Perhaps now is the time to talk a bit about the unconsciousness component of No-Thing. In the I Am experience we see that there is complete void, which becomes and is self-awareness, and this awareness is being all things. It’s easy to say all things exist in and as this Ultimate Consciousness, but there’s still a pesky problem of the moment in between, when perception of existence stops and starts. What is that moment, that true death from which life springs? What is the void?
Blankness is and becomes self-awareness, which is and becomes being. From the perspective of becoming, which is the motion of time, it looks as though there is a chronological order to becoming being, which I’ve reversed here by accident. After all, shouldn’t something that is have become what it is first?
It’s no accident. Becoming, which is time, is transcended and included within isness. Isness does not happen first or second, everything happens within isness—all of time does; all chronologies. Isness is always already happening. One aspect of isness is void. Or, if we want to be cute, let’s say isness contains all that isn’t as well as all that is—all non-motion/motion at once.
In simply being, Ultimate Consciousness is expressing. From our vantage point within time, we’d say expressing in two directions: forward in a positive direction of building and backward toward a negation or absence of all things. There are those who say consciousness builds life to know thyself as Ultimate Consciousness, but that cannot be true, for there is nothing apart from Ultimate Consciousness and so all choice exists only as an appearance within it. Building is an action within isness, as is destructing. Destructing (or deconstructing) yourself by your own choice to hit the void can only take you to the brink, for there comes a point where further action cannot happen, because… void. Any further action is not void. Choice is not void.
We often talk about isness, or the now, as a picture, but that picture is not a static snapshot. It is aliveness. Choices happen through you. Choices create appearances through individuals and then societies, which create more choices, it’s just that this sense of creating is all happening right now. But, from any point within the picture, it looks like creation unfolds through time. And this is where clever people often say that life is an illusion; all this running around is an illusion. But it’s not exactly. There are several necessary illusions involved. One, we now see, is the notion that it could be another way.
Can’t. Oneness. All ways happen within oneness.
In the language of time we’d say that if all exists within the now, then everything has already happened. But that’s not precisely true, either. Every choice, every appearance is always already happening. Action is ever-present. Aliveness is ever-present. We are the characters in the picture doing their thing, the picture itself being its thing, and the consciousness in which all of this is always already manifesting. We are all of that. Everything is. But not every character has the ability to step out of the way for the self-awareness of the whole to shine through-and-as the character. For humans, this stepping out of the way is the only choice that matters. It is the only choice not mapped (or mapping) on the picture. Such a one transcends and includes the picture.
Free will choices made within the picture are of time, thought, and therefore mapped. Energy and actions are the picture. This is why stepping out of the way is of vital importance. What stepping out of the way really means is that the body stops projecting the self—a character in the picture—for a blip of a moment. Self is the consciousness of time and in the unconscious momentary blip, time is no more. The intelligence that transcends and includes time becomes the case of the body. The self blips back with the same outward characteristics, but a wiser, truer character, shining through. It would be like if you were a toddler and at the snap of a finger became an adult. Both are you but they feel different because slow growth was not involved; the transformation was instantaneous.
Why does the self blip back in? Because time is transcended and included by Ultimate Consciousness and so it must exist yet again, this go-round in a healthy state.* We are born into a world where the self excludes Ultimate Intelligence on its own terms, the fullness of it. And when the body understands this, that self-as-barrier breaks. Ultimate Intelligence comes roaring in as an energy within-and-as you that you can turn on and off when you, the same-but-different self, choose to step aside.
Let’s put it simply: the original moment of unconsciousness is a death of self that occurs when the body understands the predicament keeping it from wholeness. The body gets that the self is in the way and then removes the self. Void. When consciousness returns, it is Ultimate Intelligence that lights the vessel in conjunction with the newly-tuned self. This self can choose to allow one’s ultimate nature to take over at will. It can choose to allow timeless wisdom to enter time. The self here is a gatekeeper between time and timelessness vis-a-vis body-self awareness and formless awareness. This is not the first-person I Am, it is the second-person relationship within. Like your last incarnation, this new you can be you until you physically die, if you misunderstand what’s happening and reassert yourself as the controller—if you try to use this energy instead of being it.
If you live in right relationship within, allowing this energy to do its work, there will come another awakening. The awakening to first-person I Am Ultimate Consciousness. It will not come by your control. The previous awakening happened when the body understood the limitation of itself so fully that it dropped the self. That was a solo episode. Now, living in relationship with universal energy, the next awakening happens in relationship—as if by someone else’s hand. It’s as if someone on the other side of a door opens it for you. You step to the threshold, which is void. Whole death. And when you reemerge on the other side as whole life, you understand that you, who stepped through the door, are still you. The person who opened the door for you is you. The door is you. And so is void. All of that realizing at once is wholeness.
And this is quite simply a human being.
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Footnote: At least your experience of the transcending and including at this stage is by Ultimate Consciousness. Beyond even that, time is transcended and included within Ultimate Consciousness.