Is there such a thing as "more conscious"?

[Farnaby]

Hi! 

Do you guys think some people are more conscious than others or is that just a thought from the ego so that we feel like we're more advanced than other people? 

I tend to think of people who blame the world for their problems and project their anger and so on as less conscious but maybe that's just my ego speaking lol

[Forestluv]

It depends on how the term “consciousness” is used. From a holistic perspective, we are all made out of the same consciousness. So, it would be like asking “Are the roots more tree than the leaves?”.

We can also use the term “consciousness” to describe awareness or cognitive development. We could say someone who is half drunk is less conscious than when they are sober. And we can increase our consciousness by becoming more aware of our subconscious and expanding our peripheral awareness and attention ability. For example, through meditation we can be in a state of consciousness in which there is detached observation of our thoughts, feelings and happenings in our environment. 

[Leo Gura]

Your experience clearly shows you that you are less conscious during some parts of your day.

When you are sleeping, watching a movie, sick with the flu, drunk... you are less conscious. Notice this.

[Farnaby]

Thank you @Forestluv @Leo Gura , that's how I see it too. 

I was also thinking about this topic on a more societal level. For instance, I think that some people are more aware of their patterns and taking more responsibility over them than the average person. 

[How to be wise]

@Farnaby Yes people are on varied levels of consciousness. 

[No Self]

Neale Donald Walsch once critiqued the word 'love', pointing out that we might say we 'love' banana splits, or might 'love' the people closest to us, even though there is an enormous qualitative difference between the two.

Perhaps the word consciousness carries a similar flaw. From the perspective of Ramana, the is only one consciousness and all the rest involves people taking the unreal to be real. And yet the points made by others here are true from within the relative perspective also.

[LastThursday]

Just thinking out loud:

1. You can't compare two people's level of consciousness.

How would you do that without guessing? Is their outward behaviour the same as their level of consciousness? Can a person with a high level of consciousness ever behave like a complete idiot?

2. What on earth is a level of consciousness anyway? Is it just intelligence, empathy, knowledge, learned behaviour, insight, "goodness"?

3. Even if you look at your own consciousness, does it really increase over time? And if you believe it does, aren't you just comparing using your consciousness at that moment in time? Isn't there plenty of room for relativity and self deception here?

There are no levels of consciousness, just levels in consciousness.

Over and out.

[Megan Alecia]

I like the spiral dynamics model because it doesn't focus on individuals. Hence the oneupmanship is gone. 

I value it a lot too. 

[Leo Gura]

But love for banana splits is exactly love.

Love is love.

[Forestluv]

22 hours ago, Farnaby said:

Thank you @Forestluv @Leo Gura , that's how I see it too. 

I think that some people are more aware of their patterns and taking more responsibility over them than the average person. 

At a personal level, absolutely.  Yet this can get tricky with the dynamics of blame and guilt. Some people externalize too much responsibility and blame others. And some people internalize too much responsibility leading to guilt, that can be deeply ingrained.

And the next level of meta awareness for personal responsibility gets tricky in a different way. 

I consider dynamics of personal responsibility, guilt and blame to be highly influential on one’s mind-body and their inter-personal relations. Some people intensely hold onto, and defend, their beliefs of personal responsibility and it can be very difficult to transcend. 

[Nahm]

On 12/29/2020 at 1:10 PM, Farnaby said:

Hi! 

Do you guys think some people are more conscious than others or is that just a thought from the ego so that we feel like we're more advanced than other people? 

It’s “a thought” though not from an ego. That would be another thought. There truly is no such experience as ‘the feeling of being more advanced than other people’, as other people is also a so called thought. You could say there is the experience of the feeling of the relativity of that thought, but more relevant would be that the thought repetition of ‘other people’ & ‘ego’ is contingent on the identification with the thought ‘person’, and or ‘ego’. 

Quote

I tend to think of people who blame the world for their problems and project their anger and so on as less conscious but maybe that's just my ego speaking lol

There is an ocean of compassion and unity in not believing the thought ‘I think of people’. That is you. 

There can be the experience, without the identification labelling, or, thought is applicable to the experience of communication, but never defines itself / it’s source, if you will. All labelling, though it might be more convincing in an ‘outward’ manor, is labelling upon yourself. From the Matrix (paraphrasing)...”the prison you can’t see, hear or touch”. 

[DLH]

Just a thought...

Consciousness/awareness can be expanded and contracted, absolute and separated, within “All-That-Is”.

Edited December 31, 2020 by DLH

[allislove]

15 hours ago, Nahm said:

There is an ocean of compassion and unity in not believing the thought ‘I think of people’. That is you. 

@Nahm ??

[Nahm]

@Forestluv

Very insightful. Would you say this can even flirt with / surface as physiological psychosomatic dis-ease? Curious of your opinion given your background, if you will. Quite a few people I’ve talked to, including my mom with her what used to be chronic adrenal / thyroid issue have healed, but it’s very tricky pointing to any actual ‘connection’ and bringing the so called ego defenses through this. I feel like that is what you might point to, and wonder if anything else comes to mind. I’m always looking for insight in this specific regard as it seems to affect so many. 

@allislove ?? 

[Scholar]

It is useful to look at the world as you see it. But do not cling to the world as you see it, because how you see the world will change. The strange thing about reality is that it has no anker point. The act of observing and coming to realize what reality is, changes reality. That itself is one of the many aspects of reality that is ever changing. As this world changes you will get a true sense of what Relativity is. Each point is only a point in relationship to all other points. Each position is only a position in relationship to other positions.

For example, you might think that you started out as a unconscious child. You grew up and have come to learn to increase your consciousness. You are on a pathway to higher consciousness. Eventually you will realize you are the Creator. You will realize it to such an extend that you will become the Creator. Then you, as the Creator, will make the fully conscious choice to manifest yourself and become the unconscious child. That choice will require consciousness on a level far beyond anything you thought you ever had. Yet, that sophistication of consciousness, that power, that intelligence, that pure Being, that is what the unconscious child is. That unconscious child is the direct Choice of the Creator.

Your beginning is your end. Truly, the end and the beginning were never the beginning nor the end. Each moment is the beginning and the end. This one and only moment this is the Choice of the Creator, each causing itself.

 

Life is not linear, it is circular. See, the Creator does not create by drawing a line. The Creator creates by pulling from a Singularity of Nothingness a Circle. Can you see this? Can you see that when he pulls at the Singularity, the Circle will serve-emerge?

Creation does not operate in the way the human mind conceptalizes reality in general. Creation is not building. Creation is the process of pulling apart the fabric of Nothingness. I grab into Nothingness, I grab Whiteness, and by pulling it from Nothingness, Blackness emerges on the other side. That is what it means to pull Whiteness from Nothingness. It means to seperate Nothingness into Whiteness and Blackness.

Can you see how impossible this is? Can you see that you can pull more than all things from this Nothingness? This is the nature of relativity. It is groundless, because it's ground is Nothingness. It is self-justifying, self-creating. The Circle created itself.

[Forestluv]

1 hour ago, Nahm said:

@Forestluv

Very insightful. Would you say this can even flirt with / surface as physiological psychosomatic dis-ease? 

For sure. Yet I try to be mindful about assuming psychosomatic causes to all physiological / neurological conditions. Telling someone “it’s all in your head” can be very empowering in one context, yet unfair in another context - and could create secondary psychosomatic conditions. Telling someone with two mutant alleles of the CFTR gene that their chest pain and breathing problems are psychosomatic and they can heal themself is unfair and unhelpful. That person is not going to have a normal chloride channel in their epithelial cells. It can put greater pressure on the person that they are creating their condition an heal themself. It would be like telling a dwarf that their height is psychosomatic. 

Yet there also seems to be lots of idiopathic conditions that are psychosomatic. And perhaps combinations of psychosomatic and physical. In this area, I’d say powers of self healing are underestimated. Many others have gone far deeper into this than I. Drawing cause and effect connections does seem tricky and there might not be direct cause and effect. I’d first get it checked out with a doctor to make sure it’s not an identifiable condition like an aneurism. If not, then I’d go into body wisdom - yet there are all sorts of directions. I imagine someone who has chronic headaches. This could be as simple as not drinking enough water or poor posture. Or something more complex with repressed emotions, muscle tension, energetics, diet, genetics or a combination of many things.  I’d say disrupting patterns could be helpful. If the person is constantly engaged in activity that re-enforces the identity and condition, it’s going to be much more difficult to have insights and be ‘reborn.

And I’ve found intellectual knowledge and awareness to be insufficient. One may go through therapy and develop an understanding of how toxic relations with blame and guilt have impacted them. This may help somewhat, yet is still at a surface level. And someone may develop an intellectual understanding of nonduality and have an awakening of no-self. Yet still carry baggage within the body. One might reach transpersonal omniscience with 5-meo and return to a body with clogged pipes. Perhaps the key is calling in a ‘plumber’. It seems we all have an inner plumber that is rarely accessed as it lies underneath the thinking ego. From a resistant ego’s perspective, this involves letting go, breaking through resistance and work. And even profound breakthroughs that take the mind-body into depths of insight, realization and awe can fade away into ingrained patterns. 

And I would say facilitators with embodiment and resonance can be helpful as a guide. A couple of the facilitators I do breathwork with are amazing. They can help relax the mind and body, going beneath thought control into experience and body-mind wisdom. What the facilitator said would have been intellectually discussed, had I not been beneath the hood. Even simple words infrequently spoken brought up new ‘scenery’.

[Nahm]

@Forestluv

?? I asked for an insight and have been hit with an ocean. Will read that again later and sleep on it and read it again tomorrow. Between the experiences of my sessions and helping my mom through this, I’m at a complete loss for words (in the Good way). Thank you! 

[Farnaby]

Thanks everyone for your input. 

I pretty much agree with most of what you said. It's also clear to me that identifying too much with the belief "some people are less conscious than me", can shape my reality in a not so joyful way, whereas seeing it more nuanced lets me enjoy every relationship for what it is. 

@Forestluv I love this topic. I think you're right that many problems that manifest physically can be improved through working on our minds, psychology and so on, but we shouldn't assume every illness is entirely psychosomatic. 

Would love to know more about the kind of facilitators you're talking about. You mean stuff like reiki or somatic experiencing?

@Scholar thanks for the insight. I still have trouble seeing the "I'm the Creator" part in my direct experience. I do see however how our beliefs and so on work as a self fulfilling prophecy and influence our reality.

[Forestluv]

1 hour ago, Farnaby said:

 

@Forestluv I love this topic. I think you're right that many problems that manifest physically can be improved through working on our minds, psychology and so on, but we shouldn't assume every illness is entirely psychosomatic. 

Would love to know more about the kind of facilitators you're talking about. You mean stuff like reiki or somatic experiencing?

I’ve used facilitators with EMDR, plant medicines and breathwork. I’d say there are a few skills involved: 1) creating a good setting, 2) guiding the actual trip and 3) helping to integrate afterwards.