Consciousness Is

Thank you nighthag. Your support is greatly appreciated as always.

Thank you MysteriousOne I am glad you found it useful. I hope you check out Slarty's hubs too he is a good guy.

Dear Melovy I am so happy to hear that you like this. It is just another way for me to express where I am right now which is always changing. I am never in the same place from day to day and I love that. I am also very happy to hear that you will check out Slarty's hubs because you are in for a real treat there. Thank you.

always exploring you are very good to read and comment on my hubs. I too learn from you and that is what makes the world go round.

Thank you W.B. Isley.I appreciate the comment. Thank you for visiting.

Thank you for taking the time to comment misty95

I love Slarty. I wish I didn't but I do!

Slarty says:

I feel as if I am now annoying you so I will refrain from a detailed rebuttal. However that you can not accept that I do not fear my feelings is rather odd. But I do see you why you might not trust my claim so I forgive you. ;)

SW answers:

No you are not annoying me at all and this is an example of you creating something that isn't real. I enjoy your rebuttals but will not always have the time to reciprocate in like manner. It would help if you concentrated on the key elements that are of interest and that will focus our discussion. I feel that we have a lot more in common than our communication might otherwise suggest but language is always the barrier. Words a themselves are symbols that we invest with our own energy and associations and so it is very easy to misunderstand or imagine someone means something that they don't.

There is one thing that I feel you have completely misunderstood and that is the poem is not about you. I merely answered your comments to expalin what my words meant in the poem and nothing to do with how I imagine you. I hope that is clearly understood. I am beginning to hear Carly Simon singing "You're So Vain" LOL

Slarty says:

I do like the fact that you decided to be a little passive aggressive, and that you so skillfully allude to the idea that am a neurotic. Very good. Most amusing, and completely off the mark, of course. ;)

SW says:

Once again Carly Simon is blaring in the background.LOL

I think the rest of your comment is based on the abovemisunderstanding and that I am not in any way trying to get at you or insult you covertly. I deal with neurotic people in my profession and I am referring to them and telling you that parts of my poem also refers to them. (Not you.)

I am an honest guy and though things can upset me I will tell you if they do as you have experienced in our very first communication in which I perceived Qwark to be offending hubbers. You are not upsetting me and I only wish I had the time to reply to all your very valid questions and comments.

By joking about divorce I am telling you in my own light hearted way please don't be offended if I don't always reply in as much detail as you do and if there is a delay it is due to my other commitments.

I have grown very fond of you very quickly and I look forward to hearing your ideas. Your hubs are superb and anyone reading them can glean so much knowledge and insight from them.

I would love you to take some of your hubs like the one Spirituality Explained https://hubpages.com/religion-philosophy/Spiritual and break it up and make a series of hubs explaining each phase of your journey in more detail. You have not done yourself justice there and I for one would be looking forward to reading the details of that quite amazing journey. The journey sounds like what Buddha must have had to go through on his journey to enlightenment and even he describes how terrifying it was toward the latter stages.

Finally I am a feeling thinking man and I try not to judge what either my thoughts or my feelings. In my professional life I deal all day with peoples' feelings and emotions and I spend most of my time dealing with the subconscious. Most of what I write is based on my own personal experiences and those of my clients. I hope that people may more fully appreciate feelings and emotions and the huge part the subconscious plays in our lives. at the end of the day I am a man warts and all and I do not claim to anything more than that. You too have a great day as mine is starting to close.

continued...

"We are afraid and hide behind ideas safe from feeling."

Slarty says:

Or hide in feeling, safe from the scrutiny of rational dissection. People love to live in fantasy. My ideal world would be to live in the book: Lord of the Rings. With elves and dwarfs and noble men. But it is not reality. Therefore we can not allow imagination or feeling to rule, or it will it bring us into worlds of delusion. So happier than others, I grant you. But still delusion.

But as long as I can keep imagination and reality separate, I can visit that place and bask in the strange and wonderful feelings, can still wake up to pay my electric bill.

SW clarifies:

There are many who hide from their feelings and seek solace in over analysing everything. These are the people who fear their feelings and they keep them at bay by counting the slates on roof tops when they are stopped at the traffic lights, count the paving stones as they walk and perform rituals and act compulsively as ways to run from feelings that are in constant pursuit. These people constantly proclaim the importance of keeping feelings under control for fear of disaster if they are allowed to run loose. Imagination is one thing and but what I refer to here is the world of the neurotic who hides from that which would ultimately free him of his neurosis.

"The activity distracts us from our pain."

These lines also refer to what I say above about the neurotic character.

Thank you Slarty, and now I am off to the lawyers to sign those divorce papers LOL!

Hi Slarty, I was just settling down to write a reply to your latest on your hub Exploring Time when I see your comment here. Do you do any work? Where do you get the time to write such thorough comments? Corresponding with you alone could cost me my marriage. My children are beginning to ask who the guy on the computer is. LOL

I will try to answer each point as honestly as I can.

"Consciousness is"

Slarty asks:

As in: it exists? Yes, but what is it? How does it work?

SW answers:

It is. Nothing more can be said. To attempt to do so is futile and will only result in more layers of illusion. That is why I say Consciousness and no more.

"Seek and you shall find"

Slarty says:

To be sure.

"In the act of looking we see"

Slarty asks:

By seeing do you mean understand? Seeing in and of itself does not mean we understand what we see.

"To create is to look for what we expect to see."

Slarty asks:

A lot more explanation is required to understand your meaning here.

SW answers:

An example of this is in the way scientists keep finding what they look for because the act of looking in some way causes the creation of what they look for. They go eureka we have found it until they realise that they still haven't found it all and go looking again for another say particle and this goes on ad infinitum. James Allen wrote a great book about how thoughts create reality and he explains the dynamic very well. Rhonda Byrne in her book the secret uses his ideas to explain the Law of Attraction. There is more to it than what these people say but that is a good place to start if you wish to understand what I mean by those words.

"The ego keeps our attention absorbed in illusion."

Slarty states:

It is good to break down the ego to the point that you understand it and can use it. Rid yourself of false pride and the illusion of an isolated self. Rid yourself of greed and a false sense of self importance.

In other words, rid yourself of the negative aspects of ego and delusions about yourself. But ego is you. So don't dump the baby with the bath water. Without ego there is no love. Love of self is the first step to being able love others.

SW clarifies:

My words simply mean that as long as you identify with any part of the illusion then you cannot be objective about what you observe or experience in this world. Your ideas about ego are no better or no worse than anyone else's because they are still ideas and as such are interesting just as mine may or may not be of interest to you. I have not said anything about throwing out the ego so I don't know why you said that. On the subject of love I am surprised that you would say "Without ego there is no love." This is like saying without a light bulb there is no electricity!

"Knowing is not feeling so the ego divides and conquers."

Slarty states:

Knowing is not feeling, but knowing is knowing what the feelings are about and how to come to terms with them. Ego divides when one does not know one's self.

SW comments:

Thinking about a feeling is like saying the menu tastes good. It is only by eating the food that you taste it. Reading and tasting are are not one and the same. In the same way knowing a feeling is not the same as feeling it and this seems to be something that we do not agree upon so I agree to disagree with you. For there is no more I can say about that.

The ego survives through division the way an amoeba reproduces asexually and also the way it presents opposites in order to maintain the illusion so experience happiness and sadness one requiring the other.

"We look at the world through a tiny window and proclaim reality."

Slarty comments:

Reality is. And yes we look through a tiny window at it and interpret it according to our understanding of it and of ourselves. Much of the time or interpretation is just imagination and does not reflect reality at all. Sometimes we have a revelation and see the patterns themselves for the first time. When that happens we become enlightened.

SW comments:

What we see with our eyes is determined by the frequency and wavelength of the waves picked up by the nerves in the retina. This means that our eyes are receptive to a very narrow band of wavelengths and so limits our view. Imagine everyone in the world woke up with eyes that were receptive to X-Rays or Gamma rays? We base so many of our judgements on what we see and my words highlight this.

"The frequency of the vibration determines the form so why tune in to fear?"

Slarty says:

To release fear one must bring it out into the open and confront it. Only then can you understand it and do something about it. Worry is useless. To worry about something you can do something about is needless. Do something about it. To worry when there is nothing you can do is useless. At that point you must simply accept.

Not to "tune into it" seems like running away from it and pretending it is not there. For it not to be there it must be resolved.

SW clarifies:

Electricity is readily available when we need it but to keep the lights on during the day makes little sense. Fear is readily available and can be conjured up at a moments notice. It is an essentail emotion in our survival and seeks to protect us when we are in danger but when the danger has passed we do not need to keep it turned on.

"We wake up in the morning and enter a different kind of sleep called life."

Slarty says:

I prefer to think of it as a state of confusion for most as they live on emotion rather than using it as a tool and trying to find reality with it.

SW says:

When you say live on emotion I take that to mean that they react rather than act. I am however unable to comprehend what you mean by using emotion as a tool. I say this because you are implying that emotion is in some way subservient to the intellect which uses it to KNOW reality. This comes across the way a male chauvinist would speak about women and I do not share your view here about emotion being used or manipulated by something as the intellect in comparison. When the emotions and logic are in conflict it is almost always the emotions that win. Why else do you thing the over weight person cannot walk past the freezer without eating something? Your emotions are as important a part of you as any other part of what you call you and is not subservient to any part either.

SW line of poetry:

"We go to bed at night and sleep between dreams we imagine as real."

Slarty says:

One has to, of course, understand that a dream is not reality and imagination does not always reflect reality. The imagination can be altered by what we eat and drink.

A stomach upset in a dream may become a knife in the stomach or a fall. But once we wake from the dream the truth emerges. We discover no knife in our belly, just pain from something we ate or a from a virus.

A dream may well tell you about reality but in metaphor without understanding what is really going on. But we dream in the middle of the day through imagination and flawed interpretation of what we feel and see.

SW clarifies:

Why does one, of course, understand that a dream is not reality? What you term reality is what you are seeing and experiencing in the brain. The brain is using electrical impulses from our senses to create what we see. So that tiny dark place in the back of your head where there is no light is seeing the reality you talk about! Hmmm...

So when you go to sleep and dream where are you seeing your dream images and are they created from different stuff to the images you say are real during your “waking” day? For me the drem world is a metaphor for what we call reality. Our sleeping and dreaming is telling us that we are indeed asleep and when we wake up in the morning we are simply waking up to another kind of dream.

"We are afraid and hide behind ideas safe from feeling."

Slarty says:

Or hide in feeling, safe from the scrutiny of rational dissection. People love to live in fantasy. My ideal world would be to live in the book: Lord of the Rings. With elves and dwarfs and noble men. But it is not reality. Therefore we can not allow imagination or feeling to rule, or it will it bring us into worlds of delusion. So happier than others, I grant

Thank you Ashantina.

Thank you Misty95 for your comment and expressing your opinion. I am glad you like the hub.

Thank you diogenes for your much appreciated support.