Hymn to a Silent Sky

The vast silence in Nepalese high country, its expansive vistas and high altitude- awareness is a conscious intensity and irreducible mystery. There is much debate today in consciousness studies regarding the nature and limitations of our capacity to fully understand consciousness. If we view consciousness as a thing it becomes a discrete element into our matrix of thing-logic, then consciousness is an element of circumstance that can be broken down endlessly into a phenomenal meat-grinder. What if this view is a result of meat-grinder logic, but fails to grasp the genuine nature of consciousness? What if mind is the circumstance of consciousness, and consciousness itself is prior to mind? What if consciousness is not a faculty, but the force of existence itself, that is consciousness as self-identity?

Observe what happens when we merely talk about consciousness. When we discuss consciousness we make into an “it” from the third person perspective. But consciousness is always and primarily, first person: we know consciousness primarily and always from our interior experience of existing, not from our exterior observations and analysis. Even if we object that much is known of consciousness, behavior, and psychology, it remains that those fields of knowledge and study exist only because we know that we exist—that we are concerned (Heidegger) with our existence. It is also possible that the exteriorizing tendency of consciousness—the capacity to separate the “I” from objects—can be turned inward. Our “I”, that always allusive presence, becomes a “me” of objectified introspection. Whatever arises in the field of consciousness can be objectified: made into a separate thing that can be broken down endlessly.

But what is really happening when we objectify an act of consciousness? We are distinguishing the immediacy of our conscious presence( here now in this moment) from consciousness as a concept/object, (something that appears in our mind's eye). This is why when we turn inward to find our “me”, we are left with an infinite regress. When we think about ourselves, we think in terms of appearances, concepts, representations which are all objects in our minds eye. Like light from a distant star, we are percieving objects of the past in our current awareness. Anytime we try to grasp ourselves as an object of perception or consciousness, that object will always be a memory and a mere facet of our current awareness. Thus, our current and pesent presence can never be an object to itself.

Whatever we conceive as our “me” is an ephemeral thing—it appears as an “object” of circumstance, and then it disappears. Our awareness always stands present, like the sky with clouds forming and disappearing.

Descartes' famous dictum: cogito ergo sum, haphazardly translated as “I think, therefore I am”, is a good way to approach the formless presence of consciousness. The translation is haphazard, because the words “I think” and “therefore” immediately conjure certain presuppositions we hold here in the west. “I think” doesn’t mean thinking in the usual sense of objectifying thoughts about the world. Remember, when Descartes wrote his famous words, they were a conclusion to his formal application of doubt to literally everything we think we can know. Our place, beliefs, and even the “me” of awareness may all be illusions, dreams, or phantoms in a virtual reality matrix. Hovever, even if all this were true, the “I think”, that is my awareness of being (and therefore having concern) is presupposed in even the most strident skepticism. In other words, even if every possible perception or belief can be doubted, the act of doubting itself arises in the being of consciousness' awareness of its own existence. Thus, the “therefore” is not a causal link between the act of thinking and fact of being, it is actually an indication of an inversion of ordinary sense of causal sequence. The ever-present "I Am" is inherent in and prior to any thought or doubt. Ken Wilber stated it most succinctly when he phrased Descartes famous phrase the following way: “Consciousness, therefore Being.”

Being is self-existing; existence is self-effulgent being that is an interdependent arising of endless perspectives. Consciousness is the affirmation of the primacy of being; the essential, first, and unmediated “communication” of consciousness is its own existence: ‘I am’.

The communication of the being of consciousnesses is not externally imposed on consciousness; it is consciousness. Consciousness is the feeling of being as the “fact” of being as apposed to the “what” of being. And further: this consciousness is radically non-objectifiable. If “you” reach to the back wall of consciousness the “you” disappears into an endless, formless intensity of presence. Even the articulation of ‘I Am’ merges into the great an unfathomable mystery of self-identical being.

In this sense consciousness that is self-positing being, or being’s primary manifestation of self-identity, is itself formless awareness. As Francis Lucille says, it is a welcoming space. It is in this welcoming space where we enact self-holding in being, that is a fundamental embrace/forgiveness of our manifestation here. All of the elements or strata of our lives that are otherwise unacceptable to us (hidden, broken, refused, repressed, oppressed, ignored and otherwise unloved) are allowed to arise and be “held” in the forgiving space of this consciousness. It is only in consciousness they breathe and are given room to follow their natural trajectory, and then fade away into the formless and unknowable mystery of life. It is in that welcoming space, we fall into a place where we can move in freedom through and beyond these tendencies. These tendencies are not merely bad, negative or immoral acts, but any emotional allegiance that blinds us to the great love, and silent sky being, and welcoming consciousness for all and everyone.

All phenomena arise “within” the space of consciousness; all phenomena are the spontaneous self-development of consciousness. The space of consciousness can be an indifferent witnessing, or the most profound self-acceptance and forgiveness imaginable. The back wall of consciousness, that what is prior to consciousness, is an ultimate intensity that is radically nonobjectifiable. It shines forth, self-positing in joyous dance its own existence by radiating the endless worlds

Consciousness as self-identity is the ultimate proximity. It is unmediated touch, that is self-existing and not separate from anything that arises. So when you are ready to sit back into this hermetic space of ease, the welcoming sky that is itself untouched and indifferent, you will discover that consciousness extends into the world not merely as some airy fragrant space, but as touch itself. This touch is fundamentally the intensity of being, but it is phenomenally extended in the body as all forms of beings, events, and places. Since all references are the spontaneous self-development of this touch, ultimately there is no external reference or point of view of this touch. It is the heart of consciousness, vulnerable and inseparable.

This process of falling into the silent sky, and feeling the vulnerable heart of consciousness as touch, is not comforting. It is the primary breath, or spirit, that graces the endless walls of these great mountains. Familiarity, my comforting self-identity, falters in the presence of this great and endless presence. I am left with nothing but to open the hand, and release the ghosts of the known into the great “cloud of unknowing”. This touch feels like failure, it is not “right”. It cannot be abridged by any map, for it is found even most profoundly when our American notions of “success” meet the cul-de-sac of our fleeting identities.

Trekking in the high country, situated out of a predictable cultural context, and moving physically against my own limitations, I am placed in an arena that is an ultimate intensification of consciousness. Of course, to get the benefits of such a trek, I must approach the trek as prayer: open to the unknown and assuming the posture of invocation and humility. Invocation is not the words spoken to an unknown, mythic deity, it is the posture that is taken in daily living through conscious intensity; it is an attitude of openness that approaches the unknown not only as a student and devotee, but as your very self that always already is and will be.

And it is even more than a trek: it is a pilgrimage, travel in the genuine sense of the word. In many occasions, we look at our spiritual heroes and wonder about their great awakenings. We hear about the nature of consciousness, teachers, exotic yogic practices, but the primary thing has always escaped me until now: travel, pilgrimage. Leave the womb of America, drop the convenient lifestyle, stretch into a conscious intensity, and submit to the sacred arena of the Large.

May the silent sky of being bless all sojourners on this great, uncharitable path to our destiny in the unknown.