To thine own self be true

“Oh, the glory of growth, silent, mighty, persistent, inevitable! To awaken, to open up like a flower to the light of a fuller consciousness!”–Emily Carr, “Hundreds and Thousands”. The Journals of Emily Carr

What is it that makes ‘you’ uniquely you, quite apart from your soul, spirit, and heart? You were born with a brain and sensibility to perceive and experience this world. Ever since you were young, you have experienced this world and everything in it in terms of consciousness. That is how you understand yourself, others, situations, and the world at large. Generally speaking, you are conscious of various things and experiences, or not. You have acquired a fair bit of consciousness (and subconsciousness) already, though sometimes there are things you choose to put ‘out-of-mind’, out-of-consciousness.

Think for a moment about your life. You are either alive and conscious of that aliveness, or not. You may be a few weeks old and vaguely conscious of a mother feeding you, or a teenager conscious of having done something wrong, or an old person in hospital, listening to and conscious of the machines that may be keeping you alive. Maybe at another point in your life, you hit your head, and lose consciousness. Or maybe you actually forget something and someone you used to know well, or in an extreme case, develop consciousness-damaging dementia.

Consciousness is that important, (self-)defining state in which one is aware of oneself and that which is outside of self. Essentially, it is how we experience each day and how we interact with others and our various environments. It is where we spend most of our days and time, whether we’re sleeping, remembering, or imagining. In life, consciousness always goes with the territory. It is truly who we most and each are. At any given moment, it is summarily the total of what we know, have experienced, and have learned or are learning in our busy, ephemeral, transitory lives.

Notes:

In terms of what matters, is most important, or relevant to our lives as individuals would be consciousness or conscious awareness. Watch a baby in its third month starting to become aware of his toys and try to imagine how that baby might feel or how you might have felt with those same toys at that age. Recall an important lesson you learned from a favorite teacher. Remember how the death of a pet or wild animal may have affected you. Recollect your first job and how you learned to work with others. Think back to when you graduated from high school, college, or university. And all the things that stood out or are memorable to you. Perhaps you can even have some recollection of how those moments felt and what specific things you suddenly became aware of.

“Consciousness” is also a good old ’60s word. Back then, when I grew up, young people were all interested in increasing consciousness. For some, this meant a political consciousness as in women’s lib, civil rights, or gay lib. For others, it emerged through such physical things as long hair, different clothing, drugs, and a questioning of or rejection of ’50s-style adult authority. For still others, the consciousness sought was to be found in new writing of the day and different emerging genres of popular music.

But as the third paragraph of the piece states, consciousness is truly larger and more fundamental than some things that emerged in a specific decade in the western world. What I find most interesting about any other individuals is what they know and what they are aware of. Beyond whatever behavior and action, consciousness is what defines who they are, every bit as much as their values or character.

Worth noting, in passing, is that consciousness can be physical (such as in our response to massage therapy), emotional (such as in our learning from the feelings evoked in relationship conflicts), mental (such as in transcendental meditation), and spiritual (such as in our response to religion or cultural rites). Consciousness is palpable in a number of ways, on a number of levels or dimensions.

In the earliest entry on “Individual Process, Briefly”, I spoke of how so many of us seek missing information, often things we want or need to know and are curious about. That information when found, in turn, satisfies and expands our consciousness, knowledge base, and understanding of ourselves, others, and the world. When we expand our information, we expand ourselves and become ‘larger’, metaphorically speaking. The more we are conscious of, the more we grow innerly–a core manifestation of expanded consciousness.

Later, as we age and look back, we may see that our lives were not just about the things we did and the relationships we had. Instead, we might come to realize how important, basic, and significant consciousness was in defining what we essentially were and in understanding or appreciating what we learned from life and others.

E. M. Forster’s “Only connect” is probably the truest two-word statement ever uttered. And one can connect on many levels: between oneself and others, between one and nature, and between one and any work of art, be it film, book, painting, or piece of music.

Connection is a state that starts as early as a baby returning a parent’s gaze. We also feel connection to family, others, and our various environments before we begin attending school. Connection usually means that one consciousness recognizes the existence, presence, and consciousness of others. In that sense, there is an inner connection, not just the exterior connection or superficial glancing off ‘the other’ like a couple of billiard balls on the table of life. One of the challenges of living is the extent to which we can connect with the consciousness of ‘the other’, whether in the form of person, situation, object or surroundings.

Our minds and egos typically predispose us to living mostly in terms of self; as expressed by songwriter Paul Simon–“I am a rock. I am an island.” Most of us live inside ourselves and see and relate to the ‘outer world’ in terms of our selves. The challenge often is to recognize the common humanity of other people or our similarity to other species such as animals struggling to survive possible ecological disaster or planetary crisis. There is, then, a large central bedrock of consciousness that connects everything on Earth, and it is that basic field of consciousness recognition that holds the possibility of significant individual growth and positive personal learning.

For instance, when you read a book and are moved by the experiences and ideas of real people or fictional characters, you and your awareness or consciousness are changed by that process. You may end up feeling as if the characters or people are you and feel an indefinable or inexplicable close connection to them. Likewise, if you are on a team that wins a championship, there is a bond between the team members that connects them in a lasting, significant way. Much the same thing happens when people go to a school reunion and remember and relive those old days, roles, and events. There is a sharing of consciousness that accompanies the reconnection.

Hence, consciousness is potentially the important aspect of connection. Just consider the perceptions, awarenesses, recognitions, knowledge, understandings, insights, impressions, and appreciations that occur in such key, moving, and memorable moments.

“Making mental connections is our most crucial learning tool, the essence of human intelligence to forge links; to go beyond the given; to see patterns, relationship, context.”
(Marilyn Ferguson)

And, too–returning to Forster’s quote about relationships–the best of what happens between any two people is often simply the agreements and connected consciousness—the shared experiences and mutual learning that occur in those very close ties. It is the connected consciousness that is the greatest value of whatever significant connections.

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Notes: It is difficult to talk about connection without mentioning consciousness. When we seek to connect, we seek to know more about who or what we are connecting with. We seek an awareness that is a vital part of connection. And to a large extent, our connections won’t happen or be significant unless they presuppose imaginative empathy or sympathy, other forms of knowing, other forms of consciousness.

Ideally, some of the best connections with other people will arise from talk and ‘comparing notes’. In those exchanges of feelings and ideas, we may potentially experience similarities of feelings, thinking, and experiences that create the bridges of connection and, in turn, connected consciousness.

Over the days and years, our consciousness alters and, hopefully, grows. We learn more about others, ourselves, human nature, nature, society, and the world. As Ferguson suggests, learning occurs through our ability to make connections whether studying a person, a mathematical theory, a period of history, and so forth. Those connections become a part of us as much as we may, as Paul of Tarsus said, become a part of someone, something else, a process–of who and what we know.

Above all, shared consciousness and the seeking of common ground remain basic to one’s fulfillment as a person and as an individual.

“Infinite possibility is good, not bad.”
-James Gleick, The Information



“He that desires to print a book, should much more desire, to be a book.”
-John Donne

is called:
-a bouquet
-a charm
-a hover
-a glittering
-a shimmer
-a tune.

Ah, yes, the Canadian and American military. A perfect career and lifestyle for guys with no self-control who are into sexual assault with no consequences. In Canada, Trudeau will even promote you and give you a hike in salary. Creeps wanting to rise to the top are more than welcome to enlist in Canada. T and Sajjan only want the best to serve our nation and will do nothing to anyone ‘outed’. Yup, a free pass and blind eye from two boys’ club chauvinists.

I would think all Canadian women, again, must look at T more critically and realize, again, how fake a feminist he really is and vote differently next election.

As always.

Antimaccassars. Those linen cloths that use to be used on furniture, especially behind the head on chairs and chesterfields.

I first came across the term when I started teaching English at 22. A curious word used in Munro’s story “The Monkey’s Paw”.

This morning I learned that the ones behind the head were used, especially, for men’s hair oil. Ah those days of yore with Vitalis, Brylcreem, etc.

Another woman to note who’s already made her mark on history by being a black immunologist–the lead scientist–to develop the Moderna vaccine. Women are definitely making their marks in health-care science. Nice to see women heroes emerging from the mess of the pandemic and muddled times.

in the afternoons is like having tea @ the Empress Hotel in Victoria.

In the future, who will want to:
-become a doctor or a nurse?
-become a child-care worker?
-become a restaurant worker?
-become a teacher?
-become a steward/ess?

Absolutely nothing is being done to fix the health care systems, child care places, restaurants, schools, and air travel. There is no political or moral will to change these broken workplaces. Wages and working conditions will remain poor, dangerous and oppressive for those who choosing to remain.

Expect limited help from hospitals. Expect to see many restaurants, bricks-and-mortar stores and malls to close. Expect school infrastructure to continue to decline and for online learning to become more common without common, agreed-upon curriculum. Expect viruses to continue to be transmitted on airplanes, trains, and travel hubs. Expect more people to work out of home and to order food and other products online.

People will find it increasingly hard to survive or make a living. In particular, the poor or disadvantaged will be in big trouble. Women’s lives will be even more stressed and downsized, with many limited to home.

If there was one word, I’d pick to describe our limiting times and limited lives, it would be “thwarted”.