| CHAPTER FIVE Each One of Us, Conscious Each one of us, conscious, has a mind. That mind is our identity in the universe. Conscious of our identity, we are more. Each one of us is surrounded by a unique reality. In our individual environment is the definition and materialization of our mind as it is seen by infinity. In that mind are all the elements of our identity at infinity. At infinity, each one of us is unique. We still are not conscious of all the elements of our mind that are our identity. Our identity is far greater than what we think of in our personal being when we think "I am." Though our consciousness allows us to think that we have a mind, it still does not allow us to think, entirely, what that mind is. But now we can know that the mind is greater than the product of its consciousness. In our mind is an identity greater than the one we know; but this identity materializes our reality and to this greater identity we must defer. Conscious, if we are to more fully occupy our space in time, our reality, we must become more conscious of that identity. Conscious of that identity, we become more. The reality that defines us in our identity envelops us completely. Unconscious, this is always so, since the organism only responds and is thus always occupying its defined space in time; it cannot stray. Conscious, however, we have the ability to choose action through which we may momentarily step from our identity. In each thought, each decision, each action, is the potential to either work in the direction of our identity or against it. Both have their purpose and their results. When we work with it, our environment is enriched with the materialization of our success and our being is elevated within our identity; when we work against it, our reality opposes us and leaves its imprint on our being. Such is the mechanism that allows us the freedom of mobility within the medium of our reality. But this freedom must be exercised within the limits of our responsibility to ourselves, that which defines us in the image of our identity. Earnest, ourselves, as defined by our identity, we move with our reality; false, we rest opposed. There is, in effect, a true way and a false way to work within our reality. How reality judges us is how that value of truth or falsehood, in relation to the definition that is our identity, is materialized both in ourselves and in the circumstances that engulf us in our environment. These judgements are not in relation to a predetermined or predestined set of rules of what is right and wrong; they are in relation to that personal value of what we are as an identity, our true selves, as defined by the image that is our personality at infinity. With our minds we can now know the reason for our being conscious of our identity. Conscious, we can then choose to either work with or against ourselves. We have a definition in our reality. That definition is the state of being of the rest of the universe that envelops us completely. It is a characteristic of that definition that it has a value at infinity which renders us human. That value at infinity is our human identity. As we live, so our reality, through our definition, materializes that value that is our identity. Each one of us, in our daily existence, reflects that identity that is the image of our greater self. We can imagine that greater self as a kind of super life-support mechanism through an otherwise inhospitable environment. But it is more than just a mechanism; in it is reflected that value at its totality that to now we would have expected to find only in the human mind: consciousness. It is our mind "out there." In our mind are all the values that characterize our identity, that which renders us human. Our greater self, our mind, has the impetus to adorn us, to make us more beautiful, to clothe us lavishly or simply, to help us express ourselves poetically or directly, melodiously, kindly, lovingly, subjectively or objectively; to make us more than mere organisms that efficiently process their environment from one form to another. We are creations given the ability to create; thus we materialize around us visions of those forms and forces that are creating us. The mind has the desire, the need, to express itself beautifully, richly. Those are the characteristics of our human identity. At infinity, sincerely, we are all those things; in our immediate reality, in the definitions that surround us, we are reflections of that level of sincerity that marks the level of our humanness within our identity. True to ourselves, we are in our reality our identity. Put another way, as each one of us lives, we create in our surroundings a reflection of our inner and outer being. As a man or woman lives, he or she naturally leaves a mark of his or her being on all things they come in contact with. We cannot help ourselves; our presence is a phenomenon of our being in the universe. The universe has described us to look and be as we are; this being is then reflected in ourselves and in our immediate environment. If we are smooth, soft to the touch, gentle, then that is our definition within our reality. If we are hard, sinuous, resolute, then our reality is characterized by that definition. As we live, we leave behind us a trail of our deeds, and thus we materialize our being in the way we fashion matter around us. Our conscious mind gives us the power to change our reality, and in how we change it is always reflected our being in our identity. We strive naturally to surround ourselves with what pleases us. As we succeed in this endeavor, we materialize in our environment more of those characteristics that are our mind. The body, the dimensions of our inner universe, forms itself in relation to our being as it materializes within the space-time dimensions of interrelationship. It is born with our identity already marked on it. As to how the mind molds it in its development from birth, we still cannot know; but we can know that through its interconnectedness to its identity at infinity, it is formed in reflection to its greater image out there. If it is pleasing to the eye and the touch, then those are its characteristics at infinity in relation to the observer who finds it so. These are natural reactions to natural definitions of matter as defined by infinity. Its identity will keep this definition as long as it can before it weakens with age and begins to lose its original form. The body strives to occupy its form in identity as long as it can, preserving its youthful energy until it surrenders itself to old age and death. It will strive to leave behind as much as it can with its touch, its mark on reality. Where it walks, touches, gazes upon, is; these are all registered in the greater image of its reality, itself left behind in its greater self. Where it feels, thinks, dreams, desires, are even finer influences on the matrix of reality than where the skin comes in contact with the universe. These are fine, delicate influences that are felt subtly throughout reality but which, in the manner of infinity, are registered back to their origin. The finer the influence, the more beautiful, gentle, kindly that touch, the more graceful the reality that surrounds that being. From inside is projected our universe outside, as defined by the outside that is forming us. It is an interrelationship of beings, our inner and outer being, and in both is registered our identity. It is who we are. We project ourselves naturally, as simply as we breathe and live. As we adorn ourselves naturally, in our dress, our care, thought, our manner, and as we adorn our reality, our homes, our work, our gardens, our children, our communities; all are directed by our being as it becomes real in between the forces of our mind and its greater identity. Our mind strives to express itself in a way that will make it more itself in reality. We tend to fashion reality in our image; our image out there tends to fashion it with our mind; together they create what is visible to us as a single living being. We do not create this world solely from within ourselves; all we do is supported by the state of being of everything else in its totality projecting in all directions from our being. As we do things, the rest of the universe does things with us. That is how we project ourselves into reality, with the help of our greater being. That we strive to project beautifully is a characteristic of our human identity as it had been defined in our mind. We touch with our mind beautifully. It is the essence of our being. Our existence is a natural covenant between ourselves and our universal identity. They are in agreement, working together, adorning one another in each other's beauty, a reflection of one another. Untouched, that is our natural state of being in the universe. But we are not untouched, so this ideal state may not really exist. Even in nature, even primitive, man adorns himself. It is a natural characteristic of our human mind to improve on the unconscious. Nature, in its wilderness state, has a strong appeal to us. Its forms, its movements, are pleasing to us. We seem to gain a source of strength from our communion with it. Yet, our conscious mind finds the need to express its individuality. We take possession of things, work them, move them, mark them with our personality, name them, and then leave them in our immediate environment to characterize our being. We identify things, in effect, lend them our identity. As we become more sophisticated in our command of reality, our environment becomes more sophisticated with us. The naming and marking of things become more formalized and we have laws; our working of the environment becomes more mechanized, more an extension of our understanding of reality, and we have our modern technology. The more conscious we become, the more we take possession of our reality and the more we leave our identity in it. We fashion it in our greater image, superimposing the conscious mind on the establishment of the unconscious. The unconscious was communal, free, developed; the conscious, even semi-conscious, is territorial, independent, individual, developing. Having both characteristics in our being, we have a deep affinity for both realities, the primitive and the sophisticated. As we project our identity on our reality, we are drawn into it, but we cannot abandon our past. We are drawn to nature and its ways and though we are striking out into our new independence, our development in our future consciousness, we need not do so at the sacrifice of that which is natural to us, that which had brought us here. We may sometimes feel like intruders on nature, with our conscious minds. But nature is more than merely the wilderness. Nature works unconscious, perhaps conscious only at its totalities, whereas man is conscious individually as a materialization of those totalities. Perhaps we called those totalities gods once, but now they are only definitions of greater images within the interrelationship of reality. We are only intruders when we are not conscious of our consciousness within nature. Conscious, we left our primitive past and occupied a new identity in the universe, a new responsibility. We are the elements of nature's latest development, we are the latest evolution, and in that evolution is the responsibility to add our humanness to our natural order. More human, more beautiful, we will adorn our environment more in our image as nature adorns us more with the beauty of its creations. We are not intruders in the wilderness; conscious, the wilderness is our trust. It is a trust to mold in our world a newer, more human, more graceful reality. If nature is a living reality, conscious at its greater totality; if it had carried us in our development until we reached consciousness; then it is now our responsibility to carry its living totality into our future reality. In it is our beginning. The individual conscious mind incorporates in itself all the values that render it more beautiful, more human. The things that we create to adorn ourselves, the bodies that materialize our inner being, the nature around us, and the total reality we occupy in the universe are all sensitive to the mind's definition of its identity, its outer being. The mind and its identity are a mirror image of one another and between them is the creation we call Life. Conscious, that Life is the life of an individual. As an individual, it is the responsibility of that life to treat its reality with the responsibility with which we had been entrusted. It is our role in life to express ourselves within our identity and to thus create the world in our greater image. Conscious, we do this naturally, with our minds and bodies, as we adorn nature and the world around us. Within our immediate reach is how we live, how we look, how we treat things; at a distance is our social environment, our art, our thought, our laws, our disposition toward ourselves and others, our planet and our universe. It is the mark of a mature race that approaches these with grace and reverence; it is in the conscious mind that this grace is individually evident. That consciousness is the mark of a more human race versus one that is still primitive, still unevolved. A man or a woman can be more beautiful, completely. Conscious, it becomes so much more than merely a body and mind aware of itself; it becomes a mind and body aware of itself with its reality. Conscious, it has the power to move the universe in its greater image and become more as that image has already molded it. It is greater, richer, gentler, fuller, deeper, warmer, more beautiful than before. Its dimensions reach deeper into those values of infinity that are molding it into its greater image. Human, we have a richer, more beautiful woman, man. More beautiful, we then project a more human, more sensitive reality. As we live and occupy our space in time in reality, our identity, we move with it as it develops us in our image. We create and it creates with us. We prolong ourselves in it and in this prolonging we define our environment in this greater image. We are entrusted with this creation but it demands that we lend ourselves to it to enrich it. We are the builders of our universe, but we can grow only by growing in beauty. More beautiful, more human, the universe grows more beautiful with us. We have a trust and that trust is that we become more conscious, and with this conscious we become more tender in our touch. We are adding to our universe, but we cannot add when we are destroying it. We adorn ourselves, but the universe adorns us with our greater being; we cannot do this when we are working against it. More conscious, our reality becomes more adorned with our more human identity. The trust is one of tenderness, of grace, of reverence for what we have created; it was created by our mind from its inner being, but also with its being outside. If something is beautiful to us, it is because they have worked jointly, in agreement. We have been adorned into conscious, and so we adorn in return. As we sculpture the world around us in a more pleasing image, we move all those forces and circumstances, those patterns of interrelationship that define us, in a way that is guided by the mind and its identity. When we succeed in joining the values of our mind, our being, with the values that are our identity out there, when the tension that exists between them is fulfilled with our creation, we create or discover a thing of beauty. It pleases us, it moves us; it moves us closer to those values that are our identity. More in our identity, more conscious still, we create still more richly. Our reality reflects even more closely our identity and we become even more adorned in it. More conscious, more our identity, the universe entrusts itself more to us. We are creators, not destroyers. As creators, the universe creates with us. It benefits man to seek his identity: "Who are we?" It is how we become more human. As we are free to create, to adorn ourselves, as we live, we come closer with our mind to that value of infinity that defines our identity. As we create more in agreement with that identity, we become more within it. Conscious, aware of ourselves in our greater identity, we become more within the universe as it is making us. As we grow more mature, more upright and graceful within the body that adorns us, we project more of ourselves with our touch and our being into the natural order that surrounds us. Having a mind, conscious of that mind, conscious within its identity, we lend that mind into the reality of our universe. We become known and accepted throughout infinity, and thus we become elevated in how the rest of the universe perceives us. More beautiful, unblemished, softer, clearer of spirit and more elegant in thought, we approach more closely in our body and our surroundings that value that is the spirit of our identity. More in our identity, we become more human. If untouched, we are so much more. Our pursuit of beauty in consciousness is the essence of our development and we could dwell on it here forever. But we are not yet at liberty to do so. We are not untouched. There are other pressing demands of reality that we must cover in our development before we can return to our pursuit of our greater being. It will not be difficult, but there are conditions that must be still fulfilled before we can approach ourselves as truly human. To gain our identity, we must first become ourselves. We must first learn to become who we are, to become conscious. * * * |