Waking Up
“Anything
we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness,
making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most
mysterious aspect of our lives.”
Max
Velmans & Susan Schneider (The Blackwell Companion to
Consciousness)
Thoreau, when he went to
the woods of Walden Pond, was conscious of the wildlife around him
and wrote in his journal, “Why should just these sights and
sounds accompany our life? Why should I hear the chattering of
blackbirds—why smell the skunk each year?” It was the
beginning of his discovery that the year is a predictable circle.
Seasons come and go, and signs are all around us to signal the
passage from one to another. Often, pairs of birds return to the same
tree to nest year after year. We see the same species in our area;
not parrots or condors in Alabama, but wrens and cardinals and
mockingbirds. Thoreau's revelation went like this: “For the
First time I perceive this spring that the year is a circle—I see
distinctly the spring arc thus far. It is drawn with a firm line.”
(The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Journal) This awareness
came about in the middle of the 19th century; it was
certainly not that spring had never come before, only that Thoreau
was now conscious of it.
You may be surprised that
Thoreau's awareness of nature's cycles came as late as it did. Human
consciousness is spotty, with some people waking, and others, not.
There has been a relatively recent explosion of knowledge, especially
scientific knowledge, leading to such complex discoveries as the
structure of DNA and the importance of brain chemistry. But,
knowledge and consciousness are not the same thing, and the evolution
of both has been uneven across the human spectrum. Consciousness has
not kept pace with the information avalanche of the 20th
and 21st century.
Consciousness ranges from
sound asleep (unconscious), to dream sleep (consciousness shifts when we wake); to being self-aware by way of the five senses
(I-me-mine); to being aware that within us, there is both an
identified “me,” and a presence or intelligence that observes; to
being aware that the individual “me” is part of an interconnected
whole; to being one with that whole, or part of a universal
consciousness with no degree of separation. Some of us experience
that oneness sporadically, but not consistently. I like to think
we're making progress, but judging from my own struggling
consciousness, it may not be fast enough.
Increasing consciousness
is the responsibility of each and every human being. Getting beyond our
self-identification and personal interests is essential to the survival of our species on planet Earth. We have access at all times from
birth to death to that presence within, the soul/spirit, the watcher,
that is able and willing to lead us to consciousness if we will allow
it. All we have to do is wake up, and ask for guidance.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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