consciousness and the mind

What is the mystery of consciousness?

Once you get into the deeper ends of self inquiry/exploration and contemplative practice (non-dual practice), there is the experience of no-self. Where everything in your direct experience that is the construction of your psyche and environment dissolves, and you’re just in the now. The thing is, at that point, questions only get even more confusing.

What is activity when it is not perceived? What is activity when motion itself within space and time can be seen differently?

If non-duality speaks of this concurrent nothingness that is everything (emptiness and form), then what even is a sensation when we sense it? Where do “I” start and where does “environment begin”?

The question of intelligence as fundamental or emergent of consciousness is also central to this; if we are aware of nothing but everything is there, what is aware? Now this begins to get into questions of the observer and what constitutes physical reality.

This then extends to the question of fundamentality and whether consciousness is the base thing. Who knows at this point?

The infinite nature of consciousness is always captured through the finite structures of awareness. And structure seems to exist because it’s the only way infinity can be made sense of, or brought into existence.

When there’s the idea of an endless everything, there’s no way to really conceptualize it. To truly see everything or endlessness.

Without getting into defining what is material and what exists, what’s fascinating about awareness and how we perceive our immediate experience is that it’s directly mediated through these invisible lenses of self.

How we experience our experience and make sense of things is self-referential. Self is called self after all. But what isn’t as readily made evident is how this referentiality is made manifest.

Considering this is all operating within or as consciousness, this is all within the realms of mind. A lens is that layer and bundle of sentience and energy. A way of seeing things, and therefore a path. A way to move. A literal way.

These lenses are reflective and refractory; awareness isn’t simple, but rather extremely complex and multidimensional.

One way I like to think of it is lines forming a circle. When there are fewer lines, it’s less circular and rigid. When there are more, it’s the opposite.

And so it’s reflective because what we see is made sense through what we’ve already seen. And it’s refractory because what we’ve seen exists along with what we see. And it’s not smooth or stable either.

Awareness is that mirror of lenses.

To quiet things would be to untangle those psychic messes and to release that pent up energy inside. And since one less thing exists, we’re slightly more free. Because infinity has been made manifest more by removing a way.

The hard part is to see through a circle within awareness. This circle that is really a combination of many lines is a part of what constitutes experience.

But because there are many circles that are messily entangled, it’s hard to see what one is and how it is and why it exists.

This is the point of seeing that frees. To see how reality is warped through our lenses of self that are always very subtly there. And that once we see one thread, that we can see another. And another. And other.

We are always unraveling. That is reality flowering unto itself. Light shines through the prisms of being.

And the mystery is to see the becoming. And then can we start to truly bloom into beauty.

The fractal nature of mind seems to exist to mechanically structure the energetic dimensionality of awareness.

And with awareness being this field in which there is the dance between form and formlessness, the question that arises is what are the mechanics of form forming?

Form as structure as conceptualization in perception is informationally based. Recursively grounded too.

What this means is that your attentional stream is a stream within streams and the stream that is all streams and the stream that is.

So what is happening in this current moment? In your lived experience as you read this?

Words as certain shapes are inputted which get immediately transmuted into meaning. This meaning then changes and evolves as you read, and as that happens, there’s a momentum to it.

And when things are making sense more and more, the momentum feels derived from a deeper well inside you. And more totalizing and intense too.

Until that click happens. That moment of insight. Where all that frenzy and chaotic energy dissipates into a calm. A peace that’s mediated by you understanding it.

See what happens in this process of sentience. How do you focus on something, take it in, make sense of it, and the incorporate it into the direct rhythm of your being?

Being here is hyperdimensional and seemingly infinitely complex.

Form takes in this infinite complexity in awareness into what we see.

Mind then takes in form to make sense of the things we see.

And fractal nature emerges to account for which shade of red in my current viewing of an apple. That same apple that means something slightly different today because of the apple I ate yesterday. And a different one just now because the sun was shining on it a second ago but now it isn’t.

It’s a way to make sense of sense-making when sense-making is always inherently incomplete. Going above or below or beyond to account for what is. Because that above and below and beyond is also what is.

And so what this process of sentience is the transformation of input into meaning, creating an energetic momentum that builds towards insight.

And that process of understanding isn’t linear but recursive, as each new understanding modifies previous interpretations of a continuously evolving stream.

The hyperdimensional nature of being captures an experience that is embedded with layers of context, memory, and meaning. And these elements of the mind aren’t static, but always enriched by accumulated experience and constantly shifting conditions.

And so the fractal pattern exists to maintain and encode self-similarity across scales as consciousness operates simultaneously on all these different levels.

From processing sensory details to constructing identity and story, the interplay between awareness and mind is just dancing between what is and what is.

And that is consciousness preserving its essential qualities of being while always becoming transformed by experience.

The magic in metacognition is that now you’ve conjured an algorithm of the mind.

More self-awareness simply means more awareness. So you see more, about yourself and how you live in this world.

And so things that didn’t make sense to you now do. Especially the things about yourself.

To go meta is to shine that light from above. But above isn’t the right word here.

From the phenomenal sense, there’s always just the is. I know, confusing! Screw it.

Notice how you move and how things move and what it means for there to be up and down and left and right.

The way the mind works is that as time flows, so does your mind. So it goes in all those different directions.

There are always patterns to it. And events that happen that resonate on a deeper level.

The tricky part is to see how a direction exists in the mind.

This is where the idea of knots and layers and tensions come from. When you’re still controlled by them, you operate within it. So the directionality is confined within that boundary.

And a good way to think about that boundary as a point in the architecture of your being. A constriction of experience. Suffering! But also not.

You know how certain topics really get people going? And you have to deal with it until it’s passed and they snap out of it?

That’s that specific boundary. An expression of that particular psyche for a given set of conditions. There’s always some randomness to it too. But for a good part, somewhat predictable.

So what does this all mean on the contemplative path? Insight is to see through a boundary. And integration is to allow for the stabilization of that dissolution.

Since this a point in the mind and a way of being, it’s real after all. And then seen as an illusion. But because it was real, that boundary is also a bundle of energy. Consider again the relationship between movement, boundary, and directionality of reality.

So what does dissolution look like? It depends! But you’ll know it when it’s happened, because your mind is more spacious. You feel more and see new ways of being. Your head is lighter and reality is literally brighter.

Hence, enLIGHTenment :)

But don’t hate the story of you so much. You’re always going to live it. It’s just about being more by being less.

The way the simulation works is that you’re just orchestrating these algorithms of the mind.

There exists infinity right in front of you. And to step into another world would mean to step into a different flow of things. So how do you do that?

An earlier writing got into the attachment to experience, and what it means for you to exist in your lifestream. Your ways of being imposed on the world.

Think of an example in your life where you went from one state of mind to another fairly quickly. Like laughing after crying. When you cry, the story bleeds. Then when you laugh, the story sings. But it also stings.

You’re aware of all of this. And the more aware you become, the more you see. More as in more overall, and more as in more closely.

And in looking more closely, what you’ll see is that sequence of events that leads to a certain state of mind.

So if you want to be happy and exist in a bright and cheerful world, be the best researcher of your happy being. Explore all the different ways in which you exist and feel. And when you feel, examine how you feel and how much you feel.

The entire universe exists in that equation. So go as far as it takes you, because the scrolls of reality are always unraveling.

And in doing so, you’ll find the treasures of being.