Each week my newsletter explores different aspects of life through the lens of truth. Today’s was on, what appears to be, the fundamental truth of our experience as a human being — consciousness. But why would we talk about it? What difference could this conversation make to our everyday lives? Thanks to the reader that asked for the topic, and to the other who led to the idea of sharing it as a post. Read on and see what you think.
“You cannot fight against the ego and win,
just as you cannot fight against darkness.
The light of consciousness is all that is necessary.
You are that light.”
Eckhart Tolle
When I first began this work, the fact I was having a conscious experience wasn’t something that had crossed my mind. I was just a person doing a job, living and working with other people doing theirs.
Then Piers opened the door into a whole world of curiosity about consciousness — why are we conscious? How does this thing we call experience work — why can we taste a flavour we describe as chocolate? How does seeing happen?
Does all this even matter?
How will this help us when there’s a pandemic going on? My invitation is to consider that, through recognising our essential nature, any “thing” in the world changes. All “things” appear as a function of consciousness in the moment. AND there are many routes to recognising our essential nature, with this conversation around consciousness being one of them.
In science and philosophy today there are many exploring the nature of consciousness — quantum physics, maths, neuroscience, panpsychism and more — and calling it “The Hard Problem of Consciousness” — why do we have a subjective experience? Nobody has a universally agreed answer at the moment so what I’m sharing is for thought-stimulation and curiosity at whatever level interests you.
Some believe that the brain produces a conscious experience, that something happens in brains that makes an experience happen. It’s probably what we naturally assume. That we are conscious and rocks aren’t and therefore it has something to do with brains. But what about plants. With trees and fungi showing that there is communication happening with no official brains in sight. Given we see less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum, is it fair to consider that we don’t know it all and that maybe brains, as we perceive them to be, aren’t an essential feature of experience?
So if not created from a brain, what else? Another school of thought is that consciousness is primary and that everything we experience arises in it, from it. This aligns with the quantum field theory which shows quantum fields as fundamental, prior to particles, and that it’s in the collapsing of the potential energy in the field which creates particles, and everything ‘more solid’ than that. On that basis, a brain is a function of consciousness, an appearance created from consciousness — not a creator of it.
And so, again, what’s the point of all this?
Currently we could debate this intellectually till the cows come home. Even when the scientists decide on the answer to “the hard problem”, what does it even matter in our day-to-day experience? Why would we even care?
This conversation between Tim and Rupert shows some of the tension between different theories and then the fundamental question about what’s the point of this debate: “what’s important is that everyone in some form comes to this feeling-understanding that everyone and everything are one” Rupert Spira.
I just cried listening to Joe Biden giving a speech about us not needing to be at war with each other, we’re at war with a virus. His words were so authentic and loving. And I’d suggest we go a step further; we don’t even need to be at war with a virus — this “one” or nothingness of the quantum field from which we all come, the virus is that too.
Who knew that a conversation about consciousness could actually be a conversation about unconditional love?
With love, Helen
If you’re interested in this conversation, my weekly Connection Call this week is on this very topic on Thursday 3rd Dec 7pm UK / 2pm ET / 11am PT. Join here.
If you’d like to join my newsletter, do that here.
I work with people who want a quieter mind and a more fulfilling life. They’re smart, passionate people who are curious about there being a better way. They’ve worked hard to get to here and yet something’s still missing: ‘is this it?’. In our work we explore and reconnect you to innate brilliance so you rediscover the real happiness, real security and real balance that you are. Find out more here.