Do we live in an inanimate world? Or do we live in a world that’s alive?
This is a key point of non-duality. With easy questions like this it is easy to flip our perception from individual duality to nature consciousness. We can do this to understand how we got into the mental mess we seem to be in these days.
In this article, I’m going to talk about the difference
between animate and inanimate so we can experience how our brains were designed to live within a speaking, conscious earth. I’m going to talk about how much of the problem with our perception is the language that we’ve been taught. The language that chatters away in your head. It defines everything as things rather than the relationship between things.
If you take a moment to look with curiousity you’ll notice that in order to have a relationship with a rock, the rock has to
be as alive as you are, right?
It's obvious when it's pointed out. Yes?
What would it be like if we saw the world as living, breathing, knowledgeable consciousness? How would that make our inner life different?
So let’s get started.
We have been taught that we live in an inanimate world. We have been taught to believe that we live in a world where only people are conscious.
This is
what we’re taught.
First of all, we’re taught that consciousness is this thing that’s just in our heads. It’s separate from the rest of reality. Then we spend untold amounts of energy trying to figure out what consciousness is and what our consciousness is. We’re working with an incorrect assumption at the very base of the question.
It’s easy to turn that around.
Use your own experience. Do we really live in a world where only human beings
are conscious? Almost everyone who owns a dog would argue that their dog has consciousness. People who own a cat. People who have spent any time in nature.
One of the good examples is the little squirrels that run through the trees around your house, assuming you got some squirrels and you got some trees. They’re chattering away. They seem like they know what they’re doing, right?
Take it down even further, like, what about ants? We all get to experience
ants. They scurry around. Are they really completely unconscious?
Now stop for a second… particularly if you’re arguing in your head with me.
“But,” you say. “We’re talking about god consciousness, and human beings have a better consciousness than anything else!”
Do we really? And this is what’s so cool about non-duality studies. When we are examining we don’t have to take anything on face value.
We don’t have to be told a thing. We
can stop and discover it for ourselves. We’re kept so distracted in our world that we don’t ever stop and notice what this consciousness we think we have is.
What is it? Let’s have a brief little pause. Experience it for yourself.
What is your consciousness?
You probably couldn’t come up with a whole lot of ways to describe it. And that, right there, is one of the most dynamic truths of non-duality.
You experienced it.
It was hard to describe, but most important, description was not necessary.
One of the problems we’re experiencing in this modern world is that our modern languages describe everything as things. And strangely enough, in this article, we’ve been doing exactly that, using English to describe things as things, rather than describe the relationship between things.
Let’s rewind. At the beginning of this article, I was talking about consciousness. We paused and
experienced consciousness.
What is consciousness like? That was our moment of pausing to see what consciousness is like. Let’s do it again.
Pause…
You can feel what it’s like. But I was using the word consciousness as a noun, as a thing. What is your consciousness like? Now instead, imagine if our language was more ripe with words expressing the relationship between things.
Stop again for a quick moment and notice that
your consciousness does not exist as a thing. It exists only in relationship with something bigger. That is why mystical knowledge describes consciousness as a mystical thing, because it doesn’t have edges.
Feel it again, and you’ll notice that your consciousness does not exist by itself. It’s more like a void of knowing. It’s more like a vast field of knowing.
Consciousness.
Notice also how quickly you can experience it. It doesn’t take a
lot of time or effort.
So if your consciousness is the relationship between you and everything else, and if it doesn’t need language, if it doesn’t require English in order to understand things, then what’s the relationship with you and all the things that you see and hear?
I’ll leave you with that.
