In order to perceive the meaning of existence, to know yourself is of the essence. In the temple of Apollo at Delphi, it is written: «Man, know yourself and you will know the gods and the universe ». To know yourself means to awaken the child within ourselves – which symbolizes the principle of another Nature that falls asleep in the hearts of human beings. The human being has a dual nature: he is a mortal personality as well as the temple of such an immortal principle.
In the universal teachings of many ancestral wisdoms, it is said that conscience is synonymous with soul. It is what animates us, what moves our choices and actions. Our conscience is threefold: heart, head and life, that is, our thoughts, feelings and actions. However, these three centers of consciousness are usually in disharmony, aren’t they?
In this state of consciousness, like in the case of animals, the five senses guide us. Emotions dominate us. We project images of ourselves, of others and of circumstances, rooted in unconscious conditioning and automatisms. And people fight against each other or band together according to these images, which are nothing but an illusion.
Our “conscience”, limited by our mind and senses, is the tip of an iceberg, the immense base of which is an unconscious chaos of thoughts, feelings and actions. We do not act, but we react to others and circumstances. And so, we create and reinforce the paradigms of consciousness.
And what are these paradigms? They are the lenses through which we see the world. We put our mind as a shield between us and reality. These lenses are made up of millennia of beliefs, habits, rules, dogmas and, at the base of everything, automatic and unconscious reactions. With beliefs, we cultivate fears. With habits, prejudices. With rules, blind obedience. All of these are the paradigms of our conscience: all prejudices, habits and our “truths”.
The worst thing is that this state, which is the result of all these paradigms, causes a crystallization, a stagnation of consciousness. Like a stony cocoon, this crystallization envelops our mind, heart and body, and prevents us from seeing, hearing, groping, aspiring and savouring life as it is – vibrant and full of its own magnetism.
Our stagnant, stony conscience makes us isolated – either individually or in social, religious, philosophical, political, and scientific groups. Crystallized by the dogmas that we accept, create, or that we are not even aware of, we are no longer able to act. We just react – and we barely get to interact with each other: in fact, we only react to others. All this confusion, this internal chaos, obscures us and hurts our souls.
Our behaviour is just a reaction to a crystallized conscience. It is a reaction trained for millennia to obey dogmas. We say “I am a Christian”, “I am a Rosicrucian”, “I am Brazilian, French, German, or Dutch”. These labels that we stick to our personality – which is the mask that covers our true being – serve us only to feel protected within a certain group: a group that reacts in the same way, based on dogmas, beliefs, habits, rules. Only then, as cultural animals, we feel safe. And we will feel “good, dignified, honest, honourable human beings”, on the way to a “personal development”, a false “spiritual evolution”.
How to get out of this inner chaos and confusion? We need to renew our conscience. And the first step is to become silent. Only then, in our desert of self-unmasking, we realize that the real action is not at the level of ordinary and stagnant consciousness.
When we wake up, we find that the behaviour ties us to an extremely superficial, binary conscience. We confuse our oscillation between one pole and the other with “self-knowledge”. Zealous, we analyze ourselves based on binary classification labels and ask ourselves: “Am I thinking, feeling and acting right or wrong?”, “Am I following my group’s rules or not?”, “Am I being good or bad?”, “I can improve this”, “I must stop doing that”.
But, friends, in order to break the heavy stony cocoon that imprisons us to the shallow conscience crystallized by external or unconscious dogmas, we need an immediate change of attitude, in the here and now!
How to define what attitude is? Attitude is true action, aiming at an accurate and clear objective. So we use objective words to define it. An attitude is not “right or wrong”, it does not follow rules, it is not “good or bad”. It goes beyond ordinary consciousness and flows into intelligent action. After all, it is born of active intelligence! It comes out of the swing of the pendulum and flows like a river of light, full of a life of its own!
If, on the one hand, the stagnant consciousness is stuck to the eternal binary pendulum, the renewed consciousness, which generates a new attitude, shows a vibrant life to our eyes, ears, smell, taste and touch! From then on, new senses – nameless, incapable of being expressed in words- guide our steps towards the true knowledge we have about ourselves and the world. And that daily learning goes step by step with life! Letting life flow, we realize that we, the world, and humanity are one reality. So, we are no longer concerned with judgments, social acceptance, and images that our persona can create in our family, religious, political, and professional groups. This awareness is simply being. It is all about living in the eternal present, serving humanity, with joy and conviction.
To serve humanity is to be ready to let life flow with all its energy, in the here and now, in a firm, conscious, determined attitude, from those who know that we are all One. Then we no longer ask: “Am I acting right?” It is not necessary! From our attitude, we already know that, at every moment, everything is renewed. And, from the really new, life just flows.
