If we examine it closely, every happening is one that actually emanates from beyond the individualized thing, yet works through the individual — relegating the individual to something of an agent merely bringing forth the happening itself; in this way, we are all nothing if not custodians and vanguards of universal forces.
Whether we love or hate, are happy or sad, actionable or still, every state is something more so channeled than invented. There seems to be a relationship between the individual and some ineffable beyond; and it is in that relationship that the emotion, the thought, or the happening itself is brought forth. We cannot have an event or any kind of phenomena without something pulling that happening into being; oddly, individuals of all kinds of being seem to act as lures ushering phenomena into existence — and are not simply bystanders within the milieu of the action around them; which is to say that phenomena seems to actually emanate from individuals, as opposed to individuals existing within phenomena. However, where that happening originally comes from is anyone’s guess.
The significance, though, is that we are not necessarily responsible for all the things we take agency for — at least, not in the traditional ways in which we have come to understand that agency. We did not uniquely conjure the physical movements we make with our bodies any more than we invented the emotions we have when looking at something beautiful. Moreover (and far stranger still when examined at depth), we likely do not actually manufacture our thoughts themselves — again, at least, not in the usual ways we have learned to think about them (...more on this later). All of these actions we partake in are born in ulterior realms — often realms inherited from other ideas, other conceptions, other cultures, or general other ways of being that come down and are directed towards and impressed upon us. So, we are frequently trying to actualize an old idea or an old way of being that does not fit the here‑and‑now event that is unfolding right before us.
Living From The Archive
However, living through a tapestry of memories is how we operate in our daily lives; and, in fact, for performing the basic functions within our day-to-dayness, such memories are extremely useful. By implementing the learned functions of memory we are able to put our socks on in the morning, drive a car, recognize familiar people, do a job, and all the other things that are important to our survival and day‑to‑day being.
Yet, at a certain point, these patterns seep too deeply into the structures of our consciousness itself, and who and what we are as human beings becomes stained with the influences of a modality with a different design. Put simply: we rely too heavily on the mechanisms of pattern and memory, and our lives become a series of events attached exclusively to whatever patterns and memories we hold onto; so, in order to truly evolve, we need to shed and discard the memory, and become a kind of ghost to these old modes that have come to fully construct our consciousness; for it is only when doing so that we could ever be able to experience things freshly, gain a new perspective, and evolve within ourselves.
Unfortunately, however, we have made this act of becoming open to and invoking novelty a very difficult to do: it calls for us to be completely new and reinvented beings on a near moment-to-moment basis. And not only do the thought-patterns we cultivated serve very specific purposes (as mentioned above), but they also give us a mode by which to operate where we are able to comprehend and dissect the world — which, in turn, gives us a narrative about our own beings and our place within the grander scheme. So, then, we have a choice: ego or reality. On the one hand sits all that is familiar and (....seemingly) safe — where we have a defined relationship to the world, and we know (....roughly) who we are. The other path, however, has nothing to do with us as individuals; in fact, within reality, the individual we think we are does not exist at all: for, in reality - in looking at what actually is - we see that we are merely channels and vanguards of phenomena; and that those universal forces exist regardless of the ego we have come to create. So, choosing reality means choosing a kind of death; and death is the polar-enemy of the ego.
Systems Of Consciousness, Not Consciousness Itself
In my book, A Philosophical War, I argue that what we call “consciousness” in its current operation is really a system gifted to us through antiquity where we have learned that our being and the consciousness that it holds is something separate from — but that our individual consciousness is not actually Consciousness in its pure and “grand form”. The systems of conceptualization that we have inherited become the filters through which every happening is processed. But very seldom is there any direct contact with reality (or what I call “Verity”).
When we automatically replay inherited emotions and prefashioned thoughts we are not really experiencing what is actually happening. We are not engaged in that “being with” which opens us to the veritable realities that exist prior to and beyond our concepts. We are, instead, animating an old script.
And yet, consciousness itself is not bound to that script. Consciousness is the container that holds both the archaic patterns and the possibilities that have never yet been lived. The war we are waging is not against memory as such, or against the body, but against the unconscious rule of these inherited forces over our present relation to Verity.
In my next article, I want to follow this line toward a simple but radical claim: that there is nothing external to consciousness, and that what we call “life” is really this container learning to observe and understand its own workings, one happening at a time.
Until then.
