Explaining consciousness
2024-10-07T21:52:44+08:00 | 2 minute read | Updated at 2024-10-08T23:27:58+02:00
The mind cannot grasp consciousness
One of the hardest parts of explaining consciousness is that the mind cannot grasp it. For me, it was elusive and magical for a long time. There are different methods of ‘getting it’; here’s another perspective:
One way to understand consciousness is to look at it as the fabric or building blocks of your experiences. It’s not a thing, and not something your mind can fully comprehend, but an approximation that your mind can grasp is to visualize it as a spacious thing where things can morph into. This morphing happens all the time - objects (sensations, thoughts, and feelings) arise within it, merge and morph with each other, and fluidly dissolve again.
In daily life, we are caught up in the foreground; your mind automatically focuses on the objects that come and go - thinking this, feeling that - without you even realizing that you are caught up in this thinking, thereby missing the silent space in which they appear: the background. And this background, this void, is consciousness itself. It is not something you reach, find, or attain - and you cannot focus on it as it is the subject and not an object; it is something you fall into by letting go. Like a deep exhale, it comes when you soften your hold on the foreground and rest, effortlessly, in what remains.
