Consciousness

I don't know if the creation of this page marks the end/failure of my Experiment in Happiness.  I think, ultimately, if we are still here, and still asking/searching, it ain't over yet.  However, we have experienced many months of struggle and difficulty now, and I am hard pressed to justify events (ie, it's for the best, it was meant to be, bla bla...)  Pushing 5 decades of life, and watching everything  that I care about crumble around me, one by one, what feels like repeated punishment for no wrong doing that I can fathom, my faith in an all loving existence runs low.  Further, and ironically, I find myself instinctively looking for the reason for every sour event, expecting to find a reason why it was all for the best, in the end.  This is either a habit learned sometime in my childhood, or some perpetual inner positivity, constantly projecting on every experience, attempting time and again to paint the pain with loving caring colours.  If it is the first, it will pass.  If the second, well, I embrace love and positivity, even in a cruel world.  If such a world cannot negate an otherwise positive soul, that is a good thing.  It also points to the fact that maybe we are not this world.

So with all the turmoil around me, a wounded soul in a wounded world (especially now, where humanity at large seems to be suffering globally, caused or triggered by covid events), pain is in the air, and I find myself thinking again and again about one of my first posts ever: 'Our Place Here', in 'Thoughts'.  Still an outstanding question, and arguably one of the pivotal questions of our physical existence, it is one that demands attention.  To the best of our understanding we exist in a body, in a world that consumes itself, a world in which we literally eat each other to survive.  When I say 'each other' I mean all living beings.  This basic condition to life is in contrast to any experience of caring, sharing, and love.  It  breeds despair and fear, feeding ongoing aggression for survival, despite any natural loving inclination to the contrary.  Nothing good can come of a world that perpetually consumes itself, not when the condition to our existence is anchored in us inhabiting it, in this horror-show encapsulating our awareness.

So why from here to the subject of consciousness?  After contemplating oneness, spirituality, afterlife, the before as well as the after, greater expanded existence, etc, etc, I must conclude that although we know nothing of our true being in the big picture (where do we come from, where are we going, transformation, time and space Vs infinite existence, and all that), our current existence as we experience it is anchored in our consciousness.  We may be affected by infinite elements and aspects of ourselves that we are unaware of, physical and otherwise, but ultimately, what we live and know is what we witness, our conscious self being that witnesses.  Anything else may very well exist and affect us now and always, on every level of being, but we are ignorant to it, partially if not completely, and as such, are rendered unable to help ourselves or liberate ourselves from the pain, in effect, inflicted on us by our current existence.  In other words, goodbye free will, hello hell.

Even as a child I had no patience for lies.  Deceit, self or otherwise is a waste of time.  One thing worse than no hope, is false hope.  We do not need to live in a Greek tragedy.  At least let us  see  things for what they are.  But here's the thing, what are they?  I have no idea.  But at the moment it  seems to me that any answer that aims to nullify or ignore our conscious experience is a waste of time, a lie.  Because it is our conscious being that is suffering, that needs help, that is raising the questions in the first place.  Does the solution lie in changing things?  Is that even possible?  Is the only other solution simply to exit?  (For those of you who believe in re-incarnation, I don't fall into that group, one less thing to worry about... lol ).  Or can it take a different direction.  All that I have learned in the past few years has pointed to internal and external perception of experiences being the key, rather than the experiences themselves.  I'll take it one further: is it about EXPANDING OUR CONCIOUS AWARENESS, to perceive more than what we are perceiving now, and I don't mean a glimpse, I mean ongoing.  In affect, perceiving a different reality.  By doing so, creating a reality in our minds that is different to that we have already created?  Or rediscovering a truth inherent in us, forgotten?  Part of me  tells me if this is a natural part of us, it shouldn't be so hard to return to.  So, what are the things we perpetually return to?  That is an important question that may help us discover CONCIOUSLY who we really are.  Or, it may just be another lie.