WHAT PURPOSE DOES IT SERVE TO EXPAND OUR CONSCIOUSNESS? WHERE SHOULD I FOCUS MY CONSCIOUSNESS?
An absurd question that can awaken those most deeply asleep. An answer that can confuse the smartest among us.
These questions do not make much sense so any answer will not make much sense either, but a lot can be gained from the attempt to answer them; It can even be a transformative act to open yourself to this search for an answer. Many people dare to ask these kinds of questions, but not many want to hear a response addressed to the one who is asking the question, because they run the risk of ending up confused.
Asking what consciousness is for or how to focus it is like asking me: For what reason am I what I am? Where will I get to by being the way I am? When I ask myself these questions, I get into a labyrinth with no way out, because searching for utility or meaning leads us to a controlling and calculating part of us that wants to know and understand, but that blocks true exploration. Although no answer is found, the investigation itself can bring light and even awaken consciousness. Throughout time, questions which have been formulated from an open heart have brought great discoveries to those who trust; even questions that have no answers can guide you directly to the truth.
UNDERSTANDING THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
The first thing to understand is that expansion and consciousness are the same thing. Or said in a dual way: they are two sides of the same coin. Expansion is the outer face of consciousness, and consciousness is the inner face of expansion. Expansion unfolds in the infinity of non-space and consciousness in the eternity of non-time. Both are non-material and non-linear, therefore they do not belong to space or time, but they are the product of space-time being born; that is, they are beyond those who created them.
Expansion is dedicated to traveling from the singular and towards unity, while consciousness returns and remains waiting in duality. Expansion explores the infinity of the external and consciousness explores the eternity of the internal, together they form the romance of existence. They separate to meet again in the ecstasy of the orgasm of reconciliation. For this healing reunion to occur, consciousness must awaken to reconnect to its expansive face.
The sleeping human being cannot expand, but those who wake up have the possibility to do so, and with this to reconnect with the nature of the universe: to travel and get bigger.
When consciousness does not expand, it ceases to be. A dormant consciousness is a consciousness that has stopped traveling. But if consciousness expands it is creating light itself; creating amplitude, understanding and unconditional love everywhere, because it can hold everything. It is essentially inclusive, although when traveling it produces distance between all that exists. It creates distance, but it does not exclude. It separates us and leaves us alone and abandoned, trapped in the prison of finiteness and incomprehension; so that in search of a return we have to wake up.
People who have started an expansive journey from their consciousness, have had to experience a deep sense of existential abandonment, because it is the effect that is felt before there is a great understanding and consequent awakening. It is the existential anguish that comes before death. Right now, I am in Jerusalem, the city where a great teacher was crucified. This has connected me to the fact that Jesus felt abandoned just before he died, and he expressed it: Why have they abandoned me? Divinity had to abandon itself, and it seems that this is the law of understanding: the abandonment before the rebirth; I also had to abandon myself to understand the authentic existential state in which I found myself.
It took me 7 years to write this series of articles, and I just want to reveal to you a personal secret that I discovered in this process: it is possible to either evolve or to regress according to the attitude we adopt with the consciousness we have. Because it is in your consciousness where you can house and sustain any possible internal evolution. The awakening of consciousness is a possibility, not an obligation and, to my understanding, awakening depends on coming to understand certain key and essential situations of a life governed by the unconscious.
With this game of searching for answers, we can discover those keys to understanding circumstances that are limiting us and making us suffer.
Expansion goes very fast on the journey towards infinity, but consciousness is the stellar imprint left behind by this expansion, as if leaving behind the trace of where it comes from and where it is going, to give us a clue towards reunion; spreading infinite grains of the sand of consciousness so that within this material and dual reality the expansive potential of the spirit that inhabits us can be awakened.
When we wake up we can contemplate the wonderful stellar landscape of the path of consciousness. And if not, look up a starry night, there before your eyes you will be able to see it.
NO ANSWERS AND NO SENSE. ANY PROBLEM?
Expansion is consciousness’ way of being and existing; therefore, the questions arise: What is the purpose of expanding consciousness? or Where should I focus my consciousness? They lack an answer and therefore lack meaning. The only answer I can give is directly to those who ask them, understanding the search for usefulness that underlies these questions and that is projected to all the things that you want to experience. In this sense, people’s lives are controlled by speculation, calculations and control; they want to flow, but they do not want to let go; they want to be free but without abandoning what they think they are. For almost everyone everything needs to be “for” something, everything has to have some “end”, everything has to be focused on some “objective”, the “why” must never be absent. This human need to have to find utility, or to find some benefit in everything, is a tremendous limitation that appears evidently in these questions, but they are also the springboard that can take us beyond that limitation.
Expansion is “the great universal phenomenon”. Space is expanding at great speed, therefore everything in existence is traveling towards that limitless expansion, without knowing why it is traveling or where it is going. If we had the possibility to ask an asteroid or a galaxy, “where are you going?” they would answer us “I DON’T KNOW!” That is why I propose that we ask ourselves more complex questions: Where are the confines of the cosmos? Why are we traveling to a destination we do not know? What sense can there be to make a trip in which we know that the path is without an end-point, and that there is neither origin nor end?
Many teachers have said: “THE PATH IS THE GOAL”. Trying to eliminate any future goal of your mind and focus on the here and now, without thinking about tomorrow or the goal; because every teacher who has already understood the extraordinary confusion that arises when pointing to the future, prefers to lead us to the here and now, so that we focus our attention in looking at every step we take. Those who try this, and sometimes achieve it, know that this brings peace and relief and that it focuses and connects us. But, there is another, more complex possibility.
THE COURAGE TO OPEN OURSELVES TO THE FUTURE AND TO EXPANSION
In a certain way, having our sight raised towards a future that has not yet arrived is a consequence of knowing that there is a path ahead and that many things can happen along the way; what we find difficult to understand is that the path is not real, because it does not come from anywhere or go anywhere, in reality there is no path. We can look backwards and forwards to see that there is neither before nor after, there is neither beginning nor end. But for our mind it is so complicated to understand this, that we need to create a linear model with stations that represents the passage through life. Hence, the question arises for many: At what point in my process am I? When in reality, there is no path and no stations to pass through. We need to locate ourselves, somehow, on an eternal path with some guiding signs; We need to relate to the surrounding environment within an infinite space to have some place to grab on to.
Being on a planet and inside a body with life is the representative figure of our spurious step through life. It is the way that we are able to locate ourselves on the material plane. The place where we live is so small, a planet so distant and almost invisible within the magnificence of the cosmos, that wanting to project ourselves towards what lies beyond is a tremendous effort; to leave the body, the mind or the planet means going out into the undefined future, as if we were going on an adventure that will, in every moment, surprise us, surpass us and overwhelm us, because even everything we see as real is relative.
The greatest of human resources is unknown and is related to our ability to overcome. In fact, everything that exists in the universe has an expansive code encrypted, an order that says: “GO BEYOND, GROW, EXPLORE, EXPAND, TRAVEL, ARRIVE …” a compassionate order to penetrate the future not yet defined. We humans have decoded that order, but from a mental nucleus that has produced neurosis, especially as a need for material progress, to have everything controlled; but we have also obeyed it by orientating ourselves towards the exploration and investigation of everything that surrounds us. That is why we have created so many sciences and disciplines of study; we have launched ourselves into outer space and submerged ourselves in the depths of the oceans, we have created instruments of observation for things big and small, but we have not yet given due importance to the observation of our own consciousness, which is our essence that has been lost or forgotten. The science of the internal is the subject that humans have not yet passed.
At some point a fear of freedom arose that has enslaved us within the boundaries of comfort and has made us stay within the limits of this slavery. To expand beyond what we can seemingly reach is freedom, but this is madness for our settled and established mind. Hence the need to find some use to expand consciousness, because if it has no use, or if what it offers us threatens what we know, it will not interest us. The unconscious is always ready to operate the safety device.
From the point of view of the conditioned mind there is no benefit in expanding consciousness, there is even a great prejudice towards it, in the sense of that lack of control that can occur, because there is no mind that is not stirred up by the magnificence of consciousness. When consciousness expands, the mind breaks down. The human mind only has a tiny germ of divine consciousness, but it is asleep, in a state of potentiality. As long as it does not awaken, the unconscious is assured of its reign.
Both what we are unconscious of – the content- and the unconscious itself – the system that manages the contents by converting them into imperative orders – have been born as a result of a sleeping consciousness. With so much repressed material, added to so much conditioning imposed from the time we were children, consciousness has fallen asleep, and consequently the unconscious has expanded inward, exerting great power over human life from the shadows, power which it does not want to lose. The mind is guided by that unsatisfied and unsuccessful unconscious that can lose control when it comes into contact with divine consciousness. That is the risky part (for illusion and sleepiness) but it is also the door to healing or liberation.
There is free will in human beings that allows us to choose whether to accompany the rhythm of consciousness or stay stagnant under the domain of the unconscious. Expansion does not occur within human reality because of the very way of life we have adopted. That model, style and project of life that we have chosen, on the one hand confuses us and makes us suffer, because we do not understand what has happened for us to become so dissatisfied, but on the other hand we have a great need to discover what there is beyond the limits that we have imposed on ourselves. The conflict is served on a platter to be consumed by humans.
Consciousness flows in the expansion of space. The spirit that dwells in it is eternal. Faced with eternal time, infinite space is necessary. It is impossible for a human to understand infinity and eternity, but if we manage to have a small glimpse of such greatness, we can come to understand what life is and the opportunity it gives us. That is why I affirm that comprehension cannot be directed at anything, nor at anyone, because it is guided by consciousness which is objective, that is to say that it has no object or objective.
Traveling to eternity and to infinity does not require direction or meaning. Therefore, there is no use, no reason for being, no meaning nor anything that we can gain in this extraordinary experience of life, nothing more than opening ourselves from the heart to mystery.
Alberto José Varela