“Consciousness is Us”

Thursday 11 May 2017

I started this blog in an effort to explain why I believe the “Stillness Healing” I offer in my Hypnotherapy practice is just so powerful as a healing modality.

Click here to go to Dennis Sheppard Hypnosis:

But then I realised I did need to explain that stillness and still consciousness are one and the same, so “Consciousness is Us” as a blog, needs to come first. Consciousness is just so sensitive; it takes on all manner of suggestion, it can be as strong or as subtle as you can imagine, our consciousness is continuously being shaped. It is consciousness that puts in place the cycles of our day to day thinking, the cycles of our day to day lives though birth, death then rebirth and then ultimately it forms the universal cycles as they too come and go. Different scales to be sure, but the resonance is unmistakable. “Why is Stillness Healing so Powerful” will follow as the next blog.

Another way of thinking about “Stillness” in spiritual terms is to see it as emptiness or what might be more scientifically identified as space or spaciousness. It is analogous to the space between all forms of matter --- analogous to the space between stars. We can know and physics confirms that this space is very powerful and energetic such that the science of Quantum Mechanics has a term for its quality. It’s is called “Zero Point Energy”! Each point of space is equivalent to the energy of the entire universe. This startling fact means that it does not matter if we are looking at just a tiny bit of space down to a zero point or if you are looking at it all collectively, it is equivalent. This paradox is a resonance of the Particle/Wave duality where a super position of the entire universe is held in place externally to what has been collapsed and created by us individually.

See my blog “The “RIGHT VIEW” of Reality” for an insight into this paradox:   

A clearer picture of all this emerges when we start to see and understand it all from the perspective of consciousness.  Stillness is really still consciousness. Emptiness is being conscious of emptiness. Space is being conscious of spaciousness. So it is really consciousness at the heart of any idea or experience that we may have when we perceive, think or feel, and so it is with either Stillness, Emptiness or Spaciousness. Still consciousness can be experienced tangibly as stillness in the mind. A stepped and increasingly refined calibration inside a self-reflective meditation practice will allow anyone to eventually become aware of this for themselves. Of course we need to be on the right path and this requires a certain level of purity. (Not too much neurosis and a balanced energy.)  Then with practice and a calibrated path to the heart of the present moment, we will experience this stillness and realise it is in fact, a universal matrix of mind. We will then understand that this is also a resonance operating inside and driving the Universe.

See my blog “The Truth Beauty and Power of Stillness” for more detailed instructions.

When we each look into the night sky we are viewing our consciousness writ large. It is moving consciousness held within a matrix of still consciousness. Physics confirms that the stars and planets are moving aggregations of the space that contains it all. (It is also what the Buddha said in his exposition of the “Five Aggregates”.) This includes all the exotic particles, elements and compounds that make up our personal physical and mental form, along with all that is external to us. We see that it has all been created from the moving shifting tensions we see playing out in space. Various phase-transitions of aggregated, compounded and dependent physical and mental formations collapsing and freezing out of space to tell space how to shape while space responds telling the created form how to move. It is all in balance. There is always movement and creation in space. It is all playing out in a dependent and volitional way into the present moment. Past volition moving to future expectations all beginning and ending countless times in the present moment to create an apparent conscious flow past the present moment “now”.  At the heart of it all, we see that this structure and its movement is consciousness that is apparently moving along with it all. In the first instance the observer perceives all this mentally which then conditions a further aggregation that fuses into a physical experience. All this from the moving consciousness dependently displayed to the observer!

It is important to come to terms with what is moving consciousness. We experience it in both mental and physical form. We will become aware that mental movement is the precursor for physical, but it happens very fast. Insight will show that like a cart that follows a horse, the body (physicality) will follow the mind. (Mental)  When practice brings our mind to stillness, we do then have the ability to discriminate between “movement consciousness” and “stillness consciousness”. We will see and experience our physical and mental movement against the still continuous background as it feeds back. We can become aware of and know stillness beyond any doubt and this will allow mindfulness to focus and penetrate into it. Eventually, as purity and letting go becomes complete we see that stillness has the propensity to finish. It finishes feeding back the external so the identity of stillness is gone. We know at this point that the external world has unified in our mind. The physical and mental world still operates but it is not feeding back. There is not potential for the world to continue after the physical death of this individual and this individual knows the karmic forces that conditioned them in the first place have finished. There are caveats that have been spelt out in the blogs with a link above.  

Our consciousness and the way it is conditioned is what keeps us bound into beginning less beginnings and the eternity of endless ends. Round and round on the so called wheel of Samsara! Understanding this conditioning and letting it go is the pathway to liberation. It is the pathway to freedom and peace. It is the ending of what the Buddha called Dukka.

The one who delights in mindfulness (and) who regards unmindfulness with fear advances like fire, burning up fetters gross and subtle. --- Dhammapada Verse 31.