I AM–The Sound of Consciousness

Earlier today I noticed that someone read the following blog entry which I had posted on May 4, 2011. It brought back lots of memories: I was living at Lake Douglas in Dandridge, TN, spending hours meditating, reading, taking notes, and attempting to write a book explaining my theory of the All That Is. The book wasn’t written, but I did spend a lot of time sitting by the lake watching herons catching fish. That was thirteen years ago, and I’m still, in one way or another, working on the same project. Below is the entry as it was written:

Yesterday I had an interesting experience during my Jewel Tree Meditation. In the section “the spirit of enlightenment with wisdom, love and compassion” I came to the third level of wisdom which is meditation. There, using the technique called the Diamond Drill, I pursued the question “Who am I?” Normally I defer to Eckhart Tolle’s answer which is “I am the space or the field in which form appears” but sometimes I answer with Thou Art That or the ground of being or the All That Is.

More Self-Realization But Still Under Construction

I awoke at 5 am this morning with some partially understood information in my mind. It felt as if I had been attending a class during the night and I was looking over my notes to see what I didn’t understand and needed to go back over and study. So, as I write this entry I’m thinking of a construction site with signs that indicate “Temporary Inconvenience Permanent Improvement” and “Proceed with Caution”.

I was thinking that an adult grows up in three stages: a physical stage, human stage, and spiritual stage. In the physical stage a body grows from a baby to adult on its own. In other words, a normal healthy body goes through an almost automatic maturation process. As this is happening the second or human stage is going on simultaneously. Here I’m thinking of a combination of the opening of the chakras as well as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. (I’ve read his critics as well.) As a baby we need our basic needs of shelter and food met. Next we have feelings such as happiness, sadness and other similar responses as the outside world is presented to us through our senses. In the third stage, which corresponds to the third chakra, we begin developing a sense of self. I’m guessing this begins in a serious way around the age of seven when the recollections of our spiritual heritage fade and we focus on our human incarnation.

Now, as I continue with caution, I’m guessing that it’s in the third chakra where we develop some serious neuroses. I believe both Ken Wilber and Joseph Chilton Pearce write how human development proceeds on a schedule. In other words, we have an allotted period of time to develop a certain area before the process moves on, and if we have not developed the stage normally the body checks it off, in a sense, as a neurosis and moves on. Here we may have issues such as fear of the world, a need for safety, not feeling loved or not believing we are good enough. So as an adult we perceive the exterior world through this lens, in a sense, which is damaged, immature, and inaccurate. Nevertheless, it’s the “who I am” that we developed in the third chakra.

In the fourth chakra or the heart area of development we make our social and religious contacts. For a healthy adult we would go through the substages of family, community and global relationships. If, however, we have an unhealthy view of ourselves then we also have a distorted view of relationships. Here I’m reminded of Shel Silverstein’s book “The Missing Piece” because we, feeling incomplete, look for a partner to complete us or make us whole.

The further I climb this mountain of development the less sure I am of my path, but I’ll venture upward. In the fifth chakra we express ourselves to others and allow them to see both the healthy and unhealthy aspects of who we think we are or who we have become. It’s also the area of imagination and possibilities. If we have developed as a normal healthy adult we may have learned that the exterior world responds to our wishes and dreams. An unhealthy adult may have internal mantras that always say, “It’s not possible” or “that could never happen to me”. The distorted perception, possibly the neurosis we developed way back in the third chakra, is the lens through which we perceive ourselves, others and our environment.

Okay, now we’re at one of the higher camps and ready for the final climb to the summit. In the sixth and seventh chakras we experience the feeling of unity, of being part of something greater than ourselves. I presume someone “firing on all chakras” might experience unitive consciousness, but we know how rare this is among us human beings.

Still, I believe, because the sixth and seventh chakras exist, even if we have our deficiencies, our partially developed earlier chakras, we get a sense that there is more. Unfortunately this is often presented to us in the form of suffering which makes us aware of our faulty foundation. Here I think we have two choices: one is that we give up on life. Whenever I’m out and about, which is rare, I look at people and notice the toll that life takes on us. I see few people that look healthy and happy. Instead I see a mass of humanity dragging itself around in the world.

But we have a second choice. My counselor refers to it as rappelling down the chakras, down the spiritual cord, where we connect ourselves to the center of the earth. Now, firmly anchored in both the earthly and spiritual realms, we “re-parent” ourselves by going up through the chakras again and repairing the missing or faulty areas.

I can speak of this process personally which I will do in a future entry. For the time being, however, this is an overview of how I see the path to fulfilling our humanity and spirituality. We make the climb to the top physically and humanly, though with only these two climbs we may live life unconsciously. With the awakening of the spiritual aspect, we descend and climb again. After this successful summit we go back down again and again in our attempt to assist others.