Becoming More Conscious

Today’s current events are dealt with by focusing on what people believe. For instance, some people believe that the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, was justified by the police. And others believe it wasn’t. Another issue is going to war in the Middle East against ISIS. Some people feel it is not our business and we should not be involved; others feel that they are a threat against America and we are justified to be active against them. A third issue is what the Republicans feel and what the Democrats feel.
The main problem is not in the right and wrong in what you believe in. The main issue is the consciousness it is perceived with. When you focus on thinking, which is very important, you deal with things with a certain consciousness. When you focus beyond thinking, you can go back and deal with the issues from a higher consciousness. Most people constantly focus on thinking and they navigate through life on what they believe.
In Latin, the word ‘believe’ comes from the word ‘to allow.’ When you allow what you believe, you don’t always have the consciousness that goes beyond your personal perspective. For instance, if you grew up in a Republican household, your beliefs would be influenced by that. If you had a selfless perspective, you would be able to see more than your past conditioning and see issues from a broader perspective.
The main problem in our society today is the consciousness we live our life in. We train our children to focus on thinking to be evaluated in a positive way. During those formative years, if we even presented the idea of focusing beyond thinking, they would naturally be open to that possibility. When this idea is presented to most people, they relate to it in a religious way. It takes faith to go beyond the security of thinking. For those who focus on thinking, they hide behind their belief system. The way they get to God is by focusing on the “right” way of thinking.
In almost every spiritual path, silence is honored as a way to connect with God. Silence is definitely beyond thinking, for your thoughts can disturb real silence. The way to connect to God is not through a belief system, but the ability to surrender in silence. In silence “you” do not exist. There is no duality and a conscious approach to issues is a natural response. It is hard for people to go beyond the idea “I am,” for they focus on thinking and identify with it. “I am a Republican.” “I am a Democrat.” “I believe in God.” “I do not believe in God.” In a high state of consciousness, “I am” is all that you need.
We do not enter this discussion because we do not want to influence people’s belief systems. If we dealt with this issue focused on consciousness, we would become more conscious in dealing with what we believe. For instance, religion is not taught in school, because each family has different belief systems. There is a law that separates church and state, but that does not really affect people becoming more conscious.
Every belief system would benefit when people were more conscious. For instance, there are many wars based on different belief systems. That is unconscious. A conscious man can accept another’s belief system without being threatened. The reason this has not been understood in the past is that we live in the consciousness that is limited by the way we think. Most people have experienced this beyond-thought consciousness when they fall in love or face a challenge that really threatens them.
This beyond-thought consciousness is common in sports, for when people enter ‘the zone,’ they are beyond thought and perform excellently. There could be ‘a zone’ in everything we do, but that requires people to go beyond the thoughts they identify with. It might seem impossible for different belief systems to live peacefully, but if we enter the zone and become conscious of more than our thoughts, our life would happen excellently.
© 2014 Marc Lerner