A Love Song: The Evolution of Human Consciousness

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Part I-

The Ego

Chapter 1

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter 5

Part II-

The Subconscious

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Part III

True Consciousness

Chapter 14

Preface

Before you begin reading, let me clarify a few terms and ideas in the book:

My fundamental understanding of God has changed tremendously since I was a child sitting in a Methodist church. I still see God as love – they are one and the same, inseparable. I also still see God as the creator of all that is, although I now see his creation as being only love. God is the originating consciousness. He is the ultimate truth who extended his love to us so that we might learn to know ourselves. Love and judgment cannot coexist. God is only love.

When I began reading spiritual books, I found myself often confused by their use of the term, ego. The ego I speak of is not Freud’s ego. It resembles Freud’s model only in that it represents a division in our mind. The spiritual ego is a nonexistent entity that we mistake as ourselves. It is a habit of mind – in a mind that is in the habit of avoidance. It is itself a defense mechanism. Thus, whereas Freud might conceive of a healthy ego, from a spiritual point of view, this is impossible.

Introduction

IN THE GARDEN

Before there was time, we were one, a steady stream of consciousness, without beginning, without end, an energy field of love’s awareness. We lived in a state of continual abundance, we did not know loss, we could not imagine deprivation. We could not imagine separation. We were one with the eternal consciousness, we were one with God. There was only love, the energy of the universe entire. Our love gave us peace, deep and abiding. Our love gave us joy overflowing. In peace we rested in our being. In joy we sought to extend ourselves, to give of our love, for that is love’s nature. The eternal consciousness, God, extended himself in his love, to create new awareness, these were as his children, from them he withheld nothing. In full awareness they were one. They loved as their father loved. They too sought to extend their love, to create from their abundance, to give of themselves to their father whom they loved.

It was as a beautiful chorus, delicate interweaving harmonies, Baritones, bass, sopranos in perfect pitch, each contributing to the beauty of the whole. One without the other would know no balance; the beauty would be lessened without all. And then perhaps one voice raised itself ever so slightly above the others. Awareness shifted its focus. It looked away from God, if only for an instant. In that moment, God’s children realized they could look away from their father, he had given them free will; they were not prisoners of his love. Separate voices could now be heard, singing to their father, singing of love but not with the rest. If one could sing above another, perhaps God could love greater. In that instant God’s children believed in loss. The harmony began to falter, notes became discordant. God’s children began to believe in difference, separation, preference. The harmonies fell, as did his children, from perfect grace.

Those who had known only love now perceived its loss, they came to believe that which was not so. The void left in the absence of love became shame, profound and shattering. It was unbearable. They began to hide from each other and from themselves. They sought to escape the terrible burden of being without love. Pain drove them further from their home. They became lost souls who knew not even self. In their confusion they came to believe that their father was the source of their suffering. That he had cast them out for their imperfections and deemed them unworthy of his love. They believed themselves exiles from the garden, never realizing that it had been their choice to go.

Perhaps we drifted for a while, awareness knowing only shame. Perhaps as his children departed, God called them to return, but allowed them to go, as was their choice. The farther away, the louder the call, but we could no longer hear. God who knows nothing of shame could no longer speak to us in way we would understand. And so, we settled in a new home, a place where we could find temporary solace. It would show us what we now believed to be true, while gently teaching us it was not so. We believe it is possible to exist in separation from our father and so ours is a world of separation. Instead of unity, here there are opposites and opposing forces. For day there is night, for black, white. We are male and female, divided even within our form. Within the play of opposites is life, it is the balance, it is the truth we seek. Our beautiful earth sits perfectly poised between sun and moon. The entirety of our physical existence held in this delicate balance. The sun shines, the rains come, the plants grow, we breathe the air they create for us, so we may learn division is not so. We see past separation, we return home knowing that truly we have never left. Our lessons can be as simple as a sunrise or a flowers bloom. Our planet holds life in abundance; it is a vibrant energy system. Life can only exist in God’s love. If we allow it the earth can lead us back to our true home.

One can only see what one believes. The earth reflected our new beliefs while also holding truth. We however, have been largely unwilling to see love. In order to see truth we had to be willing to look through the lie of shame. That was not our intention. We had forgotten our true nature. We had come to believe that to look upon God’s love was to face annihilation. We have used the earth to hide. We placed our focus here and found that if our focus was narrow enough we might no longer feel shame. And so our focus narrowed to a single point. As experience continued we came to believe that we were the point rather than the focus. That which was distraction was given self, the ego was born. Our true self became only an observer, pushed to the background, relegated to powerlessness. This we willingly accepted to escape the belief we were unworthy of love. Our true self remains, it is always here, for most of us it is simply unaware that it has been lulled to sleep, hypnotized by the antics of distraction.

In Truth, thought is the entirety of our being. Because we have narrowed our thought to a single point, we have locked our self in form. We have come to believe there is only form, each point separate from the other. So long as we hide from pain we imprison ourselves here. This is the original catch 22 and the root of everything that does not make sense in our world. The ego came into existence to keep us from experiencing pain, yet it must maintain the pain to continue to exist. This creates an inherent split in our psyche. We exist in this world on three levels. We are the ego, the focus, the part of us which experiences the world through perception and believes itself to be form. We are also the subconscious, the level of our mind in which we try to hide pain. Our thoughts may follow the ego, while our emotions follow the subconscious. Because the ego works to keep us from looking at the subconscious, we may have no understanding whatsoever of our emotions. In order to free ourselves, we must make the decision to place our focus on this level of consciousness. We must face our personal truth in order to embrace universal Truth. These two levels of mind are only illusion, our true self, the observer waits only for us to remember this is so.

When we begin to move past the ego’s dominion, we start our spiritual journey. We move into the emotional part of our being which is the subconscious. The subconscious is a continuum of expanding awareness. It begins with the point where emotion sits next to and goes hand in hand with the ego. In order to move past this point you must be willing to examine and begin to relinquish the false ideas you acquired about yourself in this lifetime. Whatever painful events you began storing in this space as a child act as a barrier to Truth. The more you hide from them, the stronger their hold. The farther you move away from ego, the stronger the pull of your own spirit. The events of our life are not random. We are not at the mercy of fate or a vengeful god. The part of us which remains connected to Truth knows that we must return home. It seeks the reintegration of our mind’s awareness, to end the division between ego, subconscious and spirit, so that our mind can be one. When our mind is one, so are we one with God.

Life is the journey home to our source. It is the movement from a narrow point of focus to all-encompassing awareness, from self-imposed illusion to Truth. You are not alone on this journey. The events of your life are carefully orchestrated to teach the lessons you must learn. Our spirit, which remains one with all life, sets for us a path in each life. One that will lead us home should we choose to follow it. It can still hear the voice of God. He continues to call to us, we have only to listen.

Part I-

The Ego

Chapter 1

The Ego is born

The voice in your head is not you. This should come as a great relief.

The ego is nothing, we think it is everything. It is the voice in your head that attempts to fill every second of your being, leaving us no space for true thought, just endless gibberish. It is the monkey mind swinging through the branches from tree to tree, random thought to random worry. It is forever in need of something, it is never at peace. It can create strife out of nothing. It will happily argue with imaginary people over imaginary issues. This is the ego: It does not make sense, it just makes trouble.

The world you experience through perception is an illusion. The ego can only see through perception. This is a very old idea, dating back to the time of the earliest Indian civilizations. Hindus, Buddhist and many others accept this premise as fact. The reason you experience this illusion is that you hold false beliefs about yourself. You believe that you are deeply flawed and thus you experience a world that proves this is so. You believe that it is possible to separate yourself from your creator thus you see a world of opposing forces. You believe you have lost your connection to God and thus you experience a world that can give you only loss. Here there is only impermanence. That which you hold today, is gone tomorrow. As we have divided ourselves from God, so have we divided our mind. The divided mind is the mechanism of division from God. Everything we experience in this world seeks to teach us this is so. God calls to us always. Integrating the divisions in our mind will reestablish our true selves and we will be able to go home. To do this we must be willing to face Truth. We must examine our own thought processes and be willing to give up that which does not make sense. We must surrender all, which is not truth. We must recognize the ego for what it is, or more accurately for what it is not. It is not you.

We come into this world believing in loss. If we did not believe this we would not be able to experience it. This creates within us a divided mind. At birth we exist at two levels. We are spirit which holds truth and subconscious where we hold shame, the spirit knows only joy and the subconscious only loss. Thus, as infants we live in a state of balance and imbalance determined solely by emotional experience. We are warm, dry, our bellies full, all is well. We are cold, wet, hungry, we are without what is needed to be well. We exist either in joy or deprivation. The infant’s brain has yet to develop so that it can experience itself as a separate entity. It exists as awareness, an integrated part of its surroundings.

All babies are not the same. They are born with different temperaments, or different tolerance for imbalance. This is a spiritual issue. We bring into each life the mistaken ideas we held onto from the last life. The more mistakes we hold onto the less tolerance we have for imbalance, this is the child’s nature. However, balance at this point in life is largely an external issue. The child’s level of spiritual development interacts with its current environment, which may or may not encourage balance. It is nature vs. nurture. In time a balance will be struck between the two and the child’s identity established.

As the baby grows, its brain develops and it begins to experience the world in a different way. It starts to recognize itself as a distinct entity, separate from its surroundings. It develops the ability to focus its awareness. It masters what is called object permanence, the understanding that just because you can no longer see something does not mean it no longer exists. It is now possible to want what you do not have. What before was simple imbalance is now need. Rather than focusing on permanence, the child focuses on loss. It develops a distinct set of preferences for the way its external world should be ordered. It ties the presence or absence of things to its emotional state of being. If mother is here all is well, if mother is not here there is pain. It does not like to experience pain. In order to communicate preference and restore satisfactory order to its world, it begins to develop language. A third level of mind is coming into being, the ego. The ego believes it can manipulate and control the external world and by so doing, avoid pain. As we develop focus our experience of pain changes. We become aware that it is something which exists inside of our self. We believe that if we focus on things outside of our self we can avoid the pain.

The ego, then, is a decision made in our early childhood to externalize self in order to avoid suffering. It is a placing of our focus on what is outside of ourselves and looking to it to bring us happiness and love. It is a decision which makes suffering inevitable as love can only be experienced within. It is the ever so human desire to avoid pain rather than