Destined to Evolve Our Consciousness

So there's been an increasing awareness of people who look different from the mainstream culture. And so for many, for a long, long time, they felt disadvantaged and people sometimes made fun of them. And gradually empathy grew in humans. And so all the people who did not belong for a long time because there was this exclusivity in the mainstream culture, many of them can now have come to a place of greater acceptance of who they are on the level of form. And that's a wonderful thing. Gay people, people, racial minorities and so on, they come to an acceptance and appreciation of their form identity. And that's a wonderful thing. So that was a good movement. More consciousness has come in. But the ego is there. And although that's a good thing, if you exclusively identify with whatever form it is of the form that you are temporarily, if there's exclusive identification, there's always ego that comes in. So acceptance of who you are on the level of form is wonderful. Complete identification with who you are on the level of form is the ego. So you need to see the difference between accepting and becoming comfortable and appreciating who or what you are on the level of form. But if you are completely identified, it means you are unaware of your essence identity. If you are unaware of your essence identity, you don't never even had glimpses of your essence identity, then you are still completely trapped. And you're not just comfortable accepting of your thoughts form identity. No. You then have to create boundaries, and the ego does that. Then it makes others into enemies of yours. The ego likes to do that. So you always have to be very vigilant. Something that is a good thing can be used by the ego for its own purposes. And then the good thing is no longer a good thing. Nothing that is good. Now, if you have more of what is good, that's even better. And then you add more to what is good, that's even better. One glass of water is good. Two glasses of water a day is better. Three glasses of water a day is even better. Four glasses of water a day is even better than that. But at some point you reach a point where it's not better anymore, it's worse. True change cannot happen if humans, if you attempt to bring about true change in society without addressing the fundamental question of who am I and who are you? At a deeper level, without that realization in human beings, there cannot be true change, only permutations of ego. The fundamental questions who am I? So you can identify as male, female, something in between, that's all fine, white, black, yellow, whatever. That's Fine. Is that who you essentially are? No, essentially I am not a man or I'm not a woman on that, on the level of presence. There's no, there's no gender on the level of presence, there's no race on the level of presence, there's no age on the level of presence. I'm not young and I'm not old as presence. I don't have a history as presence. I'm not a victim. Lovely. The ego loves being a victim. So be careful of that. People that see themselves. The moment you complain about another person or situation, the ego is theirs, the victim, me. And it feels bigger. And then you have. The danger is you have entire groups. It is true that there have been many groups that were suppressed or victimized. But the danger is if you continue, if you are a member of a particular group, if you continue to derive your sense of identity from being a victim, if you continuously do, you're still trapped in ego, you're not liberated and your power victim is ultimately powerless. But the ego believes that's power. So the. At first you practice in non problematic situations you practice being the presence. Not having all these moments when you don't add thought. So you walk around looking at the lights and objects. And it's an amazing thing when you are trapped in thinking. The entire sense perceived world that continuously surrounds you is just a peripheral phenomenon because most of your attention is trapped in thought. So you are unaware of the miraculous nature of the sense perceived universe around you. And the moment you give it your complete attention without. And you can only do that without adding thought to your perception. Every little thing is alive and miraculous and beautiful. Perhaps this is what they try, I don't know. In so called conceptual art, when you go into an art gallery and somebody and there you have an exhibit, it tells you who the artist is. And all you see is on. There's a. On the floor or on a table is an everyday object, a can of beans. And then it tells you the name of the artist. I believe that's called conceptual art. And you're lucky if the can of beans. It could be something worse. Many art galleries have these exhibits and of course some people go in and say, hmm, interesting. I wonder what he's trying to say. There's a message here, can't quite get it. And some people are so knowledgeable about art they have a. They can write a long piece about this can of beans and why it's there and what the artist's intention is by putting it there. And you would have to ask the artist what the intention was. If it is an artist. But let's just see on the. If it means anything, if it's anything significant, then it would be drawing the viewer's attention to something ordinary so that the viewer becomes aware of the extraordinariness of an ordinary object. If it works like that, then I can accept it. It might have a purpose, but then I would not be able to write very much about except what I've just said. So it would really take your attention away from the movement of thought into thoughtless perception. So that would be conceptual art. Then I mentioned a couple of times this phenomenon that arose on YouTube of people. It's now thousands and thousands of people are doing it. Of people who take an ordinary object and handle it and touch it and make noises with it. The most boring YouTube videos you can possibly imagine. So they might go and have something like this. Now the amazing thing is they got some of them get hundreds of thousands of views. So there is a longing. They are not called spiritual, but the good ones have a spiritual dimension to them. There is a longing in the collective for that kind of thoughtless perception, because it does. By looking at those videos, you either fall asleep and many people do, they use it in order to go to sleep. Or you enter that state of presence and you suddenly become aware that a simple object has an aliveness and a beauty that you didn't know before. So when somebody goes and my drink. And people watch that and some of these are 30 minutes long. I watched some of them myself, but I watch them for anthropological reasons. Well, not really. I watch them because I'm looking for is there in the background something spiritual and people don't even know it. The people are watching it. There's a longing in humans to be free of the incessant noise of their minds. And those videos that have they called ASMR for some reason. Autonomous Sensor Meridian Response. Some people claim that produce tingles in their bodies. But many others just watch because they stop thinking while they watch. Most people who watch them probably fall below thought. And a few, especially for the good videos, probably rise up into presence. And you become aware that an ordinary thing can be extraordinary. It has an extraordinary presence. So if you haven't heard of it, look it up on YouTube. ASMR because it's become so popular. There are many bad ones, but somehow there's a self selecting process at work. And if you look at the number of views, the better ones have like a hundred thousand views or more, with the exception of some produced by young ladies who reveal aspect of their body while they are doing it. So that could be misleading. They're not necessarily good, but something that has arisen spontaneously. And there is a. There is a longing in humans to be free of the noise of the voice in the head. And of course, most humans believe the only way they can be free is by falling below thought. I want to go to sleep, but I can't sleep. So the. Whether it's conceptual art or those, those videos, there is a truth there, and that is the. The world of ordinary things is also extraordinary. The multiplicity of this universe that surrounds us, the multiplicity of life forms, of thought, things, of beings, is quite miraculous. And if we are continuously so absorbed in the thought processes that we are only peripherally aware of the aliveness of the world around us, then we are missing something really vital. And that's again, it's to do with being too absorbed in one's mind, made sense of self in that. And occasionally they say, oh look, it's a lovely flower. Oh, that's a nice sunset. Three seconds. But I have other problems to think about, more important things on my mind. I have a lot on my mind. Don't have time for sunsets, don't have time for beauty. What are you talking about, beauty? I've got problems. So look, practice it outside or indoors. There are two ways of looking around. One is choosing an object. And briefly, just wherever your gaze falls. Wherever your gaze falls upon whatever it might be for a moment, you look, and then there's something else you look at and there's something else. But as you look, there's a twofold awareness. One is the awareness of what you are looking at and you see it fully. The other is the awareness of the awareness without which you wouldn't be able to look. And that is your essential beingness. So the twofold nature of this act of perception. So I'm looking at. If I'm looking at you as a person, I'm looking. I'm aware of what I'm seeing. I'm also aware. I'm aware of how you look. I'm also aware of myself as the awareness. And because I'm aware of myself as the awareness, I am aware of more in yourself, in you, than the external appearance. I'm also aware of you as the conscious presence. That's the essence of who you are. And I can also do that when I look at a flower. There's more. One could say that everything that you perceive is a surface phenomenon. It's the surface of reality. And underneath your perceptions there is a vastness like the ocean. And whatever you're seeing is the surface of the ocean. So underneath that there's a vastness of energy formations. Ultimately the one consciousness expressing itself in these very short lived forms. And the deeper you go, the stiller it becomes. This is probably what Plato talked about, the ancient Greek philosopher, that there are ideas in the unseen realm. There's the world of what is translated as ideas. But that's not a good translation. He said before, things exist as a physical thing. They already exist on an unseen level in the world of consciousness. And then the consciousness manifests as something or someone. The universe manifests briefly as you, and as you become conscious. In you, it is the universe that is becoming conscious. You are not. I mean, you. You think you are a person. And of course, in conventional terms, you are a person. But ultimately you're not fascinated. It's absurd. What does it even mean? I mean, the word means a mask. Person comes from Latin. Persona means mask. I mean, you're not a mask, you're not a person. What are you? Who are you? You're not separate from the universe. So you are an expression of the universe. You haven't fallen into this universe from someone from somewhere. You've come out of this universe and then you go back into it, and then you come out again as something else. You die, you're born. What's this all about? And then you. And then you. Oh, that wasn't a very nice life. Oh, this one is better. But it doesn't last. So the one consciousness appearing as the multiplicity of beings. So you are the awareness of the universe. You are the consciousness of the universe. How could you not be? It.