I want to introduce the idea of coming full circle. That in our journey of raising our consciousness, our long winding paths eventually lead back to where we started, albeit with a new perception. We can start off first with the example of going for a long run, you look outside with anticipation, put on your running shoes, and step out the door. You may be running ten, twenty, or thirty kilometers, but after you finish, you end up back home. Along your run may encounter difficult emotions that percolate to the surface. Maybe you have to contend with a pain in your knee or foot, or you’re thirsty and regret not bringing extra water, or maybe you are feeling fresh and tap into a flow state. Regardless of what you experience, the person who enters the door all sweaty and ready to take a shower and eat a big meal, that is a changed person. This process is one of many, where once completed, we end up where we started.
Why does the journey of raising our consciousness bring us full circle? How can it be that after all our so called progress and hard work, we end up closer to where we started? It is because there is nowhere else to go but home, you are you, and will always be you. The only thing you can truly gain are new perspectives. Anything else is ideology, religion, and dogma. To traverse the path towards higher consciousness, we must abandon all of those things, and what we are left with is ourselves. What I mean by you will always be you, is that your existence is independent from concepts. The man who is a pilot is not a pilot, but is merely playing the role of one. We cannot really determine whether something is absolutely good or evil. And thus instead of unnecessarily limiting ourselves to paths away from certain behaviors as a way of leveling up, we must do things consciously. It is from the new perceptions that result from changes in our consciousness that we are able to be free to choose to do the things we truly want, which generally form from an evolutionary generated morality of good. We must become conscious of our choices to be free from our unconscious patterns. It is by becoming conscious of our participation in reality that we are truly able to level up.
The evolutionarily generated morality of good
Humans are operating under more complex and diverse cultural operating systems that constrain their consciousness to function at certain frequencies. In these narrow bandwidths the human brain cannot fully tap into its ancestral knowledge or instinct. It is with instinct, a type of post-stimuli calculation we can call a context-dependent value judgement system, that we are able to derive good. This is opposed to religious thinking, which relies on a type of pre-stimuli judgement we can call context-independent value judgments. There are religions all around the world that operate on vastly different value systems, however they all are similarly context-independent. A system which enforces a set of values allows for cohesion within a group, however it can create high-levels of xenophobia. If we could learn to tap into our instinct more often, we would feel more aligned with our choices without the need for a context-independent framework which alienates us from each other.
“Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”
All of these circular journeys can be characterized by three main stages; the beginning, the middle, and the end. The key here is to understand that the middle of the journey is characterized by a state of chaos, the radical and unpredictable opening of possibilities. It represents the lifting of the veil of ignorance, which is often accompanied by the pain of knowledge and awareness. It is the beginning and end of the journey that are characterized by a state of order. The beginning can be understood as a state of ignorance is bliss, and the end state as knowledge is power. But they actually occupy two sides of the same coin. You start at x, and you make the journey towards growth, plunging into chaos and exploring infinite possibilities, but as you grow more conscious you are pulled towards the end y, which inevitably is the other side of the same coin. For example, birth is opposite to death, and in your journey between the two states you are plunged into the unpredictable nature of reality where you are free to live your life as you choose, but you will inevitably reach the end state. It is in your death that you will have made the round trip back to where you started. In this example, if you were to remain alive forever, you would be stuck in limbo and would have never completed the journey, as death is a fundamental property of life. I want to highlight some more examples of going full circle which will hammer home this concept.
Within the dietary paradigm we have a lot of contention as to what is the right and the wrong diet. The modern diet culture is populated by two extremes, the vegan diet and the ketogenic/carnivore diet. While growing up, many of us do not receive any sort of dietary education. You could say most of us eat a “see-food” diet, i.e., we see food, and we eat it. This includes anything from candy bars at the convenience store to home cooked meals at our grandparents house, and everything in between. Like a dog with kitchen leftovers, we tend not to discriminate. However as we grow more conscious about the impact of our food choices on how our bodies feel, the state of the environment, and the lives of other creatures, we may decide to change our dietary habits. This is where our journey begins. Whether that is veganism, which is focused on ethics as it’s basis, or ketogenic based approach, which is focused on health as it’s basis. What usually starts off as self-education and experimentation quickly evolves into dogma and religion. There seem to be examples of people thriving in both camps. But by choosing to fall into one of these categories when we seek solutions for the health, environmental, or ethical reasons, we limit our possibilities. Our vision of what is possible narrows, and if we face struggles or feel dissonance down the road, we often resort to solutions within the paradigm we have trapped ourselves in. In truth, all other animals in nature follow their natural diet. It is the overabundance of processed foods that have perverted our intuition about our food choices, and thus we require education in order to get back on the right track. However in most cases this education only leads us further from the truth. As we become more conscious, we realize that the truth is not found in any of these paradigms exclusively, rather it is synthesized out of the partial truths that they each contain. In the pinnacle of this evolution we go from living to eat, to eating to live, and regardless of whether we stick to eating exclusively plants, exclusively animal products, or a healthy balance of both, we realize that it’s real food that matters more than macro-nutrient ratios or elimination of entire food groups. We know having a Snickers bar or a glass of wine won’t kill us, but we understand the benefit of eating real foods consistently. In a way we go back to a “see-food” diet, but instead what we see is now filtered through a higher consciousness, which influences our food choices to be healthier overall. You are not a vegan, you are playing the role of one. As soon as you make the journey of coming full circle, you realize you are a human being whose behavior does not fit into this context-independent value judgement framework.
This pattern of going full circle also exists within the religious paradigm. Similarly to diet, the contemporary spiritual climate is also populated by two extremes; the dogma of religion, and the rejection of that dogma, atheism. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and thus the atheist is steadfast in their skepticism. While the religious individual is unwavering in their faith. These two camps actually share more similarities than one would believe at first glance. They both have limited what type of evidence they will accept, and fail to appreciate the constraints that the ego projects onto reality. In essence what we see is only a shadow, or a distortion of what exists like in Plato’s allegory of the cave. Like the diet example both camps will inevitably resort to the limited conclusions that their worldviews allow them to have. Children raised in a religious environment have the idea of God imposed on them by secondary sources, it is only as a result of experience that we may come to the conclusion that there is more to the nature of the universe than what meets the eye. Our spiritual evolution can be understood as going from indirect experience i.e. the meme of God or science, to the direct experience of God or awareness. The middle in this case can generally be characterized as either a rejection of the belief systems that you were indoctrinated with, or a doubling down of your faith. It is in the pinnacle of this evolution that both paradigms converge into the same realization regardless of whether you started as a believer or a skeptic. Ultimately there are altered states of consciousness that confirm the existence of God, whilst denying the meme of God, leading you back to where you started, albeit with a new perception on your atheism or spirituality.
DISCLAIMER: I understand that God can trigger the atheists bullshit meter. God can be interpreted as the ground of reality (consciousness) from which all information processing takes place to give rise to the physical phenomenon we take for granted. The direct experience of God or awareness is then understood as the realization of consciousness as the fundamental ground of reality.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s diet, religion, career, or your relationships with people. If we are to participate in our daily reality, we must do so consciously, otherwise our decisions carry a heavier burden. This is the burden of cognitive dissonance. If we commit to doing things consciously, we have completed our task in making the most out of life, thus reducing our dissonance and increasing our feeling of being in alignment with our choices. By choosing to grow towards higher consciousness, we can increase the likelihood that we act in accordance with behaviors in aligned with our evolutionarily generated morality of good, or instinct. The reality is simple, you must understand that you really have the freedom to do what you want, you just gotta be woke to accept it. It is by understanding that all conscious development leads us in a circle, that we can finally begin making our way back home.
