The Analogy Of Consciousness To An Ocean Really Appeals To My Visual Mind

Recently, at a sangha, my teacher made the analogy where she compared our consciousness and its depths to an ocean, and it really made a lot of sense to me. I wanted to share this wisdom and insight with you all.

Transcript

Hey guys,

My name is Boomshakha and I welcome you to my channel.

I hope you're doing awesome wherever you are in the world and I'm always grateful as always grateful for your support and for the time that you spend on my channel.

In this video I want to speak to you guys about something a little bit abstract and something that I've been learning off from a school that I've been attending,

Yoga classes that I've been attending and this individual always talks about,

My teacher always talks about the ocean of consciousness and the analogy that she uses is so beautiful and so it's so beautiful in the way that it really makes me think and really is it just puts a picture in front of my mind that clarifies things so much for me that I wanted to share with you guys as well.

Hopefully it clarifies things for you as well and of course obviously if you guys have questions about it please message me.

So I don't know what the exact stat is in terms of how much of our consciousness we actually use.

There are a varying number of stats from all the way from 2% of our brain to 10% to 50% when we're on drugs etc.

So there's a lot of different numbers out there but I'm gonna run with the idea that we only use part of our brain partially.

We don't use our full consciousness we're not able to use our full depth of our capacity,

Our mental brain capacity.

And so if you think of it as a topsoil of the earth there's a this little layer that you know is the topsoil that's the little baby layer that we can plant seeds into and we can grow things on and it's precious.

It's a little baby little topsoil.

It's the layer that is usable besides that everything else is rock and lava and a hot core and iron and things that we cannot actually use.

That's just the analogy with the earth but if you think about it in terms of our brain or our consciousness and I'm using it interchangeably because I believe that it's pretty much the same thing.

The brain is just a physical manifestation of our consciousness.

So our consciousness we only use this little teeny-bitty layer of our consciousness and that is the top little bit of the ocean.

It's the ocean part that has light in it.

If you look at the ocean there's little layer on top that gets light and has all of the fishes and most of the life forms live in that little layer where the light can penetrate and beneath that there's different creatures and things like that but mostly it's on the top layer that a lot of that life form survive.

So that little layer of our consciousness that little itty-bitty layer is the one that we use on a daily basis.

I'm using it right now to have a conversation with you guys and you're using it in order to live your daily lives in order to move through the world have conversations and learn things and buy things and all of the things that we need to do as a human being.

So that's our consciousness and the majority of our brain or our consciousness is the subconscious or the unconscious and that's the 98%.

So the little bit of layer the 2% or 5% whatever you want to call it that top layer of it that is our conscious mind our consciousness and that's the part that we have access to on a daily regular basis that's the one that we use and then there's this huge chunk 98-95% of it that is not used technically not used consciously but it is unconscious it means that it's still there it's storing all these little bits of information about us it has a lot of data it has a lot of capacity but as we're not able to access it we don't really think much about it except when we're dreaming perhaps and it comes up with all these stories and ideas for us that's why dream work is such an important part of accessing your unconscious.

So the ocean of consciousness usually when spiritual texts are talking about consciousness they think of it or they refer to it as the ocean right and there's obviously the top layer as I said that access has access to light that's the consciousness and then there's unconscious and that's the deeper layers of the ocean that's all of the deep layers all the way down to the ground to the surface to the bottom surface of the ocean and that's really deep I mean you can go on forever keep on swimming down and down and down and eventually you'll touch the surface at the ground level but it'll take you a while to get there right and all of that all of that is our consciousness is also part of our consciousness but it's unconscious part right it's a subconscious it's not really truly something that we have access to on a daily basis unless we're dreaming or sleeping or meditating perhaps or lucid dreaming or on drugs of some source that opens up that consciousness psychedelics things like that and so there are only portions of it that will really access during our lifetime and this ocean of consciousness in the analogy it contains a lot of different kinds of fishes right as a as a normal ocean does our ocean of consciousness because contains fishes as well but these fishes are not like typical fishes that you eat or have pets as but these are our different fears shadows interests likes dislikes karma from past lives reincarnated lives all of our merit that we've earned all the good stuff that we've done all the bad stuff all of the stuff that we're storing over the lifetimes it sits in all these different fishes right so some of the fishes are nice and they're the good things that you've done some of the fishes are terrible and they're scary and they're like sharks with sharp teeth and there there are shadows and things that we're afraid of perhaps or things that we are afraid to look at within ourselves right and then there are small fishes some things that really don't matter that much some things that matter a lot and they're huge and they're like the huge blue whales that are enormous and take up a lot of space and will come up occasionally to the surface and you'll be able to see it and you're like whoa I didn't even know that existed within me all right meditation does that a lot you'll be sitting there meditating and because the meditation kind of puts the light on all of these under the surface areas you can see a lot of yourself and you notice oh whoa there are things within me that I had no idea even existed and that's what happens that's the point of meditation that's why we meditate is to bring all of those under the surface all of those below the surface areas all of that subconscious into view so you can learn more about ourselves so this is fascinating right I mean the reason I want to share this with you guys is because this analogy really spoke to me and there's not much more to it obviously the main tenet of all of this is to be able to move below the surface on a constant daily basis through meditation and learn more about what exists under the surface now that's basically it and that's the ocean of consciousness but I wanted to share it with you guys because I thought that you might find it interesting to have this analogy share with you guys it's very rare as I said that we ever touch the bottom surface of the ocean like the bottom bottom bottom level of the ocean right mostly we stay on top we think about superficial things and we think about the same things over and over again and that's it that's our life and that and then we die right sometimes if we go a little bit further we'll touch maybe a few layers below the superficial layer but that's it we don't go further beyond that obviously the idea is to keep on going below that and to eventually see your life as it is in its entirety and be able to see your soul or your spirit which is the part which is at the ground level it's the true essence of you right it's a true meaning of who you are and what you are all about okay sorry about all the coughing I don't know why I'm coughing all of a sudden anyways if you guys have any questions about this I just wanted to kind of share this analogy with you guys because I thought it was so fascinating but I just I think that it's it's an interesting way to look at our consciousness the ocean of consciousness is such a beautiful analogy if you have any questions about this or if you want me to expand upon something please obviously let me know I'm here to answer your questions and obviously please email me if you have any questions because that's the best way to get a hold of me and I only reply to emails twice a week so that keep that in mind as well don't email me over and over again I'll eventually get to you you guys want to support me further my patreon account its details are also in the description below so go check that out and I will see you guys in the next one bye for now

Reviews

Hi Thank for this. It is very informative i really liked. Best Regards Namaste Amar