Playing Consciousness

I happen to enjoy foggy days every once in a while. There’s a sense of the world turning inward, veiling itself so that only the most immediate can be seen. It’s a different perspective than my usual wish to stretch the eye as far as it can see to find out what’s over the next horizon. In the last few days, when the weather has been more rain and fog than sun, I’ve been thinking about the play of Consciousness --- well the real truth is I spend a good bit of my time thinking about the play of Consciousness. Lately, however, I’ve been thinking about how we can more directly access the game board.

Some of us approach sadhana (spiritual journey and practice) as a chore, one more thing to check off the already over-filled list. We’ll sit, we’ll study, we’ll do asana practice, THEN we will become enlightened. But in my understanding, Consciousness is more playful and mysterious than that.

In yoga, we use the metaphor of the veil when describing this play. This veil of illusion, or maya, shrouds our Consciousness and perpetuates this experience of forgetfulness of the truth, forgetfulness that this is all a play of Consciousness. We experience ourselves living in this world of duality and think that we really separate from every person and everything.

This maya, this illusion, can be disturbed and eventually discarded the more we free ourselves of our egos and allow ourselves to experience the play of Consciousness.
Many of us experience tension on any number of levels when in relationships with each other and, possibly most of all, with ourselves. This tension is a signal that there is a polarized pair of opposites in play. And one level of Samadhi, one step on the road to ultimate freedom, is the discharge of that tension and the integration of polarities.

The more you dissolve dualistic thinking, the freer you are to experience play in the world instead of reacting from ego to life’s challenges. You begin to access and cultivate one shade of liberation, the freedom to choose from the more spacious place of Consciousness playing in you, as you, through you.

Cultivating awareness of Consciousness is not a chore, not work per se. Nonetheless, there is effort, a sweet effort. The transformative power of this effort begins with sankalpa, intention. You have to want to release your ego’s hold on you and yours on it. This wanting activates a willingness to engage fully with awareness.

When, in any given moment, you are willing to start, willing to participate, Consciousness will gradually and continually increase your awareness. Once a polarity is integrated there is no more effort; there is simply a sweet space of spacious stillness from which you can make more conscious choices.

Further, each integration leaves an impression of that stillness, bringing alive one of Patanjali’s teachings, “The impression which is made upon the mind by that samadhi wipes out all other past impressions. When the impression made by that samadhi is also wiped out, so that there are no more thought-waves at all in the mind, then one enters the samadhi which is called ‘seedless.’”

This ‘seedless’ space allows you to increase your capacity to make choices from the spaciousness of your Essence. For you will find that there is an accompanying spaciousness of time that continues to increase as you continue to dismantle the illusion of duality. You begin to see your choices more clearly. And, you find the internal space to allow others their own play with Consciousness.

As awareness continues to expand, we are given greater and greater questions to wrestle with, greater challenges with which to play.