Conscious or Possessing Consciousness?

We are conscious, or if you rather, it is thought that we have a conscious self possessing consciousness. We understand it either way; we are conscious or our self is conscious. While one is more general and the other more specific or detailed, the two expressions represent distinctively different perspectives. We identify with either perspective.

Also as with the first, we’re looking at things subjectively, as an observer experiencing awareness. With the latter we’re looking at things objectively, ignoring the observer and considering conscious as if our awareness were something distinctly outside of us like an attribute or possession of self.

To use another metaphor, Let’s consider going to the movies and watching the latest cinematic production. While we can talk about how our hearts beat faster at the scary parts and how it felt as if we were right there in the action. We can also reflect upon watching the movie and interplay of characters and the drama of all. We can reflect that we were at the theater observing the movie and talk of our personal experience as we participated in viewing. We can even see ourselves as observing ourselves observing the movie thinking about what we felt. Then, again, we can even mentally reflect that we are each present in front of a computer screen visualizing yourself, observing yourselves in the theater observing the enacted drama and reflecting upon the various perspectives of engagement.

Now I have a confession to make, with every attempt to describe the subjective experiences above, I am forced to express those subjective experiences objectively as something outside.  The very act of articulating a description requires objectification, for only objects can be described and considered more fully. To describe an experience, requires that the experience be objectified.

Emotions, feelings and experiences, while very personal, require the perspective of a personal object ‘self’ experiencing the emotion, feeling or experience in order to have identification, description, analysis and discussion.  Subjectively you simply feel or experience events. To describe or analyze the subjective feelings or subjective experience requires objective projection; the taking of an object self perspective.

While I haven’t reflected upon every possible expression of the subjective, with all I have reflected upon, each must be considered as something external to observation and observer before a description can be expressed. While you might reflect that we can express the subjective by describing its effects (ie; the joy of the experience made me smile), such effects are still separate from their subjective cause. We’ve simply used reflective projection in providing the description.

In fact, the very word reflection is at just a metaphor, or symbolic projection forced outside of the observer for the purpose of observation. We all know a mirrors reflection is NOT the self in front of the mirror. Neither is our minds reflection that we stand in front of the mirror.

Identification of your true being is not an easy task.  Exploration and discovery of self identification may consume your life time and still not graduate beyond projections and reflections. Self exploration may actually be the essence of what constitutes our existence as individual beings.

Probably the closest anyone has ever come to expressing the subjective self is found in the words Moses recorded as having heard spoken by God; “I AM that I am” seen in Exodus 3:13.

We are able to identify with either perspective because we are able and really quite adapt at mentally twisting or objectifying our subjective perspective. We use mental constructs like childrens block toys. We construct objective realities of what we subjectively perceive and experience as we contemplate their fuller meaning and value.

Our True reality is subjective beingness. We exist in a fuller reality, a context where our I am is conscious. Such subjective beingness is often objectively identified for description purposes as our inner being or inner self. The terms are merely symbols used for describe and contrast of our subjective and objective perspectives.

The reality of I am is not confined to physical reality, yet it encompasses or projects the forms known in physical reality when ever we consciously seek or intend to identify and describe the subjective experience for greater understanding. We commence identification first by deciding where our experience exists, where it doesn’t exist, where it begins and ends. Identification follows the path of deciding boundaries and defining limits, discerning a difference between self and non-self and making decisions as to what we believe true or untrue of this experience and believe of the greater context within which the experience is seen to have being or reality.

From the earliest decision to psychological focus upon identification and defining of subjective experience, the inner psychological process psychically or mentally objectifies the subjective experience. 

The use of metaphor and analogy aids our identification and extends our understanding.  By using metaphor and analogy, we greatly extend the scope of understanding. We’ve become quite adept at mentally creating analogous mental constructions and soon recognize we have preferred metaphors that bring greater understanding.

By limiting our exploration to those metaphors that provide the greatest insights, we optimize the discovery of value sought in our identification and description effort. It should be obvious that using the inference of metaphor and analogy and recognizing some metaphors are better than others, we have purposefully chosen to consider our subjective experiences with cognitive bias limiting cognition to the perspectives of the mental constructs of linear time, space and what we normally think of as causality (cause and effect, before and after, recognition and realization).

Our true reality is best referred to as our I am subjective reality. But here once again, to describe it I had to express it objectively, as an attribute of the possessor object inferred by the word ‘Our’. 

All subjective realities, the only realities we actually know, are constructed from that which we are predominantly focused and have decided to believe of what we observe with that focus.

We intentionally choose what we observe. That is; by our intentions we choose what to give our attention to. We discern a preference and chose from all that we could possibly give our attention. In choosing, we identify what can be evaluated as real or not. Our personal discerning of a preference provides the bias that makes our personal consciousness unique.

By our decisions of what to give attention we limit our options for what can be considered real. It is impossible to believe something is real that we are not consciously aware of. This is true whether we give attention to focus upon an abstract concept or physically material object. With intentions, we therefore decide what can be considered real or not and the limits of reality.

Existential reality is mentally formed of our decisions as to what is real and reflect our bias toward the subjective interpretations we choose to give attention in establishing or forming our conclusions about reality.

As easily as we are able to objectively visualize what we subjectively decide to focus upon, innate abilities within our fuller self form the physical and material reality of our observable universe. I believe our intentional focus determines the quality of physical experience in terms of value objectively identified for description purposes as value fulfillment. And if you can accept it, the quality “I AM” being within the fuller context of subjective reality. To express this in yet another way: I am saying, not only do our decisions about what to focus upon form objective reality, but they also determine the form or value quality of our being’s existence in subjective reality.

We view our physical existence with a twisted point of view, from a twisted perspective. Observing  in the context of our twisted perspective, we purposefully experience physical reality quite differently than the subjective only. By twisted, I do not mean our perspective is perverted in a bad kind of way. Rather it is that we purposely perceive our being using metaphor and analogy and thereby as having an existence quite different from the natural subjective perspective of our greater “I AM” selves. Through the twists of mental constructs we experience greater value fulfillment in both contexts.

As long as we associate knowing our being through the analogy of the physical universe, we will continue to use the objective mental structures of linear time, space and causality. Yet, we know such are actually just the latest camouflage or clothing we prefer to dress up in as we pretend new adventures.

Believeit to Realizeit!

Notes

“Because of the simultaneous nature of time, beliefs can be changed in the present moment. There is no need to search endlessly into the past of this life or any other, for the ‘original’ causes for beliefs. Making a change in the present of a certain kind will automatically alter all beliefs ‘across the board,’ so to speak.”
Seth, The Way Toward Health, Chapter 10, 6/10/84

Exodus 3:13-15 (NASB) 
13  Then Moses said to God, “Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you.’ Now they may say to me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say to them?”
14  God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.'”
15  God, furthermore, said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is My name forever, and this is My memorial-name to all generations.

Self

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