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| Welcome To Conscious Friends
March 22, 2009
Hello and welcome to Conscious Friends, a community of The Conscious Living Foundation! As you know, our site was created to support those interested in spiritual and personal growth. Along the way, many of us have realized that relationships are an important part of creating and maintaining a harmonious and uplifting life. To that end, The Conscious Living Foundation is pleased to offer these pages on our site in the hope that we all can find new like-minded friends and perhaps develop deeper relationships. There are several ways to visit these pages. As a... more
50 Benefits of Meditation
June 17, 2008
Meditation literally means,
"thinking process with present moment awareness".
1.) To have healthy heart.
2.) To have normal blood pressure.
3.) To have normal cholesterol.
4.) To prevent stroke / paralysis.
5.) To have perfect digestion.
6.) To have perfect weight.
7.) To have perfect sleep.
8.) To become a perfect choice maker.
9.) To reverse and regress ageing.
10.) To remain young.
11.) To prevent cancer.
12.) To become embodiment of positive emotions.
13.) To get rid of negative emotions. more
Is Consciousness Energy?
June 11, 2008
If you tune into someone's "vibrations," are you picking up some form
of energy they are emitting - perhaps something we might call "psychic
energy?"
It may be tempting to think so . . . to think of consciousness as a form of energy.
But is it?
What might be going on when we say we feel someone's vibrations?
Well, one possibility is that their brain or their body could be sending out
waves of energy - something, perhaps, like electricity. If so, it must be far
more subtle than any form of energy known to...more
100 Ideas for Creating a More Peaceful World
May 20, 2008
Creating world peace takes
many forms, but surely it begins with individuals. Here are 100 ideas for
creating a more peaceful world. Everyone can play a part in creating peace. It
continues to be the most significant challenge of humankind and requires the
efforts of each of us.
[The list contains only 97
Ideas because I removed broken links to defunct websites. You can bring it back to 100 Ideas
by adding your own for Creating a More Peaceful World! When you do, take a moment to post your additions on the Conscious... more
Recipe for Simplicity
May 6, 2008
"Simplify, Simplify…" More than a
century after Henry David Thoreau uttered these words, his plea for simplicity
has more significance now than ever before. We work hard and play hard, filling
nearly every moment with activity. Most families believe they need two incomes
to pay for a standard of living that has doubled in the last 50 years. But do
we? Based on my three-year study of over 200 people who have simplified their
lives, I found that we can work less, want less, and spend less, and be happier
and more fulfilled in the process. Here are ten...more
Spiritual Diversity
April 29, 2008
To our pre-Christian
spiritual ancestors, spirituality was both contemporary and relevant. In
cultures where polytheism (the belief in many gods) was the rule, rather than
the exception, individuals were given the ability to find their own beliefs and
to choose their own spiritual paths based upon their personal needs and the
calling of their own hearts. Households had specific deities that represented
the prosperity and protection that the family hoped for their home.
Agricultural festivals had gods that watched over the planting, the growing
crops, and the harvest. This diverse pantheon of deities created a culture
where a person would draw closest to the god...more
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| Is Consciousness Energy?
June 11, 2008
If you tune into someone's "vibrations," are you picking up some form
of energy they are emitting - perhaps something we might call "psychic
energy?"
It may be tempting to think so . . . to think of consciousness as a form of energy.
But is it?
What might be going on when we say we feel someone's vibrations?
Well, one possibility is that their brain or their body could be sending out
waves of energy - something, perhaps, like electricity. If so, it must be far
more subtle than any form of energy known to modern science because no physical
instrument yet devised has detected any such energy.
But even if the vibrations were subtle energy waves they would still be
physical because they pass through space. Anything that moves through space
must be located somewhere in space. And anything that is located in space can
be measured. That's what "physical" means: It occupies space. It is
objective. It can be measured.
But no-one has ever measured consciousness. No-one has ever been able to
pint-point it in space. If they had, questions such as "How big is
consciousness (or any of its contents, such as a thought, a feeling, a desire)
. . . an inch, a foot, a mile, a light-year?" or "Where exactly is
consciousness?" would make sense. But such questions baffle us.
Even though it is absurd to talk about the "size" of consciousness,
some people may not think it so strange to say that consciousness (and its
contents) is located somewhere in the brain. But where? No-one has ever
succeeded in finding any part of the brain (large or small) where consciousness
is. Yes, it certainly seems to be associated, or correlated, with the brain - but
it is not in the brain (not in the way your brain is inside your skull).
Consciousness has a completely different kind of interiority.
So if consciousness has no size, and has no location, what does it mean to say
it is in space? And if it is not in space, what does it mean to say it is a
form of energy?
Maybe, then, consciousness is a form of non-physical energy?
Let's look at this more closely.
How are consciousness and energy related? We have three options:
(1) Consciousness is a physical form of
energy (even if it is very, very subtle energy);
(2) Consciousness is a non-physical form
of energy;
(3) Consciousness is not any form of energy.
(1) Consciousness as a physical form of
energy: If we say that consciousness is a form of energy that is physical,
then we are reducing consciousness (and spirit) to physics. And few of us,
unless we are materialists, want to do that.
(2) Consciousness as a non-physical form
of energy: If we say that consciousness is a form of energy that is not
physical, then we need to say in what way psychic energy differs from physical
energy. If we cannot explain what we mean by "psychic energy" and how
it differs from physical energy, then we should ask ourselves why use the term "energy"
in any case?
(3) Consciousness is not any form of energy. Our third
alternative is to say that consciousness is not a form of energy at all - either
physical or nonphysical. Unlike energy, which is some kind of "stuff"
that spreads out in space, consciousness isn't made of "stuff," and
is not located in space. If this is true, then consciousness would not only be
different from energy, it would be nonlocated.
This is not to imply that consciousness has nothing to do with energy. In fact,
the position I emphasize (panpsychism or radical naturalism) is that
consciousness and energy always go together. They cannot ever be separated. But
this is not to say they are not distinct. They are distinct - energy is energy,
consciousness is consciousness - but they are inseparable (like two sides of a
coin, or, better, like the shape and substance of a tennis ball. You can't
separate the shape from the substance of the ball, but shape and substance are
definitely distinct).
So, for example, some spiritual traditions talk of kundalini experience, where
a meditator may feel a rush of energy up the chakra system . . . but to say
that such energy flow is consciousness is to mistake the object (energy flow)
for the subject, for what perceives (consciousness) the object. Note the two
importantly distinct words in the phrase "feel the rush of energy . . . "
On the one hand there is the "feeling," on the other, there is what
is being felt or experienced (the energy). Even our way of talking about it
reveals that we detect a distinction between feeling (consciousness) and what
we feel (energy). Yes, the two go together, but they are not the same.
Unity, or unification, or holism, does not equal identity. To say that one
aspect of reality (say, consciousness) cannot be separated from another aspect
of reality (say, matter-energy) is not to say both aspects of reality
(consciousness and matter-energy) are identical.
Consciousness, I am suggesting, is neither identical to energy (the worldview
of monism) nor is it a separate substance or energy in addition to physical
matter or energy (the worldview of dualism) - it is the interiority, the
what-it-feels-like-from-within, the subjectivity that is intrinsic to the
reality of all matter and energy (the worldview of panpsychism / radical
naturalism).
One of the thorniest issues in "energy" and "consciousness"
work is the tendency to confuse the two. It is a mistake to speak of
consciousness as though it were a form of energy. Yet they cannot be separated.
Wherever there is consciousness there is energy, and vice versa. Energy flows.
Consciousness feels. Consciousness is the "witness" that experiences
the flow of energy, but it is not the flow of energy. We could say
consciousness is the felt interiority of energy/matter.
To grasp this experientially, you might take a moment to pay attention to what's
going on in your own body right now. The physical matter of your body - including
the flow of whatever energies are pulsing through you - are the "stuff"
of your organism. But there is also a part of you that is aware of, or feels,
the pumping of your blood (and other energy streams). That aspect of you that
feels the matter-energy in your body is your consciousness.
We could express it this way: "Consciousness is the process of
matter-energy informing itself." Consciousness is the ability that
matter-energy has to feel, to know, and to direct itself. The universe could be
(and probably is) full of energy flows, vortices, and vibrations, but without
consciousness, all this activity would be completely unfelt and unknown. Only
because there is consciousness can the flow of energy be felt, known, and
purposefully directed.
by Christian de Quincey
http://www.deepspirit.com/sys-tmpl/isconsciousnessenergy/
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