Consciousness Wrapped in Thought

Consciousness wrapped in thought acrylic on canvas 26 x 32 copyright Dee Rapposelli 2015

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Popular spiritual teachers, such as Pema Chodron and Eric Tolle, talk about spaciousness and presence. Spaciousness is what you basically feel when you are truly present . . . when you are not spinning stories, judgments, and comparisons about what is happening to and around you. When you access your spaciousness, then you are who and what you really are and you experience Reality. You find “the face you had before the world was made,” in the words of WB Yeats. The experience is one of fascination and contentment. In Sanskrit, the ecclesiastic language of Hinduism, this is called ananda, which translates as “bliss.” It is the conscious experience of being. Along with Consciousness  and Being, this Bliss-Experience is said to be the nature of God, and so God described as Satchidananda—Existence-Consciousness-Bliss in Vedic Hinduism. God is also called Brahman in this system, and this word is so old that the original meaning is unknown. It is thought to mean “That Which Spreads Out.” That which spreads out in both vast spaciousness and also creative potential and actualization. It is All This and what underlies and transcends all this.

I have come to a place in my life and practice in which the flux of thoughts, feelings, judgments, etc. feel like heavy, gripping impositions on “me,” and so I experience myself as consciousness wrapped (instead of rapt) in thought. It is an excellent place to come to. I think I can “work with” this condition more than I had the insight to in the past despite how much more spiritually nerdy and disciplined I once was. My present experience helps me distinguish consciousness and true will from habits and conditioning that run their programs and are expressed as the incessant barrage of reactive thoughts and emotions. It causes me to be very open and kind to myself—and to others—because I can divest myself of the burden of judgments and expectations.