conciousness expanison

what is conciousness expansion?

Being aware of more than you were aware of previously; percieving reality in ways you were previously cut off from; seeing more possibilities than before.

.. and I'd add that expansion of consciousness is not beneficial in itself.

how is getting a clearer undefstandiing of reality not beneficial?

It can be useful, you just need to expand in the right direction. Left and slightly to the north to be exact.

wheelchair said:

how is getting a clearer undefstandiing of reality not beneficial?

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Some things just don't matter one way or the other. Knowing and understanding the workings of reality won't ever help you in life. You need to know how people work, how they'll react to something, how to get them to react to something a certain way. You understand how everyone around you is operating on some lower levels, it's pretty amazing what you can do. Then try to work your way up to higher levels of behavioral interpretation. You'll be able to evaluate anyone, as a possible threat, or mate, or food, or any number of things.

That make sense, or was I just kind of rambling on?

how is getting a clearer undefstandiing of reality not beneficial?

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Expanding consciousness isn't nessesarily greater understanding. It just gives you more raw materials.

red haze. it sounds like what you explained is important is conciousness expansion, becoming aware of how people work, how everyone is operating on lower levels of thought, you are gaining new perspective on the reality of how people function. does that make sense?

Well, yeah, thats the soicial aspect of it. But I feel its overall always beneficial. There is a direct connection between awarness and understanding. The more you are aware of, and the purer your awarness, the more you understand.

Just like when scientists first invented microscopes and were able to observe aspects of reality they have never seen before.

Although you do need to remove ego to gain high awarness, and be more conscious of yourself/those around you. There's a lot more benefits then social behaviour, but I guess that is very practical to know.

void if you loose your ego you have no conciousness of yourself, since your sense of self has been lost. also can you elaborate on the correlation between awareness and understanding? thanks

Awareness relates to how much of the environment you're processing after taking them in through your senses.

Understanding is the knowledge you have stored in your brain, that you use to comprehend all of these things you're aware of.


Thus, becoming more aware allows you to become more understanding.

awareness is not only what you take in through your senses, because awareness of self comes through none of your senses. also, wouldnt you use your knowledge to understand your awareness, and that would mean understandind and knowledge are not the same thing.

You can use some of your senses to be more aware of yourself.

Understanding is how shall I say, is kind of like your IQ. It's more so how well you can use that information you're bringing in, in relation to the rest of the stuff you have packed away. Then that stuff packed away is your knowledge. You bring that back up and rummage through it for similar things when you're senses become aware of something similiar to those in memory. You use your prior knowledge to figure out the new stuff you're taking in.


Is that any better?

wheelchair said:

void if you loose your ego you have no conciousness of yourself, since your sense of self has been lost. also can you elaborate on the correlation between awareness and understanding? thanks

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No, ego is an object, not a type of awareness. It can even be an object of my awareness. So I can disidentify with my ego, but continue to understand it.

In other words, my sense of self can change.

wheelchair said:

void if you loose your ego you have no conciousness of yourself, since your sense of self has been lost. also can you elaborate on the correlation between awareness and understanding? thanks

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Well, you would have to go into a complete study of your own personal ego, to see how it is made up. But there are certain mechanics of the ego that are similar from person to person.

Anyway, you are not your ego -to coin a phrase from fight club, and your consciousness is not bounded by your ego though it is effected by it. The ego is kind of like the internal paramaters or limitations that you create yourself and maintaint, due to fear or whatever. You can totally get rid of your ego and then you are left in a state of just being. No illusion, delusion, or anything like that. You just are what you are, who you are. Its like all the energy that goes into maintaining those paramaters gets released and so you flow into a higher percpeception level. This is because you internal limitations effect your external understanding and view. You project your views, beliefs, fears, rage etc into the outside world. It colours ur understanding and the meanings you attach to the symbols in your life.

But by releaseing the ego, you not only go into a state of being where you just are, and accept yourself, but you also accept the world for what it is. Its difficult to explain it all but from my own experience its like you reach your full potention without ego, and gain a fuller view of the world around you. So without your ego you are still conscious, only more so. But you cannot really go by your current egofilled state to work out what it is like, since without ego your state changes. Your whole fundemental state of being and its dynamics/characteristics shifts and changes.

This has a direct relationship with understanding. I rememeber something I once read. You know those old wartime spotlights, that they used to spot enemy planes with by lighting up the night sky with them. Well, lets assume that your consciousness is the beam of that light. By releasing ego, or increasing consiousness, then the width of that beam expands. It sheds light on more of the darkness, and that does directly relate to understanding. Not just cause you are aware of more, but because with your new view you see better. At least if you get it right.

IMO consciousness expansion can mean increased awareness through reining in and retraining of the habitual mind leading to increased awareness of senses, vibes, etc. because less time is spent chasing unproductive thought and emotion loops that do not relate to one's current state. It can also mean ceasing to identify with a limited emotional or thought-form identity. You could easily argue that the first is beneficial and the second is not, but to who exactly are things beneficial or not? I also think you could find reasons that either being contracted or expanded could be beneficial given the situation and your opinions on what is an optimal outcome, which are also always subject to debate.

Losing your ego means that there are no false identifications blocking up and impeding your interpretation of the world. Although you no longer see your identity as limited and bound by constraints like time and space you still understand that at the same time you are free of constraints you also have a body (one of many), thoughts, emotions, etc. and work with those just like you did before.

I don't think you ultimately "understand" everything, as things can never be fully and completely understood as they can only be viewed from a single and limited perspective, but perhpas you do have a clearer view of what's going on.

fragbait, aren't egoloss and the change of your ego diffrent things? is the ego not ones perception of self, and if lost one would not percieve itself therefore wouldnt be able to think more clearly about itself, as void stated, because to think about the self is to precieve it?

Sure, egoloss and ego death are different things. But without ego, you will get a deeper awarness of yourself. Rather then see what you want to see, what you need to see, you will see what really is. At a much deeper level. It is as if your ego creates this inner structure, based on fears, pride, doubts, etc. Your perception is limited to that structure. Once ego is gone that structure is destroyed, and you percieve beyond it to your true structure of self. But the way inwhich you percieve, your view, is clearer cause of it. As I said, you percieve at a deeper level.

are you saying that what we learn from the experience will ultimantly help us further understand ourelves and others after, not during the state of egoloss/death?

wheelchair said:

are you saying that what we learn from the experience will ultimantly help us further understand ourelves and others after, not during the state of egoloss/death?

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Both. Such states are usually not pernament, not unless you want them to be and that takes a lot of familiarity with it so generally you come back down. You have a new experience, then you digest it. No matter what the experience is, you are not the exact same person later, that can be said with any experience. Even if its as simple as watching a movie.

But if you have this type of experiences, then you are not only in complete control during it (huge reality trip) but you remember it all. I am of coarse talking about expriences without drugs, and IMHO they are more complete, pure, and undistorted. Now I may be way off base as I have not read every book on spiritual experiences and ego, but you should probably know that the stuff I am crapping on about I didnt get from books. I've had such experiences and so I aint just regurgitating info I got off some website.

Now, for this to happen you goto open up your belief system to allow for reality to get into that ego construct you call perception, but once you have such experiences, then your belief system becomes way more open and you do have a greater connection to yourself, the world, and you understand more. Thats probably the simplest explination I can give.

I am sure in biology you could be told how cells work and live, but once you look through a microscope and see it, or view the computer imaging they can do these days, then its an entirely different matter. Your understanding goes way up since its easier to visualise and it makes more sense. Same goes with this stuff.

Now as far as human understanding goes, I firmly believe this is the key issue we do not get as of yet. I know there is a push to develop a unified scientific theory, one that perhaps could include psychology, philosophy, and all that. I do not think such things will be possible until we have examined spirituality, simply because it is such an awsomly fundemental part of reality. Sure, we are physical people in a physical world, but there is a spirtual energy system integrated into our body and the universe. Once you feel it and experience it, then it becomes more then just theory, and I think that is how it works. We have our own physical body, then it gets enhanced by spiritual energy through intent and will, which brings about an expansion of your being, consciousness, perception, awareness.. everything. I think it could even be explained in a rational scientific manner if we developed the right terminology. During this experience reality is the way it has always been, the physical aspects are there as solid as the drum beat in a jazz band, just as it has always been. You are simply aware of an additional component you have been missing all your life, so its the ordinary reality we all know and love, plus a bit extra. Like TV with color, rather then just black/white.

thanks for clearing that up void. i have another question, what is collective conciousness and eternal images? i just read that collective conciousness is like a pool of all conciousness. when something is born or comes alive, conciousness from the pool is put into the thing that was born. thus we are all connected through this collective conciousness because we all stem from it. in fact, this means there is but one conciousness and we are just projections of it. now aristotle philosiphied eternal images, i think it might be the infinite understanding of the collective conciousness that is in us all, because we all come from it theres a part of it in us. this is what would be the imagination, because all conciousness expansion came from it as a hunch or intuition. an example is gravity, newton had no prior knowledge of it and yet he imagined some force pulling the apple to the ground, and then tried to prove it false, which is the best way to test if somthing is true. then again i might be way off

wheelchair said:

thanks for clearing that up void. i have another question, what is collective conciousness eternal images? thanks

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No idea. Fractals? symbols? dunno...