Clouds of consciousness
I wrote this article over 8 years ago and it was funny reading it back as I have adopted the belief system of clouds of consciousness a number of years ago, and it all really stemmed from this article and the awakening moments I had back then.
I thought it would be fun to put the original article up in it's before I go on to write another one refining my ideas on this theory.
I am rapidly coming to a place whereby there is a definite idea about this formulating. It is probably nothing new but I have not read about it or seen anything on the internet. Of course the books I have read, the radio interviews I have heard with physicists and other scientists and spiritual people all go a long way to me formulating this idea.
When I was nearing the end of this article it got me researching along a path of: consciousness, reality and spirituality and led me to two scientists; David Bohm, a great physicist who only died in 1994 and Dr David R Hawkins a scientist whose work is fascinating me at the moment. I thought you might like to read about them yourself.
The theory of clouds of consciousness just now goes something like this.
Clouds of consciousness are something we all have. There are various levels of these clouds that surround us and, should we wish, and open up our minds enough, we can tap into a lot of them. There are various levels between each of the four levels mentioned below, but for now I will write briefly about the main four clouds.
Self consciousness
These are the clouds which immediately make up who we are, what we think about ourselves and the world around us. Imagine a band of clouds tightly surrounding your head. This is where the self consciousness cloud lies. These clouds contain everything that encompasses your current reality, everything you think about, everything you believe, everything you believe about the world and other people. It almost blinds you as you are only seeing, thinking and feeling what is immediately in front of you. You have not formulated any original ideas about the world and decided to question your life.
The first 4 of Maslow's hierarchy of needs would reside here. Most of us would stay in this state of consciousness until the day we die. However I truly believe there is a global shift happening and that pretty soon most of us will die whilst in the awakening consciousness stage.
Your ego resides here also; everything you do is for the benefit of yourself.
Awakening consciousness
This is the second level in this theory. In this stage you have started to question some of your beliefs about the world, yourself and the people around you. You are not operating from a self point of view you are starting to think about the bigger picture and to help others and to find ways to be able to do this. You can access a higher aspect of yourself, but may not necessarily understand it completely. I believe this is what is happening in the world at the moment, there are more and more people at this level of consciousness and it is culminating in a mass awakening. More and more of us are starting to believe there is something more to life and something more to our minds than was previously imagined.
I am not talking about organised religion, that was a way of stifling the awakening, the real religion is when you've found GOD within yourself, GOD is not an entity with laws, GOD is a belief within yourself and a connection to other states of consciousness. The awakening consciousness is the beginning.
In this state of consciousness you are starting to believe that you create your own world, you create and manifest the things and people around you. It is the beginning of what Maslow would call Self actualization
Here comes the tricky bit. I can't write about the other levels of consciousness as I have never experienced them. I believe I have experienced glimpses of them through lucid dreaming, astral projection and inspirational thinking, so from this point on it is mostly
hypothesising.
Awakened consciousness
After awakening consciousness there would be a permanent state of awakened consciousness whereby you live in a world dominated by your thoughts to serve others. Your ego is a residual memory however you will still be self aware but from a spiritual point of view. I believe Buddha, Christ, Allah, Mother Theresa, Krishna Marti, and other spiritual beings all lived here. This type of consciousness begins to transcend the reality as we know it. It has one foot in the "˜real world' and one foot in the "˜pure world'.
Universal consciousness
The "˜pure world', this could be where your mind goes when you die, it's the library of the world. The mind could be uploaded into a melting pot of mind, consciousness and spirit for the good of the future world.
We, as living beings, can maybe tap into this universal consciousness when we have that "˜a-ha' experience, or astral project, meditate, through kundalini, basically if we momentarily transcend our "˜Awakened consciousness', and to transcend the "˜Awakened consciousness' we have to have transcended the other levels. So we have to break through various clouds of consciousness to get to the universal consciousness. If we were to live in this cloud we wouldn't be of this world, we wouldn't need our bodies.
Practical value
Having a theory like this brings up a lot more questions than it answers. However, for me, it's stimulates my goal to be "˜awakened', I wouldn't be overly concerned about what people think of me, about earning money, about getting clicks on my Google adsense ads, about getting visitors to this blog all the things ego is concerned with.
Okay, it's good having theories but theories should have some practical value. How can this theory have any practical value? For me it reminds me that I am still living in a state of self consciousness and it reminds me to try and have more "˜awakening consciousness' moments.
Recently I got back into the habit of checking my stats for this blog, purely an ego thing to do as I had started to think about the money it was earning rather than the content it was providing. I was writing articles that I thought readers would want rather than what I really wanted to put up. I have spent three days on this article as I have a passion for its content, other articles, due to inspiration can be written and uploaded in 1-2 hours.
So having theories like this reminds me every day that I am still living in my "˜self conscious' world and reminds me to at least try and have more experiences in the "˜Awakening consciousness' cloud.
Since writing this it has led to me change my view on reality and what it really is. I have been struggling for a while with the concept of reality and how one's person's world can be so different from my world.