I have noticed some weird ideas about consciousness in the Western culture.
WESTERN IDEAS ABOUT CONSCIOUSNESS
Some seem to not differentiate between consciousness in itself and what it forms itself into. They use the word when they refer to things happening within consciousness, within the field of experience, for instance, self-reflection.
Some seem to see it as a kind of appendix. They say, “We have consciousness”. They seem to assume we fundamentally are something else, likely an object within our field of experience like this body and psyche, and consciousness is somehow attached to that as an appendix or afterthought.
DIRECT NOTICING
To me, in my noticing, it looks different.
I find that I fundamentally am consciousness. I am this awake space that the world, to me, happens within and as. The consciousness I am forms itself into the experience of everything that’s here – the screen, the hands and fingers, the sound of the crickets, the slight breeze, the mental representations reflected in these marks on the screen, any sense of a center and periphery, and so on.
It’s all awake space taking these always-changing forms. The reflections on it, and the mental representations, are some of the forms it takes.
The consciousness I am has some characteristics… It seems without end in space. It doesn’t seem to begin anywhere in time since any idea of time happens within and as it. It’s awake. It’s seamless. The world, to me, seems seamless since it happens within the seamlessness I am. And so on.
Even more fundamentally, I find I am capacity for all of it, for consciousness and what it forms itself into.
It’s possible, and maybe important, to differentiate here. To myself, I am awake emptiness that forms itself into this whole field of experience, it forms itself into all content of experience including any form of self-reflection.
So to myself, I find myself as what a thought may call consciousness. Anything else, all content of experience, comes and goes, it’s fleeting. Any experience of this human self, along with any ideas of a doer or observer, belong to content of experience. It all comes and goes. It’s not what I more fundamentally am.
If anything, it’s this human self with its identities, roles, hangups, and so on, that’s a kind of appendix, although not really.
This is all in direct noticing, reflected in mental representations.
IN LOGIC
I can find the same in logic.
If we “have” consciousness, then to ourselves, in our own experience, we have to BE consciousness.
If we are consciousness, then the world, as it appears to us, has to happen within and as the consciousness we are.
And if that’s the case, then any ideas of who or what we are happens within and as the consciousness we are. It all comes and goes within and as what we are.
Said another way, any ideas of what we are, and anything those ideas refer to, come and go within the field of experience. They are ephemeral. They are not always here, but what I am is always here. So what am I more fundamentally?
I have to say I am baffled that this is not universally recognized among psychologists and philosophers. It seems simple and straightforward. (Of course, it seems that way to me since I noticed it directly long before I had any interest in this or had thought about it. These mental representations came after the noticing.)