I am a participant in a global enterprise embraced by an array of humans who believe that the exploration of human consciousness is the preeminent challenge of our times. We don’t meet regularly, though some subsets convene. We tend to recognize one another, and often find comfort in the recognition.
We generally do not concur with those who insist that consciousness is a brain function, a mere neural event, though we attend to their work and outcomes. We have a body of literature, a history of sorts, and a conviction that exploring the nature of human consciousness is not merely a curiosity but a commitment. We believe it is tied to our purpose as humans.
My personal membership started decades ago. An important beginning for me was the exploration of the concept of “flow”. “Flow”, using the dominant dictionary definition is “the action or fact of moving along in a steady, continuous stream”. Like all humans engaged in learning, I lean on the “known” to try to grasp what is “new”, using metaphors as is our habit. My metaphor for “flow” was the movement of a stream or creek. I usually envisioned it as a mountain stream, tumbling downward in the spring thaw.
In retrospect, I can see that flow for me was imagined as quite linear, moving in a given direction in a fairly straight line. I knew much was written about “flow” that would challenge this linearity, yet kept the metaphor. There is always a comfort in the familiar, and besides, I liked mountain streams.
Over the last few days, walking my favorite beach water lines, communing, as is my joy, with the Pacific Ocean, I suddenly realized that the “flow” of oceans was quite different from the “flow” of my imagined mountain stream. Though cyclical, it was not linear. The persistent, almost mesmerizing crashing of the waves, their variance in strength, sound and force created a rhythmic “flow” of energy. My old metaphor for “flow” was suddenly disrupted by the “flow” of the Pacific Ocean on my little beach edge.
Because I think of nature as the best of my available teachers, I paid attention to this shift, and began to explore how this refined my perception of consciousness. When perceived using a linear metaphor, I “wanted” a clean, tidy, persistent, uninterrupted “flow” of consciousness free of disturbances and persistent in predictability. I vaguely sensed that this desire was pure nonsense, but I wanted it anyway.
One of the most persistent characteristics of the experience of being a human is that no matter how you plan or prefer, it is a messy and unpredictable adventure most of the time. For some reason we work very hard at trying to have a tidy adventure and feel shame when we fail to do so. My linear “flow” fed that longing for tidiness, and the emergent insights from the crashing waves, the ebb and flow of the ocean’s edge, seemed more reality based. I was almost never in a persistent “steady state” and knew no one who was. I was suddenly enchanted with the ocean’s “flow explanation”.
Returning to my investment in the study of consciousness, and more specifically in my conviction that the expansion of human consciousness is integral to our purpose as humans, I found my walk by the ocean became electric with awarenesses. I noticed how I was attached to linear metaphors that blocked awareness of a more complex understanding. I realized that the abandon of the ocean to its persistent rhythmic flow was for me a modeling of manifesting consciousness.
The easiest place for me to feel gratitude at a deep level is at the water’s edge, at the space where the Pacific Ocean toys with my responses to it. Not surprisingly, I found that gratitude surge that comes with gifts given so freely. At the same time, as is my habit, I spent some time muttering about how it would have been helpful to have this insight a little earlier in my human adventure, or more practically, wasn’t it kind of late to figure this out.
And so, I hauled my “crazy” back in, reflecting on the good fortune of this experience of “flow” and working to weave it into the tapestry I am creating of this last cycle of my human existence. Almost all the books on aging, and I have an embarrassingly large collection of them, say this developmental stage is focused on the spiritual dimension of human existence and the outcome is wisdom. I have liked this description and find it fits how I am living my life these days.
Which took me back to a deepened exploration of human consciousness, a conviction that this is the work of our times, and welcomed a suddenly enriched metaphor to shape my reflections on “flow”. I watched emerge the realization that all of this is tied to my commitment to my personal “wisdom work”. The insight didn’t show up “late”, it showed up when I was developmentally available and paying attention.
Geologists tell us that about 71% of the earth’s surface is water-covered, and the oceans hold about 96.5% of all earth’s water. It seems to me that this is a fairly compelling case for paying attention to this dimension of our natural world, to be “conscious” of its patterns, lessons, and generous gifts. And of course, it can always arrive as a metaphor.
Understanding consciousness continues to elude all of us despite our investment in the exploration or desperate declarations of certitude about its nature. We define it in interesting ways. It is the state of being awake and aware of one’s surroundings, as in emerging from anesthesia. It is also the awareness or perception of something, like me standing at the edge of the Pacific Ocean. It is finally the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world…this third descriptor opens the doors and windows to the most challenging understanding of the concept. If consciousness is awareness of the mind, then it somehow is, in a way, greater than the mind.
It is this third understanding that continues to draw me in. And the Pacific Ocean models the ebb and flow of this process, the arrival of an awareness not here before, now altering my sense of myself and my world. It settles in, I adapt and integrate the insight, I go on, until the next wave arrives. And the focused exploration and expansion of consciousness shapes the life I live and the continuously evolving nature of that life.
The unique emergent insights of the final stage of a human’s life, my life in this case, are both dependent on all that preceded it, and beyond all that. I find myself curious about the wisdom possible when the possibilities of consciousness meet a full and fulfilling life as aging arrives.
“People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.”
-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi –
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
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