[MD] Emergent Consciousness

[Heather Perella]

Hello Steve and Arlo,

     Arlo said:  "Like I've said, I consider the "I"
and the "collective consciousness" to be co-constructs
at the social level, siding with Einstein's view that
the "I" is an "optical delusion of consciousness"
(and, I should point out, his thoughts about
compassion that should be the purpose of human
activity. "Our task must be to free ourselves from
this prison by widening our circles of compassion to
embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature
in its beauty." In Pirsig's terms, to "be a part of
the world, and not an enemy of it."

     I have been contemplating this and find some
parallels with meditation that help me understand some
definitions to weed out insights into the social and
intellectual levels.
     I definitely agree that the intellectual level is
composed of ideas.  I also agree, I'm not sure who
mentioned this (maybe it was Pirsig, somebody quoting
Pirsig, or another insightful idea), that the
intellectual level (in tune with the hierarchy (or
group) that all the levels are) is an intellectual
level that provides a view of dynamic quality.  To use
an analogue somebody else also has used before the
intellectual level seems to be as a prism.  
     The more solid ideas, those ideas such as
Einsteins 'I' that does not reach out very well and is
a prison is a more solid idea or static, concrete idea
attaching itself to a concept that by all arguments
should or would be helpful in its' detachment but for
some reason the pigeonhole sticks and does not move. 
Now on the other hand, the 'I' that reaches out into
the world, as compassion, as empathy, as oneness, as
clarity, a clarity where the idea can be difficult to
determine if it is an idea only in our head or it is
what we have an idea about.  
     For example, somebody is hurting and we are
trying to help them.  Over and over again, we have
empathy for people who hurt and become as a doctor
trying to help them, understand them, and to have
empathy for them.  Sometimes we get to the point where
we don't know if it is their pain or our pain we are
feeling.  Is it gravity or our theory of gravity that
has gravity exist?  Is it the clearness of thought or
is it the clear sky that our attention, our mind, or
our intellect is involved amidst?  When I meditate and
let thoughts go, is it the clarity in the air that
allows our view to notice all the trees, the soil,
colors, etc..., that clear view, is it merely in our
head or is it the sky coming into our heads?  Just as
a dead body.  When do we say the dead body is soil
once again?  When is a leaf, soil once again and no
longer considered a leaf anymore?
     This solid idea prisming into a lighter sense of
the idea being an idea or not, I propose the latter is
towards dynamic quality.  It is the detachment of the
'I' that inclines me thinking this way.  An idea that
is capable of verging into the unknown and providing
structure that guides views or directs views away from
our current thinking, that is the kind of thinking
that also states and shows us, what we think reality
is, is not wholly reality, we must look beyond
ourselves to notice this.  It is the disappearing into
the trees poetic tune that jumps our view from its'
static latching into a beyond, that is beyond what we
might currently think.  It is the shock that rattles
our existence that wakes us up to something else and
removes any stuckness that may have been impeding us
and when in hindsight we view our previous actions we
might say, "Oh, how ignorant we have been."  Suffering
need not be evil or bad, but a great eye opener, a
peeling of the skin as in the Sun Dance, the peeling
away of old thoughts, old habits die hard as the
saying goes.
     Could even all that I said be the new 'solid
thinking'?  Sure it happens quite often maybe, and
yet, that's why being open-minded has been such a
quality concept for a longer time indeed.  As I've
said, is this open-mind, my mind being open inside of
itself, or am I letting this sky, this clear air pass
through my nerves to provide a view, an understanding
that my mind provides a idea about this sky, inside of
my head and I view that idea of the sky as this clear
head?  A clear head or a head full of sky?  I am
inclined to view this as one in the same.
     Maybe this will help encourage this thread to
continue.

Thanks,
SA    
     

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