The One Thing That Exists

This is the sixth meditation in the Process Meditation Series.

Consciousness is the one thing that exists. By learning to hold my focus on the whole of our experience, Consciousness begins to come into focus.

Transcript

We're going to look together,

We're going to inquire,

We're going to question our experience.

We're going to see what is real together.

And we can start by looking around us and we notice that our default is to see that there are all these different things in all these different places.

And this is our world,

This is the way we live,

This is the way that we make choices and choose a direction is through navigating through all the different things that exist.

I have to travel from here to there,

I have to move this over there,

I have to work within this world.

The world is stationary and I am moving through it.

I am an object that moves through a stationary world.

But it's not the only way to experience life.

And from my perspective it's not the most true or real way to experience life.

And if you've done the exercises that I have put out that precede this,

Then you have some experience of this refocusing process of bringing awareness into focus,

Allowing yourself to feel awareness and beginning to shift your relationship with all the things that exist inside awareness.

So very briefly we can do that and say,

I am having an experience.

I know I'm having an experience because I have awareness.

If I didn't have awareness,

Then I wouldn't be able to experience.

So awareness is here and I can turn my attention towards it.

I notice that awareness feels like a vast space.

Now there's my experience with all these different things in different places and there's this vast awareness.

And most likely they feel to be distinct from each other.

And that's where it starts.

That's where we,

That's the first sort of breakthrough into consciousness is to have this kind of other plane of reality,

Of existence that is separate,

Transcendent.

It's not here.

It's not of the world as Jesus famously said,

In the world but not of it.

It's not,

It's not a thing that exists in my experience like a tree or the sound of my voice.

And again,

If you've been doing the activities,

This should be familiar to you.

And through these activities,

I continually encourage that we move from this distinct reality to an integration with all the things that I see.

And primarily with all the things in my body,

This is where it's really most important,

Fundamental,

Is that I'm able to bring awareness into my body so that I can hold and focus my feelings,

My thoughts,

My sensations at the same time that there is awareness.

So that in any moment,

I can feel that there is this emptiness,

This space,

And that it's full of information,

It's full of stuff.

So,

Arriving at this level of focus,

We can really begin to talk about what consciousness is.

We can start to perceive it directly.

The easiest answer to what is consciousness is to say it's the one thing that really exists.

It's the one thing that's happening.

Right now,

You are having one experience.

We could describe that experience as a space of awareness which contains all the stuff,

All the information,

All the sounds and the people that I see,

The objects in my space,

In my room,

In my house,

My body.

From the perspective of awareness,

All of these things are inside,

And I have one awareness,

And I have this one everything of experience.

I hold both things in focus.

So that I'm really just looking at the one everything.

I'm looking at my whole experience in a relaxed way,

In an openness of focus that allows me to see the whole,

The one,

The singular thing called consciousness.

This is the only thing that you've ever known.

Sure,

The things within consciousness are changed and move and seem to be shifting,

Come and go.

But this one experience is really the only thing that has ever,

That you've ever known or experienced.

And generally,

We take this for granted.

We take it for granted because we're really focused on the things inside our experience.

And we have lots of good reasons to be focused on them.

But we move away from this openness of focus to pay attention to stuff.

We keep contracting out of this focus,

Or maybe we've never had this focus,

But we keep contracting into the details of our life,

So that we can manage,

Manipulate,

Deal with,

Produce work,

Protect ourselves,

Accumulate,

Push away.

But right now we don't really have anything.

You're just listening to me speak.

You're just in a state of contemplation or inquiry.

We don't really have anything we need to do.

So we can let that go for a minute.

And I want you to imagine that this state of focus,

In which you observe one thing called your experience,

Imagine that that was your resting place.

Imagine it was actually the place where you lived your life from.

Ask yourself,

Do I really need to leave this place to deal with things?

Do I need to contract to recognize the work that I need to do,

To move,

To make choices,

To engage in my life?

Or is it possible to do it without contracting?

Ask yourself,

Would I be better at my life?

Ask this open focus.

Is this a more powerful way of relating to life?

Or would I be more effective if I contracted?

And I think universally,

When I work with people and in myself,

I discover that it's clearly more powerful.

It clearly makes more sense.

But we give up,

In doing so,

We give up the ability to hide,

To avoid,

To fixate,

To control.

Because if I'm open to everything,

If I'm really open to all of my feelings,

All of my sensations,

Everything that happens in my body and in my world,

If I stay open,

It gets hard to avoid things,

It gets hard to run away.

Where would I go to avoid the truth of my feelings and my thoughts?

What could I do to hide from myself?

And this is a loss.

This is a loss of a strategy which has been really effective,

Tremendously effective for all of us.

This ability to avoid primarily our bodies,

But avoid our life by focusing on just little pieces of it.

Picking and choosing what I want to feel,

What I want to know and acknowledge,

And what I don't.

And if you ask me why,

As a species,

As a humanity,

Why we're stuck,

It's because we have been busy managing our experience.

We've been moving away,

All of us,

From the things that are difficult.

And this has left a kind of a backlog of unprocessed experience.

To process life is really to be aware of something happening and allow it to move through.

A good example would be if I stub my toe.

I stub my toe,

It hurts a lot.

I stop,

I sit down,

I maybe take one of those deep breaths.

I feel it,

The pain comes.

And it goes.

The experience has passed through.

Now imagine if instead of letting it pass through,

I just sort of was able to sidestep,

Prolong,

Delay that experience and it just sort of stayed waiting there for me in the background.

I imagine that somehow I was able to leave my toe,

Become unaware,

Unconscious to what was happening in my toe.

And if I ever wanted to feel my toe again,

This sensation would be waiting for me to complete it.

And so what would my life look like?

Well,

It would look like I would be in part unable to feel my toe and really busy coming up with reasons and strategies to not have to feel or use my toe.

I would be sort of disabled from a part of myself,

A level of functionality because I was avoiding pain and discomfort.

I could invent a special scooter,

An electric wheelchair,

A jet pack.

I could come up with all kinds of fancy inventions that would help me get around,

That I could convince myself were superior.

And yet this very simple experience of existing in my toe and feeling,

Allowing that pain to pass through,

Remain.

So that's my metaphor.

As we continue to find ways to build jet packs and electric wheelchairs and to supersede our humanity,

To overcome ourselves,

Instead of holding an open focus and having an honest,

An unconditionally honest relationship with ourselves.

And if you're able to just again remain with this open focus,

Notice how hard it is to lie to yourself.

This is clarity.

This is a clarity that comes from not being able to trick yourself into believing one part of your experience over another.

What is true?

What is true is everything that is happening inside this one experience.

In totality,

That is what is true.

You don't need to think about it.

You don't need to manage it.

What is happening is true.

And the process is just a way of discovering for yourself that this honesty,

This open experience with the next thing that happens is a superior way to live life than through control,

Avoidance,

Delusion.

Managing your experience.

And it's superior because it,

For many reasons,

But primarily because it's productive.

That's what I want to focus on.

So this person,

This theoretical person who steps their toe,

Holds this open focus.

This one thing.

Their toe is inside of this one thing called consciousness.

They become aware of their toe.

And it hurts.

This pain is inside of this whole one thing called consciousness.

And if they can hold their focus open,

The pain in the toe will complete.

And they will be able to walk again.

They won't need to come up with fancy workarounds or apparatus to support their avoidance and their trauma,

Their toe trauma.

What I see in the world is that contemporary culture is kind of a conversation about what workarounds are going to be most effective.

Should we vote in a certain president?

Should we educate our children about something different?

Should we have electric cars?

Should we,

You know,

Whatever it is.

We have all kinds of notions about workarounds.

And not to suggest that we shouldn't do that.

But if we don't deal with ourselves,

With all the things that are stored in our bodies and consciousness,

Then we won't be able to walk,

Figuratively speaking.

So ask yourself,

What is my way forward?

Is it to manage my life?

Is it to contract into the details so that I can try and get a little bit more of pleasure and a little bit less of pain?

Or is your future to open to the truth,

However it is,

To feel consciousness directly?

To pay attention to the reality of the one thing that is real.

And not to distort your experience of that through this avoidance,

But to the very best of your ability to relax.

To complete all the things inside yourself that remain,

The products of your past,

The leftover of all the experiences that you and the people before you were not able to feel,

To complete,

To stay with.

So that as a human being,

You can get your legs under you.

You don't have to scramble anymore.

And so that as a species,

That we are not moving away from something all the time.

We're not moving,

Hoping for a better tomorrow.

In a material world,

It feels like I move through the world.

It feels like I go from here to there.

And that's true.

That sort of remains.

But in this open consciousness,

In this open focus,

It's more like life moves through you.

Ask yourself,

What do I trust more?

The movement of all things through my awareness?

Or my contracted movement through life?

What's more powerful?

What's more real?

In what direction does my highest potential align?

Thank you for listening.

And may you come to learn to hold an open focus,

To perceive consciousness directly,

As yourself,

As the only thing that's ever happened.

The only thing that's going to happen.

And through this acceptance and relaxation,

Inherent in awareness and consciousness,

Become empowered to transform your life and to transform the world.

To be transformed by life.

Beyond what you could do through contraction.