"The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend." Henri Bergson
Synchronicity - it has taken over an hour to get to this site and it is still sticking - does this mean I should not write today, or is its meaning coming from an entirely different direction? At this point, it all depends on my interpretation. Which is real? Where start the boundaries of paranoia?
Thus a way back to Alan Combs's book on consciousness, which at this point in the book is offering a perspective on consciousness evolution that is intuitively clear once outlined. We have, first, categories of awareness, starting with those comparable to a new-born's, and ending with those comparable to the "unitive" stage of a spiritual master. Combs matches these with our readiness - our personal level of evolution- to receive such levels of awareness. Thus a small child might have a "peak" experience (the unitive), but would be unable to comprehend its meaning such that he might reflect on the fullness of the experience later. Somewhat further along, a Larry or Moe might have a similar flash of deep insight, but would later dismiss it, as Scrooge famously did, as indigestion, "an uncooked potato." A deeply religious person would grasp the experience, but in the guise of his beliefs - a vision of Jesus,say, or Vishnu - and so on.
All well and good so far, but how is it that we come to be able to comprehend such insights? How is it that we mature so that we can expand our awareness of these moments of grace? And how or why do some receive more of these insights than others?
Combs proceeds. Just as with childhood development, we have to mature spiritually, moving eventually to the level beyond self. These higher levels Cook-Greuter labels: the autonomous, the construct awareness, and the unitive, each of which preceded the other on a learning curve as to the source of our being. The autonomous grows from the average adult when he realizes that his well-being is not dependent on others (thus autonomous),while still being comfortable (and I presume charitable) with those others. In the construct awareness stage, the self becomes aware that its self-perception is based on history - that is, that the "self" is a limited construct made by its location in culture and family and so on; that is, that it is not anything truly real or permanent. This leads to the ability to supersede the small self, without loosing the larger Self, "being", in the unitive.
And so we will our growth in a way. And yet, we might be pulled by the divine plan, as many in the evolutionist spiritual camp believe (I will stay with personal growth alone in this blog, although this group especially highlights societal growth). Why, for instance, should we want to continue this growth which, after all, does not satisfy more basic desires? More interesting, why are some Larrys and Moes smitten with higher consciousness? For instance, Combs gives us a story of a man and a wife who were on vacation in Thailand, where a local offered them some candy. The wife declined, but the man took it, only to find himself in a hospital with a coma a few hours later. During the coma, though, and then after, he experienced what he described as cosmic truth, and he has remained in that higher plan, with few exceptions,ever since.
Much more on these things later as the book carries me towards the finish. There is something more that I wish to highlight, though, and have done so several times before - that is, that higher consciousness is not a place. It is rather a perspective, just as the perspective of a child is different from that of an adult, the artist's different from a police detective's, and so on. They see, feel, and understand the very same world both the same and differently. What we are talking of here in higher consciousness levels are even larger leaps of perspective, the "unitive" being of the highest order, where all things appear as one connected truth. The person with this perspective will look the same as any other, but will not understand events or even time as the rest of us do. Life will be much the same for this individual from one perspective, but from his, entirely different. His understanding and reactions in the world would be as different from ours as a small child's is from a mature adult's.
For some reason - because of grace, which is simply undeserved insight - I have briefly experienced some of the "higher" levels of consciousness ("higher" is a debatable term, but we'll keep it for now - meaning, more comprehensive). There is nothing imaginative or unreal about them, any more than a botanist's perspective of flowers is imaginary when compared to that of the layman's. Higher states of consciousness can be found through various prayer and meditative practices, but as Combs has begun to show us, they can also be found by making ourselves ready for them. The eyes will see, after all, what the mind is ready to comprehend. FK
Synchronicity - it has taken over an hour to get to this site and it is still sticking - does this mean I should not write today, or is its meaning coming from an entirely different direction? At this point, it all depends on my interpretation. Which is real? Where start the boundaries of paranoia?
Thus a way back to Alan Combs's book on consciousness, which at this point in the book is offering a perspective on consciousness evolution that is intuitively clear once outlined. We have, first, categories of awareness, starting with those comparable to a new-born's, and ending with those comparable to the "unitive" stage of a spiritual master. Combs matches these with our readiness - our personal level of evolution- to receive such levels of awareness. Thus a small child might have a "peak" experience (the unitive), but would be unable to comprehend its meaning such that he might reflect on the fullness of the experience later. Somewhat further along, a Larry or Moe might have a similar flash of deep insight, but would later dismiss it, as Scrooge famously did, as indigestion, "an uncooked potato." A deeply religious person would grasp the experience, but in the guise of his beliefs - a vision of Jesus,say, or Vishnu - and so on.
All well and good so far, but how is it that we come to be able to comprehend such insights? How is it that we mature so that we can expand our awareness of these moments of grace? And how or why do some receive more of these insights than others?
Combs proceeds. Just as with childhood development, we have to mature spiritually, moving eventually to the level beyond self. These higher levels Cook-Greuter labels: the autonomous, the construct awareness, and the unitive, each of which preceded the other on a learning curve as to the source of our being. The autonomous grows from the average adult when he realizes that his well-being is not dependent on others (thus autonomous),while still being comfortable (and I presume charitable) with those others. In the construct awareness stage, the self becomes aware that its self-perception is based on history - that is, that the "self" is a limited construct made by its location in culture and family and so on; that is, that it is not anything truly real or permanent. This leads to the ability to supersede the small self, without loosing the larger Self, "being", in the unitive.
And so we will our growth in a way. And yet, we might be pulled by the divine plan, as many in the evolutionist spiritual camp believe (I will stay with personal growth alone in this blog, although this group especially highlights societal growth). Why, for instance, should we want to continue this growth which, after all, does not satisfy more basic desires? More interesting, why are some Larrys and Moes smitten with higher consciousness? For instance, Combs gives us a story of a man and a wife who were on vacation in Thailand, where a local offered them some candy. The wife declined, but the man took it, only to find himself in a hospital with a coma a few hours later. During the coma, though, and then after, he experienced what he described as cosmic truth, and he has remained in that higher plan, with few exceptions,ever since.
Much more on these things later as the book carries me towards the finish. There is something more that I wish to highlight, though, and have done so several times before - that is, that higher consciousness is not a place. It is rather a perspective, just as the perspective of a child is different from that of an adult, the artist's different from a police detective's, and so on. They see, feel, and understand the very same world both the same and differently. What we are talking of here in higher consciousness levels are even larger leaps of perspective, the "unitive" being of the highest order, where all things appear as one connected truth. The person with this perspective will look the same as any other, but will not understand events or even time as the rest of us do. Life will be much the same for this individual from one perspective, but from his, entirely different. His understanding and reactions in the world would be as different from ours as a small child's is from a mature adult's.
For some reason - because of grace, which is simply undeserved insight - I have briefly experienced some of the "higher" levels of consciousness ("higher" is a debatable term, but we'll keep it for now - meaning, more comprehensive). There is nothing imaginative or unreal about them, any more than a botanist's perspective of flowers is imaginary when compared to that of the layman's. Higher states of consciousness can be found through various prayer and meditative practices, but as Combs has begun to show us, they can also be found by making ourselves ready for them. The eyes will see, after all, what the mind is ready to comprehend. FK
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