Consciousness and Those Pesky Wonderful Primal Drives

I am not a sociologist, anthropologist, zoologist, or a scientist with years of learning that has a descriptive label with a gist in it. What I am is a woman with an ability to notice information as stuff and energies here and there. I have a developed sense of myself as both Consciousness and Self. Perhaps like you I hold a lot of awareness of my biases as Self and the difference in those two states of orientation. 

What I have become familiar with over the years in my experience in being and living among others is an appreciation of our relations with fauna, flora, earth, sun, planets, matter/anti-matter and bits and pieces of science here and there and so forth and so forth.  

I can speak only with certainty from my particular life-schooled position. I hold a very high degree in it as it comes from years of training in being a human. And the gist of what I am aware of is how we right now are coming to terms with the primal drives in all of us. Reality awareness is ripe in this unfolding, exploding, imploding dynamics that abound in and around us. It can be unnerving or surprising in what seems to be unleashed at times. 

It is not time to panic but to appreciate what drives us all in our being human. We are so much more than what one might define as just human and for some that can be enough to avoid or back away from. It can leave one without a true sense of self and subject to how others define them.    

It is important to know ourselves and our history. Too often we can try to hide from our primal natures. Some may feel that as spiritual creatures we need to combat or deny or beat ourselves up for these natures. This is silly. We are alive and in the human form of life. 

We judge them, our drives. Mankind in the past seems to consider man above other mammals and animals. We don't like to think that we are like animals but we are. Embryos of mammals and man form pretty much alike. Other mammals demonstrate caring and love and hierarchy and power and killing all the time. All animals and mammals share a drive to mate though they might not think about it in the ways we do. The biggest can be the tenderest in it's behavior and also do what it needs to do to protect what he feels is his. 

Are we so different? They are perhaps better behaved when you think about it. They are rarely witnessed to kill or harm indiscriminately unlike us. Unless they are in a survival position where all bets can be off. . 

What is under all of this is our primal energy, life, be it bird, elephant, man. Our vital life force that we all share in if we are living. In the contrast of being in form and alive it can switch into the ability to taking another's life. Humans are able to kill, harm, maim another as wanted and often by whim. 

What we do with those natures, along with our thinking and feeling and our subsequent choices of behavior make us sort of different from animals. Our ability to reason and shape our environments to the degree that we are capable is what makes us unique. And, in the global natural forces at play that we are witnessing it would seem that we need nature more than nature needs us. 

For those of us who use consciousness technologies and meet in group here we serve as reminders for others, in this shared field of Unified Consciousness, that it is okay to feel what we feel at our core. We will all be in different relation to what is there and judgment has no place. Because we know where we find ourselves to be is our starting point not necessarily our ending point of being.

Every moment is a choice. It can be the same choice or it can be a different choice. It most often is not to be noticed in our subsequent moments of action. 

When we move into appreciation and out of denial, into acceptance of our drives we have a better chance to transcend and evolve when we want to. We can then become appreciative masters of our fate. We don't have to be subject to whims and internal and outside influences. Only aware of how we choose in this moment. 

It is also no guarantee of a quality of life or length of life. For those are judgments and limits we often put on ourselves and others. And the truth is that we are each masters of our fate no matter what it may seem like. Quality is the question. 

As Consciousness as our reality state our subsequent feelings, thinking, actions are not held in a state of confusion. The majority of us exist in reality states of confusion about being human. From this perspective as Consciousness what challenges us then doesn't create confusion, just clarity not yet reached or held in awareness. And it doesn't throw us out of any alignment. 

From this reality we can let go of our attachments to the states of blames and wounded victim/abuser, definitions which are limiting. Like people with cancer for instance often come to find out. How the awareness of the dynamics in experiencing cancer is life enhancing/changing to awakening shifts in being and behaviors often. This lessening of our life force internally can often clear away our cluttered thinking and feeling and reduce us down to what is really important, no matter the outcome.  

We might need to offer reparation or pardon to clear feelings and the emotions connected to our actions.  Re-encoding or re-framing in this state of reality, our stuff is free without any bias or emotion and is free to be different and perhaps more life enhancing.  

Make some time to access your sense of Heart Centered Awareness and look and listen. Look and listen to what you are noticing inside looking for your awareness so it can shift and transcend. Not so much into something else but just freeing it up. When freedom is important inside then one knows how to be limited. When we shift from doing into being direction and what will be has a different value and not the goal. A being that is BEING, in harmony and accord. What follows will be primal life at its' best. 

It is time for new choices. 

Janet Barrett
Life in the Beyond/Journeys Into Enlightenment
www.janetandbeyond.com
janetb@janetandbeyond.com

Consciousness In Our Time

Vienna, Austria

Some people have no interest in history. Yet it is important to have a sense of the historical record and one's own history. It puts human life into context of patterns of behavior and beliefs and subsequent interactions. And, how now is about then in new appearance. 

It is equally important to appreciate our past dynamics and let them serve only as warning and not the given, the unchangeable with the past playing out again and again. Society may not be different emotionally but this is a different time. And the collective is engaged. Consciousness is afoot. 

We can have the tendency to think that our current political situation is an isolated experience. It is not. Many times and in many places people have reached crisis in living together due to politics and desires of a few in power. Our global community is powerful in bringing this to our attentions.  

Maybe Americans just thought it would never happen here. (We can conveniently forget our own American First Peoples interactions). There can be the disbelief of what is happening and the failure to shift quickly into actions to counter. Or a sense of overwhelm to change a mob or incoming force. Or when the force is already present within you or your neighbor. Our tolerance for differences can be like elastic and can get stretched out of shape and broken.  

We attended the opening of a new play this weekend "Adroit Measures". The playwright had combined actual events and people and documented truths of many into a character and her family. It was told in flashback about the Anschluss when the Germans annexed Austria in 1938 and the subsequent horror results for the Jewish population and others. They had scrim fabric panels above the set of the grandmother's New York City apartment. Using rear screen projections they played actual film news clips of Vienna throughout the play to demonstrate the power of Hitler on a mass of Austrian people using Christian symbolism into emotional frenzy. The streets were so filled with cheering masses it looked like a sea of people with buildings corralling them.  

It was very effective in putting the context, the overview and place in the Jewish grandmother's retelling to her grandson of her life in Vienna among cafe society in the 1930's. A story she had never shared with her children's families in the US. As part of the resistance she helped collect information, family and friends to escape until it was not longer safe for her. Her husband would spend 7 years chasing Hitler until they met again to live together. 

She left Vienna by way of the Siberian train to Shanghai, China. From there by boat to Seattle and another cross country train ride to Washington DC. A nine month journey by herself pregnant by rape by a family member who helped orchestrate her leaving. All while carrying her 5 month old son in her arms. No food or family, only strangers all escaping.   

It brought forward the reality of what one might do to live another day when faced with death in that moment. And the current story line was about her own children themselves acting in the same fearful thinking as in the prior generation of Austrians towards their own family members and sexuality and fears of the AIDS generation in the late 1990's.   

This was a story of power and the human spirit. Who had it, who didn't, and who had it and did what they had to do to survive another day. Who used it over others, how power itself is in the application, the intensity, the bias. 

It was about how, no matter the experience, we can not visit some of internal spaces at times to even speak of what one witnessed and experienced at times. What can make us strong and feel weak. What makes us seem weak to ourselves and yet strong in spirit. Our resiliency to continue on.  And how we still feel about a moment in time. 

In these current times we are witnessing what for many of us has been a relation to silent horror held inside. We have in all of us sides of every story every horror depending on our choices. Those choices we were forced to make or chose freely to make. Included our own choices and those from other generations of DNA imprinting. 

Sometimes we can be accused of being Pollyanna or live in states of compromised denial or discredit of our inner feelings and drives. Which is not useful in a society that allows for abuse of all kinds. 

We have to grant ourselves acceptance for what we are and how to utilize our primal drives in helping us all. We each may need to make different choices in extending tenderness or violence. Societies may hold different values about the two and with other societies. We can each be playing by different rules. 

No matter what one might think we are animals even it we have only two legs and not four. I don't know how often animals kill just to kill or harm to just harm as humans are inclined to do. I don't know of animals that often are looking to annihilate a group or clan or tribe of the same except under survival stress frenzy. But we as humans do it all the time. 

Our primal states are influenced by our ability to reason a thought and feeling into some thing, some action. We collectively create our civilizations and decide what is appropriate actions and reactions. That is what our various justice systems are in place for. They are subject to change and influence and reason and bias, our fears. They incorporate our highest held ideals and our lowest emotional spaces as we embody the spectrum of being. 

Access Heart Centered Awareness and feel the calm there. Let your knowing as Consciousness help guide you in the coming days. Be okay with what you find inside as it is past choices. It may take an apology or a Ho'oponopono or appreciation. Reparation and humbleness. It will mean looking at what is within and not being frightened but accepting. 

And, making a new choice, a different choice the next time. 

Janet Barrett

Life in the Beyond/Journeys Into Enlightenment

www.janetandbeyond.com

janetb@janetandbeyond.com

Consciousness and Riding the Waves of Violence and Tenderness

Last week I mentioned that in our field awareness about tenderness,violence also came up. Duality was in  play. 

One thing that is getting clear and clearing out for each of us energetically is what motivates and inspires us. And, what is important when exploring what is possible in being a human surrounded and living with others. 

If we take our reactions and judgments off the words of tenderness and violence we can see that both are movements of energy. What comes to mind is like in the difference of the tender waves a foot tall at times on the east coast of the US and the big waves of Hawaii that thunder on the west coast. Both are waves of energy in motion. They are more subtle in a small wave and easier to manage. We can look to exist with the violence of the energies in the big waves. No matter their size we can ride them like expert surfers or expert onlookers.   

In the different groups I facilitated for two days men and women held some same and some different resonances about tenderness and certainly about violence. Not surprising. It made for both passionate and heart warming expressions of being. 

Violent expression is intense powerful movement. Tenderness is a more subtle movement. One may lead to a sense of violated in a body, mind, neighborhood, a community, a nation, a people. The other enhances our lives. 

Not carrying movement forward is equally valuable. Just think of the inspiration tragedy has for us in not wanting the same for our children and what actions we feel inspired to create and take as a result. We actively choose to transform the violence into tenderness that creates benefit and growth for others. 

We have to remember that we are describing a movement of energy in terms of outcome in our labels of tender and violent. In most traditions and cultures the movement of energy is important. For instance, Pele is revered by the Hawaiian culture. She is the goddess of Fire and lightening, wind, dance, volcanoes and violence. She holds a valued place. 


A recent show on civilization on television stated that war is the force that moves a society forward and how that happens. It was disturbing and helped me to wake up to some of what is inside to me and in each of us. And how close or how far violence is in any of us at any one time or another. I once more looked at my reality sets in play.  

This may be an active conversation in yourself to reorient and come to terms with. Make the first step by accessing Heart Centered Awareness for yourself. Hear and feel the Ho'oponopono, or kindness or appreciation for your life. Take time to list all the things you can be grateful for, feel tender towards and savor each item. Be free to just notice what presents itself to you. See what happens if offering the like to what seems violent in your life. You might be surprised. 

To not judge ourselves and others may seem like such a leap at times. As Consciousness, it is not. We are all Consciousness in form. Stuff happens in our co-creation with each other. People and events are catalysts of movement and we get to decide how to use it in forming, supporting or changing our personal biases about what life means free of gripping emotional pulls. 

The waves are all different. Depending on the kind of surfer we each are and our skill levels we may like at times the adrenaline rush and push of our skills on riding the big waves. We may also appreciate just being on the board riding the gentle movement close to shore. Be sure to notice the unseen currents of forces mixing with the big thundering waves and when the waves collapse and lose their force and gently roll up to the beach. 

We can always just play on the beach and watch the waves. 


Janet Barrett
Life in the Beyond/Journeys Into Enlightenment
janetb@janetandbeyond.com 
www.janetandbeyond.com

Consciousness and Being Tender

We are one as mankind. Each week in group, we play with the dynamics that we, as individuals and collectively as Consciousness, experience life to be. We are busy knowing ourselves as points of awareness in this collective. We make it easier for that collective to clear and deal with what life has become for each of us.

In our empathy, we notice qualities and states of reference in the collective. In this current time of upheaval and unfolding from within ourselves those qualities and states are rippling out at an alarming rate it seems. So much is punching our buttons. In group we hold and interact with these in a context of shifting energies and possibilities for growth, change, letting go and for all those around us. We are Man evolving and helping each other. We extend compassion to all.  

Each week is a new adventure--each group a new adventure in exploring who we are. The word tender showed up out of our stuff this time. (I use the word stuff often to indicate information in order to be free of any bias/limitation state that a title or label may hold). As Consciousness, our information is all just photons and some bio photons organizing into patterns. 

Tender. It is an interesting word. Runs the gamut from being sensitive to touch, an offer or proposal made, to offering an unconditional payment of money. It says "Legal Tender" on the USA's money. 

We were noticing tenderness in terms of being open to another, showing kindness or compassion. Feeling tender towards another, how it is received and our feeling about that and when it might not be acknowledged by others. When it has no value. What it felt like to be treated tenderly. 

Our exploration of tender led to treasure and tinder. (The difference one letter makes). I always trust the words that show up when in Heart Centered Awareness.  While they may not seem related in obvious ways, I can appreciated them for the breadth of the field we hold.  Life is filled with bits and pieces of associated and disassociated states of thoughts and feelings. Like my writings so often are. 

Maybe it was about how tenderness acts as tinder and lights us up inside. 
  
Tender led to treasure. Treasure is valued. Men go on quests to find treasure, to steal treasure from another, to hide it, collect it, and act out to protect it. What about when treasure is a person worth their weight in gold to you? 

And what also came up was violence and the role it plays with tenderness. We will explore that next week. 

Have you felt you are treasure? What it is like to feel tender, and to be treasured? What is it like to offer this to another? 

In this time of awakening people are coming awake. it is not helpful to judge this process or experience. Let's do it in an atmosphere, a state of tenderness, of appreciation and offer it free of any of your lingering old conditions.


Janet Barrett
Life in the Beyond/Journeys Into Enlightenment
www.janetandbeyond.com
janetb@janetandbeyond.com 

Consciousness and those Bemusing Streams of Consciousness

For our weekly radio show prep my co host Joan and I will take time to notice what we notice about current energies around us. We sift through them all to find a focus for the upcoming show. What to present for our audience's contemplation?

Always we are aware that life is dominated in many different ways and arenas all at the same time.

During our radio show it can be a challenge at times for me to keep a limited focus with the information that I am aware of in the moment. My focus tends to be big like our peripheral view's are. I allow information to present itself as I scan when opening my awareness.

I will mention the awareness that appears. I  don't judge it as I know it is articulating a part within the whole. When spoken it may seem unrelated or a tangent, maybe leading to dead ends. Joan and I may have to take a moment to re-calibrate and reorient and sometimes left to wonder what that was all about. And never know the answer.

It led me to contemplating this dynamic.

Our worlds in us and around us reflect collections of thoughts, feelings, experiences that can be known but really are not. For our conscious minds can track and remember only so much. We have all kinds of memory banks in our physical, mental, emotional, psychological, psychic and spiritual realms in our bodies of mass.

The body tracks all information with our sensory and extra sensory equipment. We are also taking in information from others all the time. It is surprising to me that we don't blow up as we are so dynamic!

We are always going to be dealing with information and mostly from our unconscious states. Our controls sort and categorize through our mindsets what is important now, what to be dealt with later, what not to be bothered with, what becomes ballast.

Gravity pulls energies of mass to us and time and space push the energies down and around. My sense is that we each are gravitational bodies pulling information from other bodies of mass to us as Consciousness and our humanity acts as control with what to do with it all. 

For me I have always noticed life around me as streams of consciousness. Like the Breaking News feed line you see across your television channel. Streams of information maybe about the same event or maybe about different events you need to about. It can collect and connect information in the field seemingly stuck together like bugs to flypaper. Pieces of information random in origin but now not so random, finite in connection.

Now consider this: Think about all the uncompleted actions and feelings and thoughts you might of had just yesterday. When you were interrupted and presented with a new situation, a new thought, a new feeling, seemingly unrelated from the first action. But not. For every action generates and contains the action or actions, the thoughts, the emotions attached and that exists in a state of reality perhaps separate from the second situation but maybe not. We each embody shared realities and our individual realities at all time.

Any state of reality holds certain biases formed by our thoughts and feelings. This state of reality will have a gravitational pull for matching thoughts and feelings that come into your field awareness and can glom on. They may feel like your thoughts and feelings when they are only matching exactly or sort of exactly but not really your own. We can lose our awareness of distinctions or we can never had the awareness of the differences in our ability to sense and feel.

Now maybe expand this yesterday's awareness into a lifetime of interrupted, uncompleted actions and thoughts. Maybe only then can one appreciate what seems random or tandem or tangent or "makes no sense" quality to a thought or feeling is really part of the whole.  We are full of them.

How do we sort it all out? How do we make sense of it?

Right now is the best time to not be so attached to the plethora of internal fuel and energetics engaged. To just be aware and to be open to what your are feeling. Be present. Be mindful. Be in Heart Centered Awareness where warmth, support, non judgment, Grace and potential are all active in the moment to play with.

Allow what is present to degrade into nothings. Appreciate your inner dynamics for clearing what you did not know needed to be cleared. Feel the shift.

All of this past information is weight and shapes our current realities. It is time to turn neutralize the gravitational fields we each are generating as, at least for just a moment to experience new states of new realities and fresh lives.


Janet Barrett
Life in the Beyond/Journeys Into Enlightenment
janetb@janetandbeyond.com
www.janetandbeyond.com