I think we’re entering territory that’s going to get more and more difficult to describe.
From what I feel and hear from others, we’re beginning to see changes in our consciousness and that can lead to situations that are difficult to delineate.
Let me give you an example of a process like that.
If I were to say to you: “You lifted yourself up by your own bootstraps,” how does one do that?
To lift you need a stable platform. How can you lift that which provides the very foundation for lifting? That’s what makes the image dramatic and engaging. Consciousness processes are like that – difficult to describe but very engaging.
In awareness workshops, it was a common exchange to hear one person who’d been through a lot of them say to a newcomer: “Don’t head-trip.” What they were saying was that to describe a consciousness process conceptually would prove an impediment. Staying “in your head” would effectively have one miss what was happening, which was a body thing or a heart thing.
We describe linear and dualistic things conceptually. We talk about going from point A to point B. We talk about more and less, up and down, back and forth.
But a consciousness process like enlightenment or transformation, for instance, is a discontinuity. One minute you’re at point A and the next minute you’re at point B, without any recollection of how you covered the distance.
So the advice was just to “be with” the process – to allow, to accept, to surrender, etc.
I’m experiencing a gentle expansion of consciousness, of love, of joy. It’s like a flower unfolding. I suppose I could talk about flowers unfolding but I can’t measure the effect, or give a location in which it’s happening, etc.
That’s probably why empiricists – those who believe only what they can see – have made of consciousness the last frontier of study, so to speak. Many consciousness processes are “verifiable only by me.”
But consciousness processes are interesting and enjoyable because they’re happening right here, inside of me. They’re very impactful, which mental processes are often not. Mental processes can be dry and flavorless, but consciousness processes are full of sap and vitality.
At some point we may have to create a whole new vocabulary, new communication conventions, etc., because the old way of speaking about things won’t prove useful any longer. It’ll need to be a process language rather than a structural language.
Just as we talked about “vasanas” during the period in which we were clearing, and it took a while for people to know what was being discussed, who knows what language we’ll need to invent to cover this next chapter? I think it’ll be another challenge in a very challenging time overall.