Perry J
14-03-2011, 06:48 PM
I often get the question: What is consciousness? How do you raise that?
I use to answer with an episode from my early childhood, I think I was five. I had a friend who was also five then...
The scenery was as follows: We had both learned from our parents what is "right" and what is "left".
And we sat outside on the lawn, at the opposite of each other. And we had a quarrel that heated up very fast, because I pointed at my left and shouted at my friend (who more and more became an enemy): "LEFT IS IN THAT DIRECTION!!"
"NO!, my friend shouted back: "LEFT IS IN THAT DIRECTION!!!" and he pointed at my right.
So we continued for some minutes, and it became really outrageous, we were ready to almost kill each other!
But then an old man came by, he stood there for a while, with a great smile on his lips...
"You are both correct", he said. "And you are both wrong".
I remember this for the rest of my life, how hard it was to transcend this situation and see it from a distance, where it stood clear as day that his right was my left and vice versa. How hard it was to do as the man told me: "Be in your friends position and tell me what is right and left!".
And I will remember to my death day how it felt to realize it. This was not an intellectual insight, but I raised my consciousness, and the intellectual gain came from it. Everything just blew away!
We were helplessly closed within ourselves, catched in a conflict, unable to see the situation! The only important thing was the enemy I had in front of me - and he felt the same.
This was our first encounter with the human ego.
Raising consciousness is to recognize such spheres of false identification - mental boxes - so you transcend them, then they just blow away and you are in a much wider sphere. In the childhood this becomes much more pronounced than ever in the adulthood. But the principle is the same...
I wonder what had happened had not that man shown up. And what he meant with "You are both wrong" (but I think I know that answer...)
I use to answer with an episode from my early childhood, I think I was five. I had a friend who was also five then...
The scenery was as follows: We had both learned from our parents what is "right" and what is "left".
And we sat outside on the lawn, at the opposite of each other. And we had a quarrel that heated up very fast, because I pointed at my left and shouted at my friend (who more and more became an enemy): "LEFT IS IN THAT DIRECTION!!"
"NO!, my friend shouted back: "LEFT IS IN THAT DIRECTION!!!" and he pointed at my right.
So we continued for some minutes, and it became really outrageous, we were ready to almost kill each other!
But then an old man came by, he stood there for a while, with a great smile on his lips...
"You are both correct", he said. "And you are both wrong".
I remember this for the rest of my life, how hard it was to transcend this situation and see it from a distance, where it stood clear as day that his right was my left and vice versa. How hard it was to do as the man told me: "Be in your friends position and tell me what is right and left!".
And I will remember to my death day how it felt to realize it. This was not an intellectual insight, but I raised my consciousness, and the intellectual gain came from it. Everything just blew away!
We were helplessly closed within ourselves, catched in a conflict, unable to see the situation! The only important thing was the enemy I had in front of me - and he felt the same.
This was our first encounter with the human ego.
Raising consciousness is to recognize such spheres of false identification - mental boxes - so you transcend them, then they just blow away and you are in a much wider sphere. In the childhood this becomes much more pronounced than ever in the adulthood. But the principle is the same...
I wonder what had happened had not that man shown up. And what he meant with "You are both wrong" (but I think I know that answer...)