 124. Philosophy � Greek |
Be Consciousness, inherently Free (or the inherently Perfect Witness) in relation to all objects.
"Consider" that you are (Originally, or Most Basically) Consciousness (Itself), Freely Witnessing and (apparently) being "played" upon (but not actually changed) by body, life-energy, emotion, mind, conditional self-idea, and all relations.
Then Be Consciousness (Itself), and Stand As (or in the Position of) Consciousness (Itself) - instead of persisting in the conventional and inherently (Obviously) un-True presumption that you (As Consciousness Itself) Are a body-mind (or an always already modified, qualified, limited, defined, and named conditional or psycho-physical entity).
To Be (and To Stand As the "Point of View" of) Consciousness (Itself) is not (yet) to Realize What Consciousness (Itself), or Its Ultimate Status, Is, but this first stage (or part) of the "Perfect Practice" is a matter of Being (or Standing) in the Obvious and (Obviously) Right Disposition or Native Attitude, As Consciousness (Itself) in (apparent) Free relationship to experience.
To Be Consciousness (Itself) in (apparent) relation to (rather than identical to) all that is (apparently) seeming to be the conditional self (or ego-"I") is to Stand As Consciousness, Freely Witnessing the body-mind, and (Thus) no longer mechanically bound by a presumption of identity, rather than (apparent) relatedness, in the context of the body-mind.
The body-mind is what you call "I."
Consciousness (or attention-consciousness) as the body-mind is "Narcissus"* the separate and separative ego (or self-contraction), identical to experience.
In the state of identification with the body-mind, attention-consciousness (and, apparently, Consciousness Itself) is a subject suffering from the absurd presumption that it is identical to its own object.
Consciousness (Itself) is inherently and always already Most Prior to experience.
Even Consciousness (Itself), Witnessing conditional experience (and even Witnessing the functional witness, or attention-consciousness, itself), is always already and only (and only apparently) related to experience, and, therefore, the (inherently Perfect) Witness-Consciousness is never an expression, result, container, servant, or prisoner of experience.
Consciousness (Itself) is inherently Free of the implications or effects of the body-mind and the apparent cosmos of conditional Nature.
Even the (inherently Perfect) Witness-Consciousness (Itself) is not Itself un-Happy, afraid, sorrowful, depressed, angry, hungry, lustful, thoughtful, threatened by bodily mortality, or implicated in the alternately pleasurable (or positive) and painful (or negative) states of the body, of the mind, and (altogether) of conditional Nature.
*"Narcissus" is a key symbol of the un-Enlightened individual as a self-obsessed seeker, enamored of his or her own self-image and egoic self-consciousness.
He is the ancient one visible in the Greek "myth," who was the universally adored child of the gods, who rejected the loved-one and every form of love and relationship, who was finally condemned to the contemplation of his own image, until, as a result of his own act and obstinacy, he suffered the fate of eternal separateness and died in infinite solitude.
