Consciousness of Consciousness

One of the goals of my life has been to know my higher self. This project is by some estimations an impossible task. Some contemplative texts such as "The Cloud of Unknowing" posit that you can't know. Other writers describe knowing this higher consciousness but only after a phenomenal incongruity, like a near death experience, like an LSD trip, like some other experiential extreme, including visits by supernatural beings. None of these things have ever happened to me and I have frequently been pissed off about it.

Because I wanted the experience. I wanted to know. 

So...

Anyway...

I am reading a difficult book. The book started off so difficult that I almost gave up. But starting on page 11, I ran into a series of ideas which I actually understood. The series of ideas lead me to a consciousness of my deeper consciousness. This knowing, this ability to know, is what I have been seeking. What I know is that inner pre-reflective non-self-conscious consciousness; my vibrational beingness, pre-manifested existence. 

I will show here the series of ideas. Each could be contemplated and possible you can achieve knowing that you know, perceiving the non-reflective.

“…consciousness is the knowing being in his capacity as being and not as being known” (Being and Nothingness page 10).

“All consciousness … is consciousness of something … there is no consciousness that has no content” (Being and Nothingness, page 11).

“…the necessary and sufficient condition for a knowing consciousness to be knowledge of its object, is that it be consciousness of itself as being that knowledge” (Being and Nothingness 11).

“…reflection or positional consciousness of consciousness, or better yet knowledge of consciousness. This would be a complete consciousness directed toward something which is not it; that is, toward consciousness as object of reflection” (Being and Nothingness, 12).

“…the known, the knower known, the knower known by the knower, etc…the totality always falls into the unknown; that is, we always bump up against a non-self-conscious reflection…” (Being and Nothingness 12).

“…there must be an immediate, non-cognitive relation of the self to itself” (Being and Nothingness 12).

“…every positional consciousness of an object is at the same time a non-positional consciousness of itself” (Being and Nothingness 13).

“…those fleeting consciousnesses which have passed by without being reflected on.” (Being and Nothingness13).

“…it is the non-reflective consciousness which renders the reflection possible; there is a pre-reflective cogito…” (Being and Nothingness 13).

“Every conscious existence exists as consciousness of existing.” (Being and Nothingness 13).

It is from following this difficult trail, including ideas previously contemplated, that my mind became conscious of itself; that is, the higher consciousness and the lower ego consciousness somehow perceived each other. They knew of each other’s existence but also that they were one being. The higher consciousness which does not speak in words was aware, and felt in this world by the lower consciousness which does think in words.

In my words: Behind the existing consciousness is a non-existent consciousness which is conscious of existing. 

The book is Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre. Nearly 800 pages, written in 1943, I don't recommend it to anyone. But I enjoy chewing on ideas. And this book does provide that. 

In other news, I am 432 miles into my virtual race across Tennessee. More than two thirds done. 

Thanksgiving Day 6

Don't you think it is funny that someone who doesn't participate in Thanksgiving has 9 days of blogs entitled Thanksgiving? Today is THE actual day. I have 9 days of gratitude because it is so precious that I ever get a week off work.

Today I was clearly tired from my 30 miles yesterday. Nothing was damaged so I went for an 11.2 mile, 3 hour walk. That went really well. I was pleased with the walking speed and that nothing felt injured. But also, I couldn't jog at all. No bounce in my steps. So, I know what day 2 of my 55 hour multi-day race will feel like.

I've had extra time today to think about a potential project. A few days ago, I thought about the word "essay." It struck me as a technical term and a specific type of highly thoughtful writing. I wondered if learning more about how to write an essay and then applying my mind to the practice could improve my thinking. By improve I mean depth I guess. I'd like to think with more depth and wisdom. Reading Plotinus has shown me what depth could be. The engineer in me thinks of this idea as a solvable problem. It doesn't require God or enlightenment. Just study, do the work, learn, succeed.

I found an online philosophy course. Mainly, you study written materials and then write an essay on one of the questions. You can then submit the essay and have a mentor critique it.

In relation to Thanksgiving, I've noticed that the topic of working in soup kitchens is a dogma for a good thing to do. Helping others is often touted as making something good out of your life. I think for me, training my thinking would be a way to add value to my life. Writing a good essay, even if unrecognized, would be a metaphysical triumph.

The Yearning

The blog was silent for a number of days, as I had nothing to say. But now I am on a 9 day vacation, in the solitude of my house; and there is now space for thinking beyond work and daily life. In that is disclosed the purpose of the monastery or the hermitage. Monks and Hermits are those with the holy leisure, time to ponder something more than survival in the world.

The past 24 hours, I have been attempting to make sense out of the first 6 pages of Plotinus' first Ennead. Plotinus was a philosopher existing around 250 ACE. It occurs to me that 250 ACE was formative for the human mentality. In a sense, the discontinuity of Christ formed and discontinuity in mental evolution. Many of our theories of God and Spirit and Soul were born at this time.

I as a 20th century American have struggled with many of these ideas. I live in an age where access to information is easier than 50 years ago when I was born. This in and of itself explains who I am and my insistence that I satisfy the yearnings of my soul.

Sitting here in Texas, in a cold rain with hot coffee and table lamp, books and journals, I ponder Plotinus. What am I? I feel like St Therese: a little bird which cannot reach the sun.

I answer in my own words. Words not given by Plotinus or A Course in Miracles. Words based in my life and all of its 54 years of experience. The yearning has been with me for a long time. It was a girl on a play ground by herself shooting baskets. A girl walking. A girl riding a bicycle. A girl swimming laps. A girl lieutenant on the traffic squad.

The yearning has been with me forever. And so now I say the I am yearning embodied. I am a yearning principle which lives. All my athletics are yearning. All prayer, all getting out of bed day after day. I accept this state of being. If it me as separate from God that yearns? Or is it Soul that yearns and I am a function of the Soul's yearning? Why would Soul yearn? Still, either way, I am yearning itself.

As yearning, I can also call myself love. Yearning is love. If I achieve stillness, I swing the scale of yearning to silent love, Being Itself. And then I am completely coherent. The problem of yearning is solved.

Surly I will have more reflections.