Passion for Consciousness

Transcript

Welcome beautiful thinkers, welcome to you.

I’d like to talk to you a little bit about having a passion for consciousness.

When I was in Wat Tham Krabok I had the opportunity to interview my monk friend. I asked him “for some beginners we sit down to meditation, they might feel perhaps discomforted at the fact of sitting still or trying to sit still for 15-30 minutes or longer.

They might even feel bored. This fellow experienced mediator has been likely doing it for 20 years or a lot more.

A lot of people in the temple even the head monks when it comes to a question of meditation they defer to him because they know how excellent he is at this practice.

At first he was a little puzzled by the question, he had to put himself in that mindset of a beginner and how a person would actually be bored with something he finds so fascinating. Constantly fascinating and just wonderful to be there with himself in that state of mediation.

So his response was it’s something like photography. He said “It’s like beginning photographer, they learn some principles of the craft. They might be very critical and have very strong opinions or taste.

This photo, I like this photo. This is a photo I like and those ones I do not like at all because they are missing certain things about composition and this kind of thing.

But as a photographer advances, maybe someone like their nephew and niece shows them photos they’ve taken on a disposable camera or phone camera or something like that.

And they will enthusiastically say “Yes, I want to see those photos” because they just love photography.

So sitting here today for my morning meditation. I like to do a mediation my monk friend taught me. Something very simple, just listening to everything around me and trying to absorb all of the sounds.

Now to my right is the open window and outside there are birds chirping and the sounds of nature and sometimes silence. Very agreeable even from an analytical viewpoint.

There’s not too many people that get annoyed by birds chirping or the sound of silence. You’d have to be a pretty aggravated person to get annoyed by that.

On the left I can hear the sounds of the street, cars passing. It even echos through and disturbs the silent coming through on my right.

Now I could be critical, judgmental or overly discerning and say one sound that I like and one sound that I don’t like. I like silence and I don’t like noise.

Or I can just allow it all. Enjoy it all. Have that passion for it all.

I imagine if we put a monk friend and you somehow do a mind transplant without completely transplanting the brain. Imagine what that would like like.

And put him in the brain of a person with noisy thoughts and I imagine what that would be like. He probably wouldn’t be perturbed by it, he’d enjoy it.

Even if the mind were disorganized and dizzy, even if there were a million things coming at him from every direction asking him for attention. Begging to be noticed.

He would probably say “Yes, this is good”.

That’s what I mean when I say a passion for consciousness. Enjoying all of it’s forms, exploring them. My monk friend also told me, it’s very interesting because he has this high level of control over his mind.

He can even visualize an object, for example a Rubik’s cube in his mind and observe it and flip it around. Or look at somebody’s face and observe that face from different angles.

Of course that comes in handy when he applies it to various arts. Its very interesting the kinds of things you can do with consciousness.

When you’re fascinated by it just like a skilled artist developing their craft. Like that photographer.

So it’s the point. We can enjoy consciousness in whatever form or whatever unusual disarray that is presented to us.

Maybe there is something about it that’s wonderful.

You know I remember being in the desert. Let me give a disclaimer we’re going to talk about drug use or taking a sacrament.

So being in the desert with my friend Mr. Battle and we were taking peyote and I would try to eat this and I was watching the way Aaron was eating it and was sort of puzzled. He had this look he didn’t hate it. If you’ve ever eaten peyote you know it’s intensely bitter.

It’s not agreeable but Aaron had this look like “What is this” I asked him about it later and I think it came from his experience in personal training and weight lifting and things.

He said to me “It’s not good, but when I ate it I can at least ask the question “What is interesting about this, what is interesting about the taste despite the fact that I find it disagreeable?”

And he could find that little spark of wonder about something that on the surface would turn him off. Similar to weightlifting because you have that strain or pain to lift something up. It takes a certain mental fortitude to say “I’ll do this anyway.”

Its a certain perspective of consciousness when you try to frame things in a slightly different light.

What is interesting about the pain or strain of lifting something up?

So we ask these questions, we can enjoy our consciousness. We have the passion for consciousness.

Alright that’s it for me today, thanks so much for listening. Thanks for exploring your consciousness dispassionately so you can find your passion. Thank you for meditating, thank you for letting go of your criticism so you can find what is interesting or fascinating about something which on the surface seems not so nice.

Have a great day, I’ll talk to you soon.