Friday, 17 May 2013

Propaganda, all is phony

The west's hidden propaganda machine

An article in the Guardian touched on the issue of propaganda in western developed societies. The comments were largely focssing on various personified 'evils' - according to the point of view.

I felt to write on the propaganda within our own thinking - which goes all the way the top (or is that the bottom?).

 - - -

One can set up what one wants to be true and assert it as the expense of truth and thereby become identified with a lie or an illusion that has to continue in bending or distorting or hiding truth so as to persist in the version of reality that is being played out in mutual agreement to the right to a private authoritative mind - which is the wish to be a power over life rather than a channel of life's expression.

The bubble will always pop - though with ingenuity this can be rebranded, re framed and re seeded or re enacted in so many levels and ways as to make modern financial systems seem simple. Mind is, after all, intelligence.

But the basis of an imaginative delusion expresses a sort of reverse intelligence for it works to undermine or exploit all that its truly is by first rendering unconscious and then 'rediscovering' and defining or judging in order to prevail over and exploit so as to establish its self and its thinking as truth.

Insanity, recognized, is no longer total - and the capacity to challenge and observe and dissociate from that which dissociates from and undermines sanity  remains available no matter how conditioned by thoughts, associations and beliefs one has become. One simply has to value truth above one's own personal will - which is not what it purports and if honestly observed is robbing fulfilment rather than delivering it.

This calls for an extension of trust. It is only in the stepping out from the fog that one sees clearly. But the fog of thinking as a propaganda of control, is an old machine for dead ideas that have no currency in any future that leads out from the  convergence of our times.


- - -

To a commentator who said they no longer believe in the conspiracy of so many other views expressed:

The conspiracy is tacit - as in a conspiracy of self interest where everyone turns a blind eye or avoids conflict or gets hysterical about pseudo conflicts.
The personification of 'enemy' with its suggestion of threat and justifications for blame and attack or invalidation, is part of the divide and rule sleight of mind by which the 'personal reality' plays out as a virtual layer over a life that almost everyone looks away from.

The thing we hate in ourself is what we excommunicate and deny - and yet it pops up everywhere in the world and where we need to see it 'out there on the other rather than be broken from an unconsciousness of which we perhaps cannot imagine we have called upon ourself.

There is a conspiracy of unconsciousness that limits MIND in order to persist in a 'dream of a life'. Not so different from the Matrix metaphor - only the machine is not other than a proxy for our own wishes.
If we want to sleepwalk through a life managed to avoid discomfort, we will be proggrammed by it and thus make a machine mind to serve the active desire. Awaken to the active desire and if it is for the fullness of life, the machine will no longer be what you employ or subscribe to. Talking here at the level of a templated reactive consciousness.
Technology can be brought into the service of wisdom - but wisdom is the recognition that one can not control a system that one is inherently part of without it all coming back on oneself in myriad effects that only increase the call for control. Yet honest connection with what actually is, allows clear perspective and effective acts. Collectively that will only be possible when individuals have established a groundswell - not of mere protest - but of honest witness and honouring communication - despite the baiting and ridicule of the mob or the Scribes of the day.

Saturday, 11 May 2013

Health 'carry on'

NHS 'cover-up culture' to be tackled with fines
Hospitals that give misleading data on mortality rates face punishment in bid to prevent repeat of Mid-Staffordshire scandal
- - -

Plans to add yet another layer of 'disincentive' to those who are falsifying accounts to avoid penalties of applied disincentives!


What is needed is the restoration of trust. A punishment culture might seem to be a way to control and manage life into shape - but in and of itself it can only further undermine trust.
People are not machines and the people who run institutions on purely mechanical lines are also not machines.

We have as yet no language in which to articulate the heart, but have leant ever more into the dependency and tyranny of the machine-thinking - for loveless thinking is not actually connecting with reality.

Loveless thinking is deceptive, and the more who subscribe to it, the more its seems normal or nature, but it is a mental illness and calls for correction.

While the heart can be used as a term for emotional overlay or reaction, it is more properly a term for the wholeness of all the parts sharing one purpose.

If we run our world as if it were a business - in this corporate era of parasitical relations upon its 'consumers and support system', it will run as a program of private self interest.

No amount of incentives and disincentives applied externally, can substitute for the calling and value expressed in real relationships in shared purpose.

The thinking that we build on is sick and the world about us reflects this.
Perhaps things have to get a lt worse before they can be turned upon a new foundation - but individually, we do not have to wait for others before we ourselves align in a more conscious heartfelt communication of all that is "not allowed" to be spoken for fear of penalty or rejection.

'Ordinary people' (that's most of us) come across numerous examples of bad practice or lack of care and ways in which the system itself is set up that works against people with care and conviction doing their job - but once darkness has been declared the new standard, there is no one willing to change the (dead) light bulb.

Real presence and real communication means treating each other with honour and respect or 'actually relating'.

The presence of joy in conscious purpose is more than therapeutic - it is a symptom of true health!
The focus on the body and the mechanical is feeding an endless appetite that no amount of bio or hi-technology can do more than grow!

Yet the corporate interests of bio-hi-tech are a humungous power lobby that have replaced a culture that had a vocational caring with puppets to systems that use the word care without actually caring - because caring occurs within a relationship and is not a mechanically contrived 'delivery'.

Shift happens!
But the investment in what does not and cannot work has to be recognized.
Everything comes from our ideas of what we are and what life is for - all of it.
Change the foundation and all that comes from it will change with it.

Tuesday, 7 May 2013

The folly of solutionism

Commenting to the ideas raised in the folly of solutionism, with  a perspective that is not merely looking at political or techno-political solutions - but addressing the roots of problematic identity at the level of consciousness:


The design-intent of the human consciousness, is to 'solve' its problem 'outside itself' or externally.
It's problem is single - being its identity with conflicted opposition to itself and within itself - and yet the denial and obfuscation of this problem is the first 'solution', which brings with it a multiplicity of problems.
To attempt to articulate on this root level here might be fruitless as our human aculturation is conditioned to already 'agree' to all 'look the other way' rather than undermine our perceived separate self interests.

But the gist is that there is a heavy investment of such self interest - passing as protective advantage to a mode of identity that is itself held un-negotiable - which demands that attention from an inner conflictedness be displaced to external causes and solution.

So there is an aspect of problem solving that works as a smokescreen and diversionary tactic - and indeed an insistence that the problem be kicked out into long grass where it can NOT be solved because the problem is actually within our consciousness.
Consciousness might be a misnomer for something that is attempting to make a mechanism of control amidst what ultimately and only is a function of awareness and attention.

The identification with 'being in control' is a sense of 'power over' life and indeed that power, seen in others or externally is experienced as problematic! But it is also addictive as self reinforcing loops of experience and act.

'Thinking outside the box' is a phrase that can indicate THERE IS A BOX, in terms of an active running self-limiting and mechanical consciousness or conditioning. The default aim of the human mind in ignorance, is to survive and prevail WITHIN the BOX, and to thus keep unconscious, the awareness of the actual nature of the box by externalising its thought and identifying exclusively with those aspects that seem to be
most associated with a personal sense of control.

This is a Dalek's eye view of a Living Universe that cannot feel nor recognize its connectedness, but seeks to imposes its mind - of definition and function - upon life itself.
Yet this spark of life IS its life and yet applies this love-connection only to its own thought-constructs and their logical extensions.

Wanting solutions that keep the dream of a life from waking up (as if that were death or worse than death), is WANTING UNCONSCIOUSNESS to be maintained in the forms of a consciousness that actually does NOT join or truly share Life.

But this MUST disintegrate, because it is all based upon untruth, which requires ever more sacrifice of what IS true to feed its 'habit'. And even the ingenuity of imaginative reframing and redistribution of problems cannot substitute for joy, true rested peace, tangibly grateful loving - or any other quality of Life.

Now problems that are mechanical can be solved - such as how best to peel a potato. But these are blind (in that they presume the potatoes need to be peeled).

Asking real questions is part of getting real answers and the first part of that is a real desire to connect with a SHARED answer. Because the search for the solution in private self-terms is the first error or a mind that thought itself separate from all else that lives or has its being in the awareness of Life.

Who or what really runs Wikipedia?

 On 'The Economist Explains' was the question and answer offered as to who really runs Wikipedia'. In passing I commented:

Though there MAY be personal executive decisions made, transparently or otherwise, and consciously or otherwise, the fact that comes to (my) mind is that the cultural presumptions of the 'age' are what set the values and goals within which and to which all else conforms.

Of course these are not set in stone and there is always a multiplicity of values and therefore purposes.

The ability to create a personal lens through which reality itself is apprehended, with its own set of meanings overlaid on and contra to the Meaning that Reality Is, constitutes a foundation of the human consciousness - not unlike the inheritance (from a yet living father) of the Prodigal Son.

It seems to me that where a loveless and private self serving intent is DENIED the right to impose itself upon the mind at large, the 'picture is brought into a truer focus with less distortion or filtering.

Yet where a voice is denied hearing, it is reinforced in its own sense of being denied expression. Like the fairy not invited to the party, it will, sooner or later spoil the party.
Finding ways to include expressions without propagandising for or against them is the way of relinquishing the investment in the personal sense and opening to a shared sense of value.
This is not available to the mentality that wants to be right in contradistinction to the wrong of another; who NEEDS the 'enemy' in order to vindicate their own personal identity-assertions.

Controlling reality is of course a joke. Yet controlling the interpretation and access to reality is taken as a very very serious matter - within our own mind and within the larger cultural aggregations of personal interests of such mentality.

Whatever else we my seem to be doing, we are learning about our own mind - or indeed have so 'personalized' or rationalized the issues that we are simply blindly reactive within our own mind-set. (The set in which we have temporarily identified ourselves as validated).

The reactive mind is an aspect of our thinking which tends to usurp a true perspective, though it does promote an ever evolving multiplicity of a defence/offence mechanism. Being willing to not use this mentality allows all sides or voices in any issue to be included at their essence - if not in the forms of its current expression.

That information can be used as a weapon of coercion and control is true - but that truth can be itself illuminated.

The ownership and survival of that which inspires and embodies the communication, is usually what compromises its integrity, because any threat to its existence is felt to be justifiably blocked or opposed - and here will be the area where truth is made the first casualty to the 'managed' war of what then comes after.

Although Jesus (mythically or otherwise), provided a cultural basis for the age in terms of challenging the power of the mind-in-fear, he would not have been able to contribute to Wikipedia excepting on already agreed definitions. He spoke out of an authority that is not citable or referencing to external 'authorities'- but from a directness of observation that can be verified by any who hear in a willingness to observe likewise.
However, that doesn't mean he wouldn't be able to point to it for background reference.
The process of discernment is different from scepticism in that it pauses from reaction whilst listening within the heart - absent of its own (reactive) thinking. Whereas scepticism does not yield in trust to being itself but defends the point of view that IT has accepted as it own - as a result of thinking - which of course includes some measure of discernment - but only where it is felt less threatening to its own existence.

Misinformation or even unrelated or inappropriate information, is like noise that blocks the signal. Consciously aligned purpose is the nature of the sharing of the signal. It is life-affirming to withdraw support from that which undermines integrity of the unifying purpose itself.

Communication itself is more than information, for its flow or sharing expresses and embodies a willingness to share. This itself is a higher purpose and has its own communication - or rather communion or connection and sharing in a level of Meaning that cannot itself be rationalised into bits of information. (without simply being substituted for by 'bits of information').

Thursday, 2 May 2013

On not being a brain (further commentary on consciousness and identity re the TED book; the Virtual Shadow)

It's sort of cute to read "the brain just needs to be present'.
The substitution of "scientifically correct" terms for the process of life - that is not only present - but Presence is an example of being more concerned with one's presented commentary on life than living it - or should I say - "being Lived' - because it is not by our own power that we live or think or have awareness of existence - and nor, are we a brain or an effect of a meat brain.
If you mess with my computer, I may not be able to type and communicate with you via these means - but my Mac is not the intelligence behind the message.

The focus on forms is the defocus from the relational field of which the awareness of the form is but part of the event.
This - further down the river of its process - becomes a consciousness that has to think or maintain a self referencing activity or it fears it will not exist - or will be confronted with non-existence. This compulsive activity is mental illness and not normal healthy running - even if such a loop is accepted to be the norm and therefore considered to be our nature.
Substitutes for life are the result of searching for a completeness that is believed lost by the act of identifying exclusively with forms and forgetting the relational being in which all experience is expressing.
Therefore people who meditate or enjoy silence or indeed one pointed appreciation and singleness of purpose, are much less inclined to 'scatter' themselves in distraction, or give themselves to what does not actually fulfil.

Virtual identities and dislocated consciousness

I feel that digital 'virtual reality' is an extension of a process of self commentary and self presentation that is ALREADY running as a virtual overlay in our minds.
Thus, one can look at the blatant and easy to see aspects of digital dislocation (if one is not consumed and identified within it), and pause to see this replicates the way our mind is already tending to work.

Identifying with illusions is a bit like 'dressing up' or constructing a self-identity as a better 'mask' or handle on the world.

Clearly this can be fun, entertaining or thrilling - but can become a substitute for what life actually is, when we take our identifications and our investment in them as more real than the fundamental experience of being and feeling aware of existence.

So yes there is a 'new territory' in which to engage in surrogate experience that our daily or working life may not otherwise afford. There is also the 'flock' mentality of becoming caught in the opinions and impressions of a mentality that is essentially conditioned and reactive.

To be able to use technology of the mind - or the digitally extended mind - without becoming lost in it or possessed by the urge to possess what is not even real - is to be truly grounded and connected in one's Self, in Life - in real relationship.

The lack of real relational honesty leaves one open to every kind of nonsense. But if this then undermines the joy and fulfilment of life it will create the conditions for re-evaluating one's orientation and foundation. BUT on the way, every kind of defence will be called upon to try to make a false foundation work. One of these is distraction from an honest appreciation or accounting - and being able to 'escape' into surrogate realities is the 'name of the game'.

But as they say - 'wherever you go, there you are'. Regardless of apparent conditions and presentations of self, reality is not affected by the mask - and yet our awareness of it IS.

Consciously on purpose life is fulfilling where it holds us in a present appreciation rather than chasing a promise or running away from a fearful or meaninglessness.

Mind - or Consciousness is so fundamental to everything we experience, that I feel to suggest exploring it as a participant - or living scientist, who is the curiosity AND the experiment. Nothing is so blinding as the mind that thinks it knows - though the most complex and convincing programs of experience and thought may arise as a result.

Garbage in - garbage out. One cannot 'save' others from their own learning experience. But nor do we have to withhold communication from a willingness to listen and learn.

When our private lives become public online … will it make us more or less tolerant?

 

 

There is no such thing as thoughts that have no effect at some level - yet human thinking WANTS to set up so as to have a private mind in which to explore, enjoy and also mask and hide thinking that is mean-spirited and dishonouring of oneself, others and life.
And then one seeks 'like-minded' others for validation and support - and to create cultural or social environments in which to indulge and gratify one's 'avatar'.

The current mindset of corporate consumerism encourages such indulgence - as it can gain private advantage or profit thereby.

Where is the voice for integrity of being?

Not merely a calculated analysis of risks and benefits within a narrow range of vision - but the conscious expression of honesty.

There is such a thing as good clean fun that is not at the expense of others, but to access it, one needs to disinvest of an addictive or passive compliance with the thinking that uses our mind without having a genuine basis for being there. For much of our ego or self presentation is an attempt to cover or hide a sense of dissonance in fearful or guilt escaping persona.

So maybe it is a good thing to have come to a time where our thought is not so much controlled - but no longer private or provincial.
So we have to start to stand in and with what we say and do rather than live superficially within a sort of cultural permission to unconsciousness.

The attempt to control thought is very strong in the mind and thus will attempt itself through the Net - even as it does in politics, media and commercial activity. But it is always a self-defeating impulse, no matter how much of a short term hit it seems to offer or deliver.

Organic systems cooperate as expressions of a whole, whether they seem to compete at surface level, and so does a paradigm shift. The end of privacy will have profound effects which must include a fresh perspective of tolerance. For who is without sin - let them throw the first stone!

Looking for fault in others is a way of avoiding your own. Period. But apparent fault in others IS the way to detect your own - and thus become free of it.

There is a new perspective within the 'new wine' that is integral to it. While we seek to apply the old mindset we hold ourselves in the dark ages.

Wednesday, 24 April 2013

Cutting the support for the arts to only those that make money!

A forest fire allows new shoots to grow.

Art is part of being but has been separated off as if an 'add-on'. A meaningless existence then makes its meaning as acquisition of things including wealth and power or materialism, which curiously doesn't -value the material, but only what can be got out of it for private or personal gain.

To reconnect with our wholeness - with our Soul - might be served in part by the arts, but if they are themselves subverted by the economy stupid, then they become tools of medication for the suppression and control of symptoms, like a kind of lubricant to allows what shouldnt be tolerated, to be tolerable.

Economy needs radical change in its foundations - which are the ideas we have set in stone and yet are ideas none the less.

Art needs also to get in touch with its roots - so as to communicate something of a wholeness of being rather than merely reflect the disease of our times.

I hold that art is of the verb 'to be'. Thou art Creativity in Heaven - but in artifice you are indebted to the deceiver!

I don't see a shift coming that will restore the pockets of a Prodigal Wastrel - but in the turning towards truth and wholeness of being, we will find we are fulfilled and share in that fulfilment. This is the art of living; a shared sense of what it is to be truly alive - and it expresses in infinite ways that are organically alive and not as an engineered society.

Does it need money to tell a story, to share a poem, to sing a song, to paint a picture or create a sculpture? Yes, sometimes. But mostly it needs inspiration, and the willingness to hang in there with it to its fulfilment.

We live in a rather monocultured society where we are increasingly managed and conformed to the mentality of control. Even rebellion has been commoditized. Is it any wonder it is bankrupt?

Our Father,

Who ART in Heaven,

Holy and Whole is your Nature.

Let it come into our own for we would remember

what we always forget,

when we make a different mind our own.

As if to use a Living Inheritance

to line our personal pockets,

until the bubble bursts.

Let forgiveness replace grievance

Your creative freedom rises

in works that speak of Life

to Life.

Let us not worship a forged copy of a life

that promises much yet only robs our Soul,

but let rip - so to speak

the cat of curiosity from the bag

of 'Thou Shalt Not!'

For what love would have us be

needs not authority of dead gods,

but the wellspring of Life ever anew.

The investment needs to be in the truly Life-affirming, whether in the arts or in economic activity.

Because you love, are impassioned, are moved, and transformed in the giving - not for pieces of silver.

But because shared value is uncovering of what we are in a world that tends to cover it over or squelch it.


(Written into Culture secretary Maria Miller to make 'economic case' to stave off further arts cuts)

Is science inherently loveless?


50 Sultry Facts About Sex at livescience

Popular science-speak, is so out of touch with what it is to live life! That is - it is so loveless.

Sex is simply communication, and like other forms of communication can be a communion of loving intimacy, a tacit agreement to separate gratifications, a private fantasy, a weapon of coercive and manipulative intent, or a shield of distractive intent.

Human beings do not merely procreate babies with sexual intimacy, they can 'make love', - not that they make what love is - but that they can become so undefended in themselves with each other as to allow love to be the full movement and awareness of life itself.

Religious personalities often have a liability for guilt that denies and distorts the impulse to share as they are conditioned by moral belief sets that are rarely transcended.

Materialistic, scientific and separative human personalities are predisposed to a control mentality based on a disconnected and seemingly independent (but actually programmed) search for gratification - may also have guilt but buried in further layers of dissociation.

The freedom from guilt is not in the surrender to the instinctual so much as the full embrace of all that it is to be human - for to be less that what we are never feels whole and to give short change or use another for our private satisfaction never feels honest. Hence feeling, or love itself,  is often suppressed in order to have a 'successful sex life'.

I am simply adding dimension into the subject that are somewhat missing from a popular science magazine. Truths may be socially or culturally accepted - but that doesn't make them true, and the most reductionist truths have the least meaning.

Sex is the interplay of apparently polarized qualities and energies whereby the whole of creation is expressed. The analysis of dismembered parts cannot account for that You Are and that you are Aware that existence Is.

Ideas worth 'spreading'

I just noticed the TED branding and felt to also note that Mind shares or extends what it accepts, and thus gives as it receives. What you accept into you mind is validated in you by sharing it.
There is a deep level of this that cant easily be talked of - but all our actions and words are expressing or extending the ideas that we have accepted as our self and indeed our reality - and so we teach what we are... to ourselves - and each other. But what we learn is not forced upon us for we are free to accept what is in our minds, as it is - or as it is presented.
That is to say a conditioning can be observed and disregarded such as to accept a fresh appreciation of reality - and live out from there.
The undiscerning acceptance into our minds of thoughts and intentions and stories that undermine our integrity and our peace - perhaps for some short moment of personal thrill or satisfaction, or to maintain an imaginary facade we wish was true - leads to the undermining of true communication and culture.

Ideas worth sharing are not only the articulation of thinking that inspires or awakens a sense of life's value in wonder and appreciation - but the ideas that we live out from as our current sense of value.

The seeking of control over communication is part of the mentality of the wish to be special. We all can readily observe this in our own consciousness. Yet the valuing of the conditions in which true communication can occur is the willingness to enter into communication open-minded, listening attentive and in an extension of trust and shared value.

The egoic mind is reactive and obfuscates such as to disconnect or introduce distraction or noise - yet a persistence in listening will uncover our own resonances to such and enable us to move free of them in ourself - and thus be more aware and discerning and less easily baited or provoked.

Ideas worthy of sharing are those that share value rather than seek to own or control it; giving as we would ourselves receive.

Tuesday, 23 April 2013

Beauty - what is beauty?

TED Radio asked what is beauty?


The feeling of beauty – if not limited to an associated form, is one of recognition.
Science – or the mind of definitions – cannot deal with beauty – but only with the forms associated with it. However scientists are humanly beholding in living relationship and so can appreciate the beauty and wonder of That anything is – or indeed of a beautiful idea or solution.

Definitions of beauty substitute for recognition. Mutual agreement makes a ‘reality of consensus’. Narcissus became infatuated with his own image – but this seduction cost him his awareness of his true relation. So it is with man and his own thinking.

Consider the act or moment of true appreciation and then notice the mechanism of mind that quickly denies it – perhaps in the attempt to define or explain or possess it.

Yet the true beauty is a moment of thoughtlessness and directness of being that is itself associated with a sense of communion or connection with the Living Universe – even if one doesn’t apparently believe any such thing.

extra comment: to an appreciation of the last paragraph:

There is a saying ‘talk is cheap’, well I guess beliefs are talk – unless they are the fruit or realisation that cannot be defined. And maybe such believing isn’t woven into a mask or identity to present to the world – but is silently moving unspoken in us in our lives as a core sense of presence that breaks through our often busy and distracted lives with a moment of genuine helpfulness or shared purpose – for these too are beautiful, and are not the result of coercive intent or attempts to become loved, respected or valid – and yet embody these qualities unselfconsciously.
    Though we cant define beauty, our current definitions limit how much we are able to let in.

Texting as a “miraculous thing”?

A TED Talk on the miracle of texting

Comment 1
Well one can study anything that people do and find all the qualities of life in it - but are they there abundantly and in clear shared appreciation?

I meet LOL mostly in those who want to affect a mask of fun while actually being mean or perhaps just just no fun at all. But I don't use text except occasionally for a specific purpose. (So perhaps not qualified to speak on its usage there).

But perhaps the most important aspect of a communication is not the form it takes, but the consciousness of intent that is its context, both in the sender and in the receiver.

Communication is intimacy and words were invented to limit and block intimacy so as to de-localize or dissociate into one's private domain. Since Eden, there's been no going back, and the process of alienating ourselves from our actual living contextual being proceeds to an almost machine-like isolation - in which management and communication of stuff between its distanced parts becomes the new meaning of life!

And avoiding relationship allows much more scope for fantasy existence in virtual identity.

Though everyone can do this without texting and online activity, it is true that these devices extend our capacity to dislocate ourselves from those we may be in the room with.

- - -
Comment 2 - went onto the actual video page:

Language is a way to block or limit intimacy - and then became necessary to convey information and negotiate trading of emotional, psychic and physical exchange.

Of course the mind that withholds itself from intimacy will structure itself to be integrated with itself, insofar as it can maintain itself amidst a field of intimate relation. One doesn't become something different than one is by withdrawing into one's own story and making culture of it together, but the priority of the identification in story will effectively discard, distort or deny the Whole Cloth from which it cherry picks to serve its own interpretation.

The miracle is communication - AT ALL.
It fundamentally witnesses to that minds are NOT actually separate - though the cultural imperative is to deny and limit this Intimacy for a modus of personal authority and control - as if actually a self-separate entity. And so the experience will seem to reflect the validation of private thoughts - albeit within culturally shared beliefs or presumptions. And experience seems to be proof or self-evident and so we each act as if we 'know' - when what we know is our personal experience as a 'take' on something that we may not really be intimately or directly connecting with at all.
The fact that almost everyone goes through life like this and doesn't actually connect with themselves, each other or their world very much, is a kind of sleepwalking or collective mesmerism in which we are seduced by our own thinking and yet it tells us we are free agents, along with a whole load of other stuff.
Yet freedom is not free from intimacy - but is freedom to be intimate - to feel and know viscerally the energies and qualities of life as the full range and nuance of what Communication actually is.
Reality may be posited as a state of perfect communication in which nothing is withheld or rejected. And human consciousness tends to identify as a withholding of embrace or attention from that in itself that it rejects . CUL8r!
- - -
question:
"And human consciousness tends to identify as a withholding of embrace or attention from that in itself that it rejects."   Say what?
- - -
reply:
The inwardness of thinking is a large part of a current split sense of human consciousness, and has symbolic and conceptual structure of thought and language with which to both define and identify its self and its 'not self'.
So the best answer to your question is what arises to your own experience when you ask innocently of yourself in simple curiosity and desire to know.
The activity of the mind is very fast and runs a bit like background processes on a computer, to serve up something of a user interface that one simply uses as if it were real in and of itself.
Clearly,something is going on - but do we look at the apparatus of our mind as part of pur perception and observe both what is within at the same times as apparently looking out? Occasionally in moments of insight - but the default directive tends to be to relate to the world as Reality and one's thought, intent and belief as something not to observe so much as to have freedom to play in or control.

Another way of approaching this is to look at the mind and see that in normal terms, everyone - or as near as makes little difference, has active defence mechanisms at work - which run out from previous interpreted experience and indeed fit exactly the model of Darwinian thought, because they dump the past (interpreted experience) onto the present - so as not to actually connect in presence - but to re-enact the past, albeit in endlessly modified and evolving forms.
Yet you ARE present - at least there IS something here where there is awareness, that is present - only the acts of definition and identification are making exclusive assertion as a basis upon which to judge and effect control over one's own experience. And this inherently rejects aspects of what is intimate to its being in favour of a sense of becoming something in its own right. Yet without the actuality of awareness - there is no being to either reject or to exploit.
In truth we are not in control of life, yet are almost hardwired to seek it.Why?
- - -

Question:
: I believe Nietzsche called it "the Will to Power".

Sorry for the short answer to your long (and enjoyable) post. Some answers to your question might be hidden in the works of Freud, Heidegger, Deleuze and Metzinger.

- - -
Reply:
The question was an invitation to listen (in the remaining 4 character limit available ;-)

When we ask a question, if we ask it with the mind of the mind, we get or embellish what we already 'know', but if the question is of the movement of our being (also called the heart), we listen there for an answer without the noise of our thinking, and sometimes something comes immediately or sometimes the sense is that a real question HAS been asked and to wait on an answer in trust is the presage of more to come. A process of transformation occurs a step at a time.

The disconnection from presence is also the disconnection from an innate sense of guidance or innate intelligence that 'knows how to be appropriate' in any given situation. And so there is the substitution for and the overriding of the natural flow of the parts towards a healing or reintegrative wholeness, by a manually applied wilful intent to control.
Indeed the 'will to power' - yet this is embodied and enacted in every judgemental thought.
The wilful determination to assert a separate mind wielding power in its own right is fundamental to the dream by which the true nature of love is rendered un-recognizable and unwanted in favour of a self and world at war with itself. It is structured to prevent exposure - but there is nothing to prevent noticing its operation but that innate curiosity has become lost to self-certainties, backed by emotional or personal fears of invalidity.
The diversion into psychology or philosophy tends to be subverted by the mentality that seeks to control rather than be itself transformed. As if Life doesn't exist until we 'discover' it and articulate it into a language of separation - and control. When really it is our consciousness that is changing as new information insinuates itself into our awareness. Human consciousness is a conditioned and conditioning set of filters and distortions, upon a Consciousness that is unwithheld or unlimited. Our personal sense is a construct for...