Notes From My Journal: December 12, 201o

Notes From My Journal: December 27, 2010

This question of consciousness, what is consciousness, and how can we become more conscious is something that has been in my mind for over forty years now, maybe longer. Today, especially, after reading a passage from Maurice Nicoll, I ponder on the question. Nicoll say that, “It is something that we come in contact with. It is a group of vibrations of high frequency like light which exists apart from our contact with it.”

He maintains that we cannot increase consciousness with mechanical effort; we have to use conscious effort to increase consciousness. So, I put in conscious effort and notice that I am more conscious of my body. I am conscious of tightness around my chest. I am conscious of my feet on the floor, my fingers on the keyboard. Is it that I do not bring the body parts into consciousness, but that the body itself, through the moving center, comes into contact with the high frequency vibrations?

I can remember some thirty-seven years ago, sitting on my spot, talking to myself, trying to become more conscious of myself. I am an entirely selfish person, as enlightened as I am, I told myself back then. I have never known myself to be otherwise. Not even when I am in my best moments, my best moments when I’m expanding my consciousness by painting watercolors, or hiking up in the badlands. Even then I am all tied up in myself.

Anne more than anyone else has pointed out my selfishness. I remember yesterday she told me, “I have never seen anyone so wrapped up in his self. You don’t give a damn about what the other person thinks or feels…” When I stop to think about it I know that what she is saying is true. Who do I really believe in? Who do I look out for? Who do I really love beyond compare? Myself.

Yet, I somehow feel that I am not entirely at fault in my selfishness. In spite of my real desire to love with all my soul, to give myself fully to my loved ones, I find it impossible to relinquish my death like grip on my own center. Is not self-love the curse of our age? Can anyone live is our times and be free to love fully? Are we taught to love as children?

We bandy the concept of love more than any people in history, yet we are the most loveless people on earth. How can there be love in a society that has exchanged all spiritual values for material gain? If I have no spirit, no soul, if I am merely an evolutionary being with learned conditional responses, from where does love for others come? I know beyond any doubt that a life far superior to my own surrounds me at every breathing minute, and yet I cannot free myself from my self-love to pursue it.

I am a product of my times as all men are. And, our times are not conducive to spiritual growth. I realize that before I can develop my inner spiritual self before I can overcome the grip of self-love I must free myself from all that I have become in my growth to manhood. Much easier said than done.

Love has its roots in the soul, in the spirit of man. If we do not know our own soul we are not capable of real love. The soulless love we practice is an imitation of the real thing. The only love that we can learn in our struggle for survival is self-love. What do I feel for my wife and children? When I strip away all that is counterfeit, what do I have left? Is there love in a sense of duty, a sense of responsibility? Does love lie in giving oneself to another for a lifetime. Is sexual enjoyment love?

Haven’t I learned that I must always put myself first? When I experience that intense good feeling toward another that love brings does that good feeling feed my own self-love? Of course, in real love the loved and the lover become one. Unless we die to our self-love we cannot become one with another.

Love. We take it so much for granted. A man needs no credentials to support his claim to expertise in love. We automatically assume that we are born of parents that love us. In the loving circle of our family we soak in the essentials of love. It is stored within each of us to be automatically released at the proper moment. We are all conscious of our desire to be loved. And, yet, we say that love is giving rather than receiving. Some of the more knowledgeable among us speak of love as an art that can be learned like any other art. Our religious leaders tell us that God is love.

We all assume that we know what love is. I chide myself for lacking real love, and yet when I do away with all the clichés I am at a complete loss for definition. Can we love if we do not know what love is? Is love more than an emotion? Is it more than an automatic response to favorable stimuli?

The sages of humanity have said that love is all. Love is the way. Love is the life spirit. They speak of love and universal oneness, love and creativity. “Truth and love are one,” says Krishnamurti. “You must love your enemies,” says Jesus. “The truth- that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire,” says Viktor Frankl .

Although I had not yet come into contact with the Gurdjiff Work as I sat on my spot thinking about my self-love back in 1974, I came very close to Nicoll’s definition of self-love. He states that as long as one is dominated by self-love, one cannot get in touch with the internal part of the emotional center. And, the internal part of the emotional center is the seat of real love. Nicoll maintains that our self-love keeps us locked in the prison of our conditioning that we cannot change our level of being until we die to self-love.

Nicoll writes that in order to increase our level of consciousness we must change the focal point of the vibrations of consciousness. As we are, dominated by self-love, the focal point is in false personality or imaginary I. In order to change the focal point we must awaken to the many ‘I’s that make up our self–love. Once we observe these ‘I’s we can die to them and be reborn in essence. When essence is the focal point our consciousness will increase.