Consciousness, Pure and Simple

The past lives in our minds. It dictates our experience of the present from a very powerful position, operating as the very self we identify as “I”. This I is like an impostor from within our own consciousness, claiming our life experiences for its own and distorting them based on its conditioning. We see the world through the lens of this I, with its web of mental associations that colour our perception and have us constantly judging and labeling everything in our experience—including ourselves—according to the past. This I is constantly reinforcing and substantiating itself by projecting memories and thoughts into our consciousness that keep it front and center in the present moment. When we observe our thoughts, we can see how the stories in our minds almost always revolve around “I”, “me”, “mine”, and variations of “me and you”, “me and them” and “me and that”. We’ve come to take this dualistic internal dialogue for granted, unconscious of the fact that this drama inside is purely mental fabrication, including the I operating at the center of it all. Isolation, division and conflict are inherent qualities of this internal dynamic, and it causes a great deal of suffering in many people’s lives. The mind is such a powerful tool, so immensely powerful that consciousness itself is easily mesmerized by it, by its own creation. That is really what we are though: consciousness, pure and simple. When we take a good look at ourselves in the present moment, if we can differentiate between what is a projection of the past and what is actually here in the present, we might see that the self of the mind does not really exist. Instead, what is here is something formless, clear and indefinable, free from the past and full of the present. It is something that is both inherently whole and empty at the same time. All the commotion inside arises in a space that is naturally still and silent. Looking inside and seeing these as qualities of your true nature creates the opportunity to shift from a state of narrow identification with the “I” thought (and all its projections), to a state of openness, non-reaction and inner peace. Who we think we are is a complicated drama of memories and emotions that is often butting heads with reality, but what we really are exists only in the present, and is simplicity itself. Our conditioning is deeply rooted, and so seeing this may not transform us immediately, but with continued awareness we might finally shed the bondage of the past and find the peace that is always right here, right where we are. JR “There is a watching of the past as it goes by, but not occupation with the past. So the mind is free to observe and not to choose. Where there is choice in this movement of the river of memory, there is occupation, and the moment the mind is occupied, it is caught in the past: and when the mind is occupied with the past, it is incapable of seeing something real, true, new, original, uncontaminated. A mind that is occupied with the past – the past is the whole consciousness that says, `this is good; `that is right; `this is bad; `this is mine; `this is not mine’ – can never know the Real. But the mind unoccupied can receive that which is not known, which is the unknown. This is not an extraordinary state of some yogi, some saint. Just observe your own mind; how direct and simple it is. See how your mind is occupied. And the answer, with what the mind is occupied, will give you the understanding of the past, and therefore the freedom from the past.” -J. Krishnamurti, Collected Works Volume 7 Bombay, 4th March 1953