Much like the caterpillar, spinning a cocoon of ‘cling-foil’ around itself for to one-day break free off thereby soar in freedom. Similar to the caterpillar, much of the personality through which humans operate today was formed cocoon-like in early childhood and onward. When the senses, interpreting life in terms of separation, conditioned the mind blindfolded-like into duality existence; a web of dualistic thought, that, similar to the caterpillar, we too must one day break free off thereby freedom of spirit unto Unity Consciousness.
Childhood situations, like, comfort versus discomfort, heat versus cold, food demanding versus feeding, screaming for attention, all leading to development of duality, to mind-sets of like and dislike, love and hate, good and bad, of ‘me’ ‘mine’ ‘I’. These early patterns constituted the cocoon thread-web, the building blocks of human personality which form the initial duality-based consciousness: learned patterns of perception fueled by cocoon-formed emotions such as love and repulsion, attraction and aversion, when life is perceived through opposites hence the dualistic mind.
Dualism being a conditioned film we replay mentally in Nano seconds to verify ‘our’ reality, when, in Truth, this reality amounts merely to a collection of dualistic mind-sets.
Direct and indirect Perception
So, there are two modes of perception available to the mind: direct perception and indirect perceptions.
Direct perception is experienced AS the present moment, as pure Self-awareness which awareness is all-intuitive, all-fulfilling, total, where the emotion of judgment, bias and comparison are non-existent.
Conversely, indirect perception is through the conditioned senses: mind seeing through recorded sense patterns or, learned action and reaction. Indirect perception fuels mind dualistically, dualism understanding sourced through the ‘I’ ‘me’ ‘them’ separation-referral mind. Other mind-sets are formed through religious belief systems, nation-identification, societal-political biases and corporate brainwashing.
What are the mechanisms of perception?
Perception is through what’s known as the representational systems referred to as VAKGO: Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic, Gustatory and Olfactory. Through these sense dynamics the mind becomes cultured into experiencing dualistically. Here mind retains all the early-life ‘setups’ — images, feelings, tastes and emotions of things not immediately present to the senses in any given moment.
Acting through this sensory memory bank the mind reuses stored data to express a senses-informed ‘opinion’ of life resulting in creating a ‘fake reality’ based on regurgitated indirect sensory detail.
Depending on their level of established indirect experiencing, of determined conditioned responses, the representational systems can serve either positively or negatively.
As we progress into adulthood, we begin noticing these conditioned responses: that, yes, we are in fact mimicking previously set patterns of early and tribal programing beyond the conscious mind’s control — activities known as subconscious reactive thought patterns, where ‘choice’ is non-existent.
By not recognizing these innate sensory mechanisms – causal of action and reaction — mental conflicts can arise as we attempt at justifying these subconscious reactor patterns to our-self, thus fueling additional emotive responses thereby perpetuate the cycle.
Subconscious Triggering Processes
In helping identify subconscious reactor patterns, attention needs to be drawn to their triggering processes. It’s here we will validate WHY exactly the captured, non-aware mind /senses go where they do and for what particular purpose. We’ll realize that their ‘going’ is triggered by the need to obtain a conditioned response of sorts, in short, an ego ‘fix’.
In this context, sense-related triggers are designed particularly by corporate and media to excite the senses artificially, by offering comfort zone appeasements similar to that which comforted us in childhood, when raw ego was initiated into responding to sensory-comfort dangling’s.
But. then, and here’s the catch, it’s the ego’s and senses’ job to create the cocoon of separateness by means of emotive identification with the dialogue of opposites.
In resolving this dichotomy – as in the practice below — we must therefore relinquish ALL ego-senses-chatter. Thus is mind stepping into ‘direct experiencing’, stepping into non-dual awareness. In other words, by mind resting in stillness, silence or primordial awareness, the present moment, even only for moments, we let go of chaotic ego-sensory perception and dualistic domination.
‘Letting go’ is symbolized by the letter A: convergence of duality mind into the centred point of transcendental Peace, the state no influenced by lower-ego and conditioned senses, thus opening the cocooned mind unto experiential Primordial Awareness.
Try this practice
Go for a walk locally.
Practice Be-ing.
Practice hearing 100% ONLY of what you hear, while simultaneously seeing 100% ONLY of what we see BUT WITHOUT THINKING or analyzing WHAT we’re hearing and seeing.
This practice places the mind in the neutral gear — primordial awareness – experiential reality – colloquially referred to by creative and sports people as the Zone.
The practice disarms the habitual thinking pattern of the ‘fake reality’, the cycle into which the representational systems have become snared.
Then a staggering revelation.
Where once it was ego-sensory chatter that kept the mind asleep, now, paradoxically, it’s silence and calm which awakens mind to freedom, expanded awareness.
That, by experiencing the present moment purely, we also experience pure silence. That THROUGH this silence conditioned ego-senses begin losing their domination — their intensity of influence begins fading into neutrality. And as mind begins opening unto the boundless silence of non-conceptual thought, phenomenal life is felt and experienced through untainted primordial awareness.
Neutral Silence Point
By watching phenomenal life in neutral-silence gear, we’re reigniting forgotten primary-awareness. By centring the mind in neutral-silence, balance is brought to the intellect, thus to potential ego-sensory chaos and emotional upheaval latent within dualism’s cause and effect dynamic.
Mental balance is achieved by withdrawing the conceptual mind from its habitual terms of reference: from SOLELY experiencing through conditioned responses — the tribal /societal mind-sets — for periods of time till the awareness fog lifts and direct perception becomes experiential.
Basically, we’re endeavoring to establish permanent contact with the already existing neutral calm point within chaos, within disorder. Establishing awareness between human evolution and spiritual development and our reaction to such — of not labeling either as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.
Even Scripture writers were aware of perception through duality-tainted lens
‘Feeding the multitude with Five Barley Loaves and Two Small Fishes‘
It’s important when reading biblical verses that these are interpreted allegorically, as they are not referring to historical people. Biblical names and places are symbols: faculties within the physical body, with, ‘Jesus’ symbolically representing the universal Life Principle latent within each of us. The twelve apostles are symbols of the all-vital brain faculties – 12 Cranial nerves.
So, in this Bible story, the five barley loaves symbolize one’s means of creating separation, of living through ego-created dualism. The Barley standard of the loaves symbolize their lower nature in comparison to Wheat, meaning enlightenment. The two small fish represent the mind’s struggle between Wheat and Barley, between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ one force dragging mind upwards while another is pulling it downwards, hence the two fish being bound to cyclic opposing activity. One half of the mind struggling for enlightenment while the other half remaining content in aimless existence.
Let us decode this scripture and see how it compares to the first part of this article
So, in this ‘five loaves and two fishes’ story, we’re reminded that the apostles (12 brain faculties) went to Jesus (life Principle) and told Him (sought wisdom) they had no food (absence of spiritual awareness) to feed the multitude of followers (thoughts /conditioned mind-sets based on dualistic perception). The apostles told Jesus there was a boy (faculties not yet spiritualized out of dualism ignorance) who had five barley loaves and two small fishes meaning (five senses of lower perception and two fish representing conflicting modes of consciousness – mind dominated by subconscious duality-based conditioning).
Jesus said: ‘bring them to Him’ – meaning bring the conditioned ignorance of ‘barley loaves standard’ — five senses — to Transcendence, to (Him): enter into Transcendence Meditation symbolized by Jesus commanding the crowd (thoughts) to sit down in the grass, meaning calm the anxious mind in transcendence meditation, thus freedom from sensory influence.
In other words, similar to the tortoise withdrawing its limbs into the shell, so too the senses while in meditation: mind becoming withdrawn from duality-experiencing, when VAKGO faculties BECOME PURIFIED /spiritualized thus fulfilling the scripture: ‘set my people free’: free the thoughts and inner faculties from enslavement to barley loaves status — barley being considered as spiritual ignorance compared to Wheat which represents spiritual nourishment. Barley standard pulling downwards, with Wheat drawing upwards. Both pulling against each other until Transcendence or neutral point is achieved in meditation. This is also the hidden meaning behind the Cain and Abel story — two opposing forces within the human psyche in need of neutralizing by means of transcendence.
We’re reminded that Jesus (innate Life Principle) ‘looking up to heaven (transcendence) blessed the loaves and fishes (transcendence nourishing the inner faculties).
The twelve baskets filled with leftovers refer to the twelve brain faculties becoming spiritually nourished – transformed from cyclic lower thought unto higher standard of perception.
And, of course, the greatest emblem of duality within the human psyche is the CROSS symbol: opposing mental planes, vertical and horizontal, being crucified by the mind entering into the primordial unifying silence of transcendence in meditation.