| Thoughts, Reflections & Musings |
| Awareness, Consciousness and Reality |
 |
| There are three areas to be addressed under the heading of consciousness. Together they are the substances of our world awareness, consciousness and reality. Reality What is real has been debated in the arena of mystics for thousands of years. But for most of us reality is a given. We accept what we see and feel as all that is. Other realities can be just as solid based on our willingness to perceive them. For some this is accomplished through a series of hallucinogenic agent. Many people consider drugs tools that shift the perception. Shamans have used mushrooms, peyote, and a variety of other substances to open their door to the other world. They however have also used many non-chemical aids in that process. They include sleep depravation, hyperventilation, fasting, fever, sex, rhythm and dance. Because of inherent legal and medical problems associated with the use of chemical agents, I choose to focus on other means of traversing the worlds. Losing a grasp on the world that others call normal is typically classified as a mental illness that requires treatment and confinement. What separates a shaman from a lunatic is the ability to shift at will between those worlds. In the traditional world much of what the shaman experiences is considered crazy, unreal, and imagined. In the shaman's world those same things are as basic as gravity and matter are in this world. The shaman's world is the land of dreams. Waking, sleeping, lucid dreams, and something in between. Consciousness Consciousness is our collection of current experiences. We live within a micro or nanosecond of time. By the time we place words on an experience it is in the immediate past. As we speak to it, even in sublingual words, we are exercising judgments and reshaping that event. It is impossible for our analytical mind to be part of the present. Our true experience is stimulus on the fly. The process of altering our consciousness is changing judgements we place on stimuli. This can be done at any place post event horizon. However, the closer to the occurrence we begin the process the easier it is to do. Last night I dreamt I was a butterfly or am I today a butterfly dreaming I am a person? This is the ancient Zen question. We can awaken to a dream or close our eyes and fall into a reality. The shaman uses dreamtime as the substance of many worlds. Images from our dream state are very much like images from our memory. To reflect on a dream is to remember it. Any difference between that experience and what we call our real world is an overlay of judgment that we place on the experience. It is a decision made after the fact. The merit of any real experience can be dismissed as easily as we dismiss a bad dream. Any dream can become our reality, if choose to allow it. The things we do there can be just as real as our ordinary world. Often times they can become so real that they flow over into ordinary reality. This is particularly true in healing emotional and even physical wounds. Awareness Awareness is our perception of the world. It is what we choose to take into our life from the surrounding environment. While many people take it for granted, awareness is also a subjective experience. As a defense mechanism we tune out much of what goes on around us. This is true will all types of stimuli audio, visual, smell, touch, taste and event what is called our sixth sense or intuition. Any one living near a dairy farm has experienced the ability to turn off or not notice the aroma of agriculture. This is also true with the barrage of advertising messages we are faced with on a daily basis. We build up resistance to the assault. Much of realty and consciousness is derived from the selecting items of which we are aware. For many an "ah ha" moment is simply turning on the senses and taking in everything that is going on around us. Breath, blood, rhythm & movement If we lose our rhythm we die. The beating of our hearts and the rhythm of our breathing are supports of life in a physical form. The circadian rhythms define when we sleep, eat, relax and become active. Light, electricity and sound move in waves of frequency. These energetic vibrations mark the rhythm of the universe. Our bodies and minds instinctively respond to patterns, or rhythms. Bodies begin to sway and move when the band strikes up a beat. By regulating the beat we can synchronize our movements. We can allow are minds to fall in step with the beat. This establishes new patterns that can shift our awareness, consciousness, and ultimately our reality. |
 |
| Thoughts, Reflections & Musings |
|
| by Chrystine Julian July 2003 |
|