To whom am I talking? Can I talk to the whole of consciousness?
There is no such thing as divided or fragmented consciousness. Consciousness is a total, undivided movement of living from one moment to the next. Where there is any sense of division or fragmentation as fear or loneliness or as any other psychological state of mind, that is not consciousness. That is merely the content of thought and memory at play, which is not consciousness. We may experience some form of conscious mental activity as the apparent interplay of this content; but the content is not consciousness. Our images of one another are not part of consciousness; they are what keep us tied to experience, sensation and pleasure. Consciousness has within it no trace of desire because the whole of consciousness has nowhere to go, nothing to find, no-one to seek. Experience, sensation, pleasure and desire are not part of consciousness. The whole of consciousness is filled with love and nothing else. Therefore, memory is the enemy of love because it destroys the very thing it tries to keep and understand. Yet we have made memory the standing stone of our psychological experience.
We have never been fully conscious except for brief, momentary flashes. Images keep us asleep, hypnotised. Images keep us separate within our own fields of experience and pleasure. But there is no real pleasure when we are living always in the shadow of the image of death; and there is very little point to experiences that keep us tied to a limited continuum of time.
Consciousness is its content - I am sure we are all familiar with this way of looking at it - but the content itself is not consciousness.
Do you see the way into this? We have now all the clues laid out before us. This is our question for next Sunday.
Definition: Facilitator, one who “keep(s) the dialogue on topic and on track. A facilitator provides structure, maintains momentum and maximizes participation, and helps participants to navigate issues and move to outcomes.”
Definition:Authority:“ the power to give orders or make decisions : the power or right to direct or control someone or something.”
So I am saying that consciousness is none of that. Points 1 to 5 have all been put together from within the limited framework of thought. They represent the various attempts by thought to make some sense of both itself and the world in which it thrives. Thought can do this only by imagining that there is something more majestic either outside of itself to which it can aspire or within itself that can be uncovered. Consciousness is not and never can be a state of being. There is no state of wholeness or state of love; there is just wholeness and love. It is not something that can be turned off and on again.
There is neither authority nor facilitator here - we can disregard those two in one fell swoop.
No, I have taken a question and found out what happens. I refuse to be a facilitator - I have said this many times - and if there is any sense of authority in this, that’s your doing, not mine.
Then, sorry, there has been a mistake. I am the host. There have been three facilitators - Ayham, John (who has now left) and Steve - and we are waiting to see if anyone else wants to do it.
I have seen something, that’s all. If you want to look, you may see it too. If not, it doesn’t matter. It is not worth a moment’s argument about it.