David Peckinpaugh ~ "Consciousness: Space and Content"

Consciousness has, as of late, become quite a vague term, often employed during discourses in matters spiritual and psychological. Yet, dare I need point out that consciousness is not just a term. Consciousness, the word, is a signifier; a term that is used so as to point to and allude to the quality and condition of awareness; awareness that is an essential fact of life, of the universe, of the Komsos.

For some, consciousness, as a word, is used to signify the Omnipresent Substrate of all Suchness, of all matter/unmatter, light/unlight, energy/unenergy; essentially all form and emptiness under one heading. And yet, for others, consciousness is naught else but a human capacity, one that is---in a very imaginative fashion---anthropomorphically projected outward onto the Kosmos at large---onto other than human. Consciousness is, it seems, more and more, and yet less and less, a mysterious process; one that somehow allows us to read and write, cogitate and procrastinate, equivocate and deliberate. Yes, for some, consciousness is solely a human capacity. And yes, for some, "the entire universe is administered by consciousness".

So, what is this Consciousness/consciousness? And, who is here who can make sense of this Consciousness/consciousness? Who but Consciousness/consciousness Itself---or that which is capable of Consciousness/consciousness---is present to expound on Consciousness/consciousness?*

There are a few sturdy reference points that I would like to share----unweatherd landmarks which can serve to orient us on these journeys of consciousness. One of these reference points is that Consciousness/consciousness enfolds and unfolds content. (Now, I won't get into the relative merits of good or bad content just yet. The qualitative aspect of content will be discussed in future essays.)

The content of our consciousness experience (after all, we experience consciousness as much or more than we direct it or own it) can be considered as the totality of the interior richness and diversity we are all subjected to; that inner lifeworld; those flows of thought, feeling, image, and concept; the weavings of grace into multiplicity.

The content aspect of consciousness is very much thingness oriented (thingness being a term I will use to refer to the rich diversity of felt/sensed/perceived "objects"---those objects that, cumulatively speaking, make up the content of consciousness). Again, thingness, as a general term, will serve to represent those sensed, felt, intuited, and otherwise, conceptualized forms and formulations that are noted as "being there" within the experience of consciousness itself.

Thingness, in the singular sense I am using here, conveys the actual presence of objects within the spatial dimension or field of consciousness. This thingness---those objects within the fields/folds of consciousness---are experienced most often as being "I, me, my, and mine." For instance, this general thingness becomes, through the process of identification, "my thoughts" or "my dreams", "my hopes", "my fears", "my beliefs", "my needs", and so on....... The content of consciousness becomes, for us, stuff----things to be owned, to be sought, to be claimed, to be possessed and possessed by.

The spatial dimension of consciousness is that space or context, great or small, within which the content of consciousness shall arise and dissipate. Now, just as the content of consciousness is flexible, and can, apparently, be willed and/or chosen to a certain extent, so, too, the expandable/contractible space of consciousness is also flexible, and can, apparently, be willed and/or chosen to a certain extent. (More on this later.)

While thingness is the multiplicity which floats, rides, bubbles up (so as too arise and dissipate) in the pure space of consciousness, the pure space of consciousness is that which gives Ground to, and within which, thingness is allowed to come and go. Again, pure space (of consciousness) allows for the comings and goings.

The content of consciousness, the "realm of rich things", is most often the well wherein humans draw their i-dentity. We are led to believe, for good or ill, that from out of the unique mixture of content we pull and draw from the well of thingness, we are formed and framed. This is only partly true, however. For if we draw all identity from the unique mixture of thingness we are attached/attracted to, what happens when that unique mixture of thingness passes---as it shall inevitably will? What is left when all of our "things" are no more? Who is present to Witness the passing of this thing and that thing? Who, what, remains?

There are a few crucial points to bear in mind when considering the spatial dimension of consciousness. To note and take care with how one i-dentifies with the content of consciousness is key to how we experience the relative space of consciousness. To, at the least, not "always" draw all i-dentity from only the content of consciousness is to know a bit of expansion beyond the boundedness of strict i-dentification.

Experience is such that one comes to find out that to i-dentify with content is to contract the expandable/collapsible space of consciousness. As space opens up and flowers through mere noting/seeing, beyond the attached identification with objects, so, too, this same experience of a flowering spaciousness is contracted as soon as one wills a magnetic allegiance with an object (be it a tangible object or a fantasy figment object).

Herein is where the sword of i-dentification severs the consciousness experience from that of All into part, Whole into fragment, Real into Real-minus--Real less than. The encapsulation of, or enclosement of, space consciousness, around an object or objects, creates conditional existence. By narrowing the Whole/Holy Field of Consciousness, that Horizon-less Expanse of Unlimited, Pure, Radiant, Bliss-Space, into and onto an object, the sense of separation becomes the consciousness experience. As the Eye/I comes to be enamored or fascinated with an object, the Infinite Embrace of Pure, Radiant, Bliss-Space collapses, forming a definite, hard, conditional shell around that object or idea, concept or feeling. And the more rigid this identification and narrowing of the Whole/Holy Field of Consciousness onto the arising object, the more contracted and dense the I/eye becomes. And, henceforth, the more contracted and dense that the I/eye becomes, the more conditioned the consciousness experience that results from that initial identification with the objectified realms.

The reach of Consciousness indeed appears to be Infinite. Yet, this Infinite Reach is only so for as long as Consciousness Itself is not choosing allegiance by "creating i-dentifications" within the realm of the ten-thousand things; that realm of thingness which simply arises/dissipates within the Infinite Holy Field/Fold/Embrace of Consciousness ItSelf. In other words, the moment we begin to i-dentify exclusively with the content of consciousness, is the point of entry into the exceedingly conditioned realms of a finite existence.

Now, we all have our fascinations and karmas that pattern us; our attachments and magnetic allegiances. These attachments and allegiances, fascinations and karmas of ours, can serve to unduly limit our experience of Love-Bliss-Radiance.

By simply and merely choosing to identify, by aligning with this object, I am at the same time creating a sense of separation from all that is not this object. In other words, this separation cannot be avoided when there is this choosing of certain objects over other objects. The moment of choice appears to be the primal separation act, the fall into the realms of the chosen/unchosen, the initiatory rite of passage into finite fields.

Through our allegiances, to pleasure and pain, we create further separations. Separations upon separations upon separations upon separations. By seeking out the pleasure-full through choice, there is a conditioned separation from the pain-full through choice--and vice versa. Again, as before, the identification here, through various allegiances, is with the "content" of consciousness (pleasure-full or pain-full). And the game, apparently, as we have learned it, is all about i-dentifying with content---forever i-dentifying with content. Perhaps fun if you like games, I guess.

The I/eye is caught up in its own fanciful drama, having lost the re-cognition that there must be an Ocean upon which all of these objects emerge out of and rest within the embrace of. Through allegiance making---good or bad, no matter---consciousness further conditions its experience and its existence. On the other hand, through choicelessly abiding as the One, Consciousness unconditions the conditional.

In authentic meditation we have a time or times in which we can cease the grasping at the conditional, stop the identification with the finite, abruptly end the attachment to this or that, me and mine, these or those, here or there, now and then.

Dissolving all attachments to objects is the Return to Space Consciousness. This Unconditioned Space allows objects to pass as they will, allows thoughts to come and go on parade, allows fights to falter and passions to peter out. Objects may or may not disappear---that is not a concern of ours in meditation. We just, and alone, retract our graspers---the claws and hooks of our seeking an i-dentity within the content of consciousness---that is our concern in liberation.

I have shared before that meditation, in the truest sense, is not an act of concentration. Meditation is a relaxation of all the concentration we have been invested and investing in. Meditation is freedom from the concentration camps. Meditation is the relaxation of the historical holdings on to; the fleet-footed fleeings, the free dumb-fightings, the fantasy followings after. In meditation one just rests in the awake-full awareness that is the Pure, Unbounded, Space of Consciousness. This spatial dimension can expand towards Infinity as we allow, through detachment and non-plussed witnessing, that which is arising to arise, and that which is passing to pass. In other words, through mere noticing, one just watches "that which is a coming and a going", all with no "need" to claim ownership to this or that.