ARE YOU SURE (M. Sager, 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 50 x 70 cm)
ARE YOU SURE?
According to Buddhist teaching, we all go through life with blinders on. We might be hiking along a forest road coming to a shack, one of those inviting oases, and we spot a rope rolled beside the entrance, but we mistake it for a snake. This provokes thoughts associated with that perception. We know that there are working tools like ropes used by foresters but start to ask whether there are also snakes. Concern about our safety in the face of dangerous animals in the woods arises. Should we avoid the area, and should we protect and arm ourselves? We spin a web of thoughts that are not necessarily based on the first sight of the thing initially interpreted falsely. Further distortions of thoughts follow, and all combines into creating a biased view. Having gotten the idea that forest huts are infected by dangerous animals like snakes, it impacts our behavior overall. We pay attention to this seemingly looming danger and see even more evidence that our fear is justified. We might stop taking walks in the woods and approaching shacks at all. The initial misperceptions got hardened, which impacts how and what data we collect. The vicious circle is perfect.
Wholeness can be felt. We can feel it when the three Awareness Intelligence modes climax into full and sound multi-perspective quality of mind.
Wholeness establishes when the intra-past, the inter-present, and the extra-future consolidate into a mental state, and when intention unites unconditional love, timeless kindness, and purposeful service.
It’s a feeling of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm, which comes from the Greek word ‘enthousiasmos’ that means “possession by a god, inspiration.” The holy inspiration, in my case, is often occurring together with signs like goosebumps and joyful tears as a bodily response to the intensive realization of having become wholly and eternally connected. Awareness so intelligent to be able to embrace all humantime is indeed like embracing God.
When the intelligences of the intra-past, the inter-present, and the extra-future unify into the grid of paramount awareness, an energetic representation of a unified field emanates. In physics, forces are theorized to be transmitted through so-called fields. Deepak Chopra uses, besides the term of the ‘unified field’, also the term ‘cosmic consciousness,’ in which the ‘in-here’ and ‘out-there’ meet.
Awareness Intelligence can be understood as such a field where life intelligence, respectively consciousness, and mentalizing are harmoniously unified.
The unified field of Awareness Intelligence is connecting our thoughts with the nature of life that is within all of us human beings. It is the unified state of humanness that has become all-including and timeless love that lets us witness its power through showers of bliss. It’s that realization of one’s humanity, which is accompanied by a sense of deeply fulfilling enthusiasm.
The term ‘Samadhi,’ as used in yogic practice, is sometimes defined as a non-dualistic state of consciousness, which might be in line with a state of harmonious awareness. Matching aforementioned experience of enthusiasm, Indian Yogi Paramahansa Yogananda describes Samadhi as a blissful state of super-consciousness in which the individual soul is perceived concurrently with the cosmic spirit. Samadhi is considered the final stage of yogic meditation at which union with the divine is reached. And so is Awareness Intelligence at the stage where all its three modes of the intra-past, inter-present, and extra-future point together to a most comprehensive knowing of humantime.
Awareness Intelligence is a maximum mental concentration of psycho-spiritual energy that brings the uncoordinated streams of volatile thoughts of unawareness into one steady river of complete understanding.
Buddhist enlightenment, the so-called Satori, described by Zen Buddhism as a state of the mind that is experiencing the insight into the nature of existence seems to resemble a state of Awareness Intelligence too.
Awareness Intelligence is compatible with key messages of Lao Tzu’s more than two thousand years old traditional Chinese philosophical teachings. Taoism speaks about living by the three treasures.
One treasure is ‘simplicity,’ or ‘humility,’ which is in line with the meaning of the intra-past Awareness Intelligence mode. Intra-past knowing is about the return to one’s true nature, before limiting socio-culturally limited identities are construed.
The next Taoist life treasure is ‘patience,’ or ‘merci.’ The Awareness Intelligence category of the inter-presence signifies a same quality of love that is unconditional and pure even towards the ones whose past or outlook could be irritating for a transaction-oriented mind and whose weakness would not arouse a material interest either.
The third treasure of life, according to the Tao, is ‘compassion,’ or ‘frugality,’ which is well reflected in the extra-future tenet of Awareness Intelligence that, once it is achieved, results in benevolence and responsibility for the benefit of all humanity rather than in ego-inflated ambitions.
In Buddhism,
first the ability to know past lives,
second the ability to know future lives, and
third the ability to know the essential nature of sufferings in the present life
describes a triadic set of insights along the threefold temporal structure of human life. This teaching not only underlines the soundness of a threefold structure but also supports the pertinence of human time that is inherent to Awareness Intelligence as well.
Also, the three Buddhist marks of existence, from which all human delusion and suffering purportedly stems, can be mapped to Awareness Intelligence in the following way.
Overcoming suffering from the illusion of permanence can be achieved through the pre-life awareness of the intra-past,
suffering itself is addressed by the inter-present that extinguishes any suffering-causing bond from relationships, and
the selfless connection to humankind as a whole lies in the healing power of awareness of the extra-future.
The pursuit of happiness generally is considered to be the ultimate goal of a human journey, while economic wealth is expected to support that goal. However, there are many different and plausible ways of looking at quality of living.
“You could be well off, without being well. You could be well, without being able to lead the life you wanted. You could have got the life you wanted, without being happy. You could be happy without having much freedom. You could have a good deal of freedom, without achieving much.”
