[kkstarratings]This is Dan of Vagabond Buddha. I am in Puebla Mexico. I just finished my run. I have some thoughts I would like to share with you: Seeing constricted consciousness from unconstricted consciousness.
You can see constricted consciousness from unconstricted consciousness.
How to more easily see your mind. Instead of limiting consciousness to your mind. How the unconstricted consciousness could see the constricted consciousness.
The unconstricted consciousness is like an opening. It is an effortless awareness of the all, without an effort to focus on a subset of the all. It is an awareness, without a position, without a listening that needs to be right. It is just an open listening.
When your mind listens to everything, people, the environment, nature. It is listening for something. The mind is listening through a filter of trying to drive to something. It is trying to understand, process, and come to a correct conclusion. The mind wants to be right about that conclusion, make a right decision. Go in the right direction. The reason the mind is constricted is that it is starting with a conclusion or starting with a filter. That listening filter is an amalgamation of your entire mind organized paradigm and point of view. And so it is a constricted view, over a constricted set of perception, that is a subset of the awareness.
When you listen from awareness there is no position you need to justify. There is no looking for proof in only a subset of the awareness, that proves your mind is right. It’s an openness of perception and awareness.
Contrast that with your mind. When you listen with focus on your mind, everything is driving to a purpose, a correct purpose that reflects all the other purposes that you experienced in your life. The mind listens to a filtered subset that reflects the past somehow. The mind justifies previous conclusions somehow. The mind honors the paradigm of past experience and organizes the future, to match that, to reflect the past. There is a listening from a place of righteousness, that we listen from when we are in a mind paradigm.
There is a need. It is a childish need to be correct and to prove the other wrong. It is childish because it is not open for new information you missed the first time you watched. The first time isn’t often this time, and if you missed information the first time, or there is new information this time, you miss it if you are in constricted consciousness.
Your predictions about the future. Are a reflection of the past. And they confirm your value. You confirm your own value. You get to be right. And even your mind when it hears this concept I’m describing. Has thoughts about how it is stupid to talk about unconstricted consciousness because what would be the purpose of that? What could possibly be the true purpose, your mind will say, of “Throwing away all of your past experience and just wandering around with an empty mind?” “What would be the possible value of walking in front of traffic and getting run over, because you refused to remember what you learned as a child?” … “Only a fool would entertain the idea of unconstricted consciousness.”
And so what the mind is striving for there is to regain control. It is in fear that, unless you quickly focus on a subset of everything in the awareness, you risk getting run over by a car. But what the mind is not interested in seeing, and will never be able to see, is that the unconstricted consciousness, has within it, as a small object, the entire paradigm that your mind has built. And, the unconstricted consciousness can take the counsel of your mind, as need be, before coming to a conclusion. Without constricting itself to the paradigm of the constricted consciousness.
The unconstricted consciousness can listen to the mind without being the mind.
It would be like a parent walking alongside a child. Hearing the child explain how if it doesn’t get chocolate ice cream within thirty seconds, it will die. It really needs the chocolate ice cream. The parent understands the child won’t die and can listen to the child’s counsel, while also hearing the birds in the trees, a traffic jam at the corner, and to everything, without filter or focus.
And so, the child is telling you, “Don’t open up your consciousness, keep it constricted, so I can get to that answer more quickly.” You want the chocolate ice cream and you take its counsel while excluding the unfocused everything. That is how most of the world is living. They are living in a constricted consciousness that only takes the counsel of their point of view. They are not taking the counsel of the unconstricted consciousness. The unconstricted consciousness brings new information continuously.
You just have to feel, to step back and hear the child. “I want to close on getting me some ice cream within thirty seconds.” You have to step back from that and hear everything else, without the paradigm of the filter of what’s the only important thing right now to get what you want.
You won’t lose the ability to hear the child when it speaks. Once in awhile the child will have some valuable information for you. But more often than not, in many situations, you don’t need to drive to a conclusion so quickly. Just leave open the possibility. In those situations where it is not critical, you can just live in the awareness. Take in more information, without a filter of any kind.
Just live in the awareness. In addition to a better counsel, with more information, you’ll find that being in the awareness itself, is joyful. There is a nature to the constricted consciousness that creates pain in your life and there is no pain in the awareness. Just by seeing the constricted consciousness from the unconstricted consciousness, the suffering ends. The effortless joy of being requires no process. Only seeing is required.
All right, just some things I wanted to share with you after my run. I hope you are here. Be here and have a great day.
This is Dan from Vagabond Buddha. Thanks for listening.
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