The conscious Grael

Any investigation into the esoteric Grael tradition soon realises that to seek the Grael was to know ones self. And in that, raising ones own awareness of the universe and our place in it. A full-blown raised consciousness is also known as enlightenment. Available in a flash of light, or mystic vision, to a fortunate few. But for most people that travel that path, it's achieved by a lifetime's worth of dedicated practice to awaken these parts of our personality. That such practice is repeatable and teachable is a subject in itself.

What is consciousness?

Awareness, awakeness, discernment, the ability to discern. Mind, mindfulness. The ability to respond (response-ability)

What it's not

The brain (a perception filter). Perception, intellect, intellectual, intelligentsia. And certainly not the post-modernist Intellectual Yet Idiot.

Raising consciousness

A question from an excellent Taikwondo instructor reminded me of consciousness again.

The question was : "How do we focus in Taikwondo?".

The correct answer is :
Focus the eyes
Focus the mind
Focus the body

All of which is raising consciousness, and when we're focused, time slows down time. Like in all the great martial arts films, the baddies flail around at high speed, achieving nothing, while the good master is serene, moving slowly and in control.

Similar events are reported for Tai Chi practitioners:

She mentions a number of occasions where she was able to catch bulbs, books and other things that people dropped before they hit the ground. Everyone commented on how fast she was. She however said that she saw everything moving slowly. So all she had to do was to move a little bit faster and that was it. So her practice of tai chi gave her the ability to manipulate her perception of time.

Is there a corollary in there somewhere? Passing time is a mark of lack of focus or consciousness? Time certainly passes fastest while we are asleep or unconscious. We use the phrase "asleep" to mean unaware or dull-witted. As in, we are unaware of many events in the world, even when they happen in front of us. This is most often a measure of the type of personality of the non-observer. We notice events that are relevant to our personality type. Events not relevant to the enabled-parts of each person's personality do not resonate or strike us as having any relevance at all. Putting it another way, events relevant to disabled-parts of our personality just go unnoticed or get ignored.

De facto, expanding our personality will increase our awareness of the world around us, and raise our consciousness.

Some people think meditation is sitting still and doing nothing. But check it out. The process is all about stilling the mind. Getting the stupid tittle-tattle chatter and noise to stop. So that we can focus, and be single-minded, faster and more responsive. At which point, we are not an idle observer any more, watching a soap opera. We own the opera.

We're all moving through the uni-verse. It's only while we're asleep we appear to be stationary.

Sometimes I meet people after a few years apart. They often say "oh, you haven't changed a bit". The little-ego part of me feels slightly insulted. Have I not grown as a person or learnt anything since we last met? The larger-ego embraces them.

Next : The CAB model of personality