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Last week we looked at the nature on non attachment, and how not being
attached to outcomes in life opens us up to being able to choose a loving
response to what is in front of us.
That lovely quote from Thomas Merton that
“You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or where it is all
going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges
offered by the present moment and embrace them with courage, faith
and hope”.
We also looked at that fact that when you see things clearly, you can see
that Heaven is in fact this world clearly seen.
And I mentioned my favorite definition of Enlightenment – “Rocks are
hard and water is wet”. Alluding to the idea that enlightenment is really
just seeing what is as what is, rather than putting our own spin on it.
Today I want to look at the idea of Awakened consciousness.
That was the talk that Cyprian Consiglio was going to give this weekend
before he had to cancel, but I thought it fitted nicely into this little series.
We began by looking at fear and the way that it can frive us if we do not
transform it.
We then looked at trust as the gateway to that transformation, and it was
from there that we arrived at being unattached.
Awakened consciousness comes out of that non attachment. It comes
from being present to what is going on right in front of us. It allows us to
recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment
and embrace them with courage, faith and hope”.
It is also one of those ‘yes please’ qualities. Like ice cream and apple
pie, or world peace or democracy, no-one is going to say no to awakened
consciousness.
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The word awakened comes from the old English awaka which means
"to awaken, revive; arise; originate, spring from”
And, of couse the first thing we think of is sleep.
We awaken from sleep, from unconsciousness and come into our day
conscious. So we are all actually living now in awakened consciousness,
except those who routinely decide to nod off during the message.
But here we are talking about something more than that.
We are talking about being awake to all that the present moment has to
offer us, and that is something many of us aspire to.
In the Developing Consciousness course that I run we talk about
becoming awake to our senses, to how we frame our reality, to the
workings of the mind, and to the realization that you are not your mind.
We have to be awake to all that is present now, we have to be awake to
our past, and how it shaped us into who we are now, and we have to be
awake the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment.
But more than all of that, I think the idea of awakened consciousness
pertains to being awake to that which contains everything.
We have to be awake to the context within which we exist.
Con text, literally a joining together. And that joining together is the
joining of all that we see as our little world, with all that serves to
contain it.
The ‘Great Spirit of All’ of the Lord’s prayer – the Our Father. The
acknowledgement of other.
That we are a part of something immeasurably greater than ourselves,
that contain us and gives us life.
And being awake to that is more than just believing in God.
It is being constantly aware of a living presence that we are a part of.
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Being constantly aware that our consciousness is one view from and into
a greater whole and consciousness. That we are an expression of that
consciousness that will come through us – whether we assent to it or not.
There is no escaping it. The only choice we have is whether or not we
actively co-operate with it or not. And the decision to co-operate is to
live in awakened consciousness.
That old idea expressed within the hindu scripture the Unhanishads
IN THE HEART of all things, of whatever there is in the universe,
dwells the Lord. He alone is the reality.
The Self is one. Unmoving, it moves swifter than thought. The senses do
not overtake it, for always it it moves not. From the ignorant it is far
distant— yet it is near. It is within all, and it is without all. He who sees
all beings in the Self, and the Self in all beings, hates none. goes before.
Remaining still, it outstrips all that run. Without the Self, there is no life.
Realizing that is awakened consciousness.
As Jesus said “ I am in the father, you are in me and I am in you” The
kingdom of heaven is within you.
Awakened Consciousness therefore includes arising from sleep into our
day. It includes being conscious of our senses, of how we are perceiving
our reality. It includes awareness of our thoughts and feelings. It
includes an awareness of our past and what has shaped us, it includes
seeing what is for what is – that rocks are hard and that water is wet. It
includes seeing that there are no others, and realizing that the whole
created order can be included within us and transformed through our
compassion. AND it includes all this is being only a partial view of
reality, and the we and all this is an expression of a far greater
consciousness that gives us our life and expresses itself trough us.
And then you have to get on with your day job!
To achieve awakened consciousness seems such hard work!
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Here I am mending my computer, while at the same time being
conscious of my…perceiving reality as…being aware of ….seeing what
is….and realizing the divine….. Oh fuck it, can’t I just live my life.
And that is the great lesson.
The key to living in awakened consciousness is just to live your life
without worrying about all of that.
All the work is done in your practice. Whatever that is.
Your practice is like winding up the clockwork mouse.
You Wind, wind, wind, and then you put it down and off it goes.
Your practice is you winding.
You practice being conscious of my…perceiving reality as…being
aware of ….seeing what is….and realizing the divine…..
You do that in a controlled space, recognizing when you drift off, seeing
when you are falling asleep, acknowledging that deep reality, and then
you get up from your practice and you go about your day like the mouse
– buzzing around here and there – trusting that you have done the work,
trusting that you are in the right space, trusting that fundamentally you
are being conscious of my…perceiving reality as…being aware of
….seeing what is….and realizing the divine.
You do not have to be thinking about it all the time.
And so, what about the idea of being enlightened. The idea of awakened
consciousness being a Christ-like Buddha-like, Bodhisattva turning
water into wine, healing the sick and transcending the limitations of this
earthly life.
Well the trouble with talking about enlightenment at this level is that
you have to be enlightened at that level, and I do not experience my life
on that level.
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In fact I have never met anyone who has.
I have read the stories, and I can see the truth in them. But that just is not
my reality.
And I think when you are looking at the nature of consciousness, all you
can really do is to tell the truth about what you do experience.
It does not help to try and be where you are not.
And that also goes for so called experiences of enlightenment.
As I said last week they are really just peak experiences, and are no
more special than any other experience.
The soil at the top of the mountain is the same soil you find at the
bottom of the mountain. The only difference is one of perspective.
And so the so called peak experience is just the same experience as we
are having right now.
Both experiences contain information relevant to the understanding of
reality. If you were not able to appreciate where you were right now and
what you were doing you would you would not be in your right mind.
No-where near awakened consciousness. You are able to process the
information you are receiving right now and have a sense of perspective
about where you are and what is going on.
In the same way these peak experiences are simply another way of
perceiving where you are and what is going on. It is just one way of
receiving an information download.
Now experience of where you are now and what is going on is a
combination of what you directly experience and what you have been
told.
You experience this room, you know that we are in a chapel gathering,
and you have been told that these sorts of gatherings have been going on
for thousands of years in different forms.
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You know you are in Aspen in the US on planet earth, and you have
been told that the earth is round, is part of a universe that includes many
galaxies and tis about 13,8 billion years old.
What we know comes part from direct experience, and part from shared
knowledge.
Consciousness – con – scios, to know with. To know with direct
experience, and to know with others.
We are aware of racial consciousness, and gender consciousness because
we have talked about it as a society.
And it is the same with these peak experiences. They are about
information, and some of the information can be experienced directly,
and some we can be told about.
We don’t have to go into space to know that the world is a blue planet
and that the moon has no atmosphere and less gravity, we have been told
that, and all the information we have received agrees with that.
Similarly, we do not need to have a direct experience of the
interconnectedness of all things. That experience might come our way,
but just like going to the moon, a lot of the facilitation of that experience
is out of our control.
We can get good at maths, train to be a scientist and become an
astronaut, but that does not mean we will go to the moon.
Similarly we can be meditate and be spiritual, but it does not mean we
will have one of those peak experiences.
That astronaut knows about the moon because he has been told it, and it
is just not his role to go there himself.
We can know about the interconnectivity of all things and the greater
self, but it just might not be us that will experience it. But everything
else conspires to tell us that it is true.
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It is just information, no matter how you receive it.
So do not think that awakened consciousness is just about walking
around like Jesus or Buddha, it is not. It is you being you in the youness
of your life.
And for you this is it.
Do the practice, open yourself in every way you can, and then just get on
with it.
That is what I do…. Trust…..assume…..let it go, until I am brought up
short, and then I learn and adapt.
DL on re-incarnation.
Work out for yourself what is true and live by it. You cannot do any
more.
And, the great news is that you don’t have to get enlightened.
One less thing you have to achieve.
Because it is all here, right now. Just know it. Heaven is this world
clearly seen.
That is what it means to live in awakened consciousness.
And it is worth remembering that Awakened Consciousness does not get
you to the meaning of life, it is the meaning of life.
Because there is nothing more to know or to be, than awakened
consciousness. It is in being fully awakened that you fulfill your purpose
in life.
It is a resonating whole that unites mind and heart into the true nature of
our existence.
And it is here that we transform the wantingness and neediness of eros,
of erotic love, into the settled unitive consciousness of Agape, divine
love. Love of God for man, and man for God. Let’s pray.