use of symbols. Until our certitudes and our own little self-written success stories begin to fall apart, we usually won’t touch upon any form of deeper wisdom.

Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion, 4/28/21

As we learn to speak from our deeper selves, we open others to speak from their deeper selves.

Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ 

Being Conscious or Aware means:

I drop to a deeper level than the passing show

I become a calm seer of my dramas from that level

I watch myself compassionately from a little distance, almost as if ‘myself’ is someone else

I disidentify with my own emotional noise, not letting it pull me here or there, up or down

I stop thinking and ‘collapse into’ pure consciousness of nothing in particular. You don’t ‘get’ there, you ‘fall’ there, objectless consciousness

Richard Rohr, Naked Now, p. 135

The heart’s job is to look deeper than the surface of things and to beam in on that deeper, ensheltering spiritual world in which our being is rooted. As the heart becomes strong and clear you are able to follow its promptings reliably, you come into alignment with Divine Being and are able to live authentically out of your true self.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, p. 164

How do we expand our minds? One way is through beauty itself.  Whether it is seeing the beauty of birds or hearing their songs; or the beauty of a blue sky or a sun rising or setting; or the ocean pounding its waves upon a welcoming shore” beauty is everywhere.  There is no shortage of beauty.  Only of our capacity to be with it and drink it in and make it our daily food even and especially when times are fierce.  So that the awesome trumps the awful.

We expand our minds by allowing the cosmos and the cosmology stories of our ancestors and of today’s science into them, thus moving us beyond anthropocentrism of the modern era (Descartes: “I think therefore I am”) to the truth that,“the universe exists, therefore we are.” We expand our minds by receiving the suffering of the world as a grace to open and expand our hearts even as they break. 

Heartbreak can expand the heart and make it green again.  Tears can water the heart”and grow it.  “When your heart breaks, the whole universe can pour through,” says Joanna Macy. Silence too expands the heart and mind.  Practice it frequently. And in each, though differently, there emerges Joy.  “Joy expands the heart” (Aquinas).

Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox, 4/12/22

Humans have a Christ-like spiritual healing potential, which stems from the fact that we are the only life form in which consciousness is able to be aware of itself. . . We are the only ones who think and know we are thinking.

The more conscious we are, the more we will automatically produce harmony in place of disease. That is because disease and disharmony signify the absence of developed consciousness. A fully conscious person doesn’t have to do or think anything in order to create harmony. Their very presence is harmony. Our most important job now is to know what consciousness is and how we can become more fully conscious. 

It’s very important to stress that visionary experiences are not just seeing something, or even primarily seeing something. Rather, they more commonly include seeing, hearing, and bodily sensations such as smell, taste, tingling, inner movement, warmth, pain, tremors, and being touched.

One of the most common “visionary in spirit” experiences is simply sensing the presence of a spiritual being such as God, Jesus, or a guide. They can range from fleeting impressions to vivid experiences that appear to be physically real. Here are some of the visionary experiences of awakened consciousness or being “in the spirit” that have occurred. 

Paul Smith Spirit as Consciousness in the Bible