Inner Work

For the week of: January 19, 2004

Pure Consciousness

Our lives consist of an endless stream of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, physical sensations, thoughts, images, emotions, intentions, decisions, non-decisions, actions and non-actions. All this absolutely captivates us and totally commands the foreground of our awareness, obscuring any possible view of its context: pure consciousness. Yet consciousness precedes and supports all of our perceptions. It is the blank screen on which we perceive the movie of our lives.

Just as the space of a room allows the furniture to be there, consciousness allows all our perceptions. We rarely notice space itself because of its inherent emptiness and container-like quality, and so it is with consciousness. Space is endless and without boundaries, but with illusory boundaries created by objects within it. And so it is with consciousness. But unlike space, consciousness not only defines our inner framework but also imparts a living wholeness to our experience. Furthermore, consciousness has more dimensions than spacetime, indeed it contains all of space and all of time. Thus, consciousness does not begin or end.

The problem is that we overlook and ignore consciousness. We leave it in the background of life while we fly headlong into the foreground. Yet consciousness forms the medium of the enlightened and the saintly. The practices of presence, stillness, and non-dual awareness all aim toward opening our experience to include consciousness.

For this week, work to have a better understanding and recognition of the pure consciousness within you.

About Inner Frontier                                    Send us email 

Copyright © 2001-2008 Joseph Naft. All rights reserved.