Observations from Silent Awareness

Observations from Silent Awareness

Once one has learned to quiet the mind at will, and begins to spend increasing amounts of time as the silent observer, abiding in pure awareness, the more one comes to realize just how unreliable, untrustworthy and trivial all of the mental activity produced by the discursive, egoic, thinking part of the mind really is. This leads to a tendency to ignore, reject, or choose not to engage in the mental activity when it returns. From this state of mind a thought can be seen to pass and fade away, returning the mind back into silence. Thoughts are like weeds, if you do not feed them (give them your attention), they will not grow and will eventually die of starvation.

As one practices abiding in silent awareness while going about their daily activities, one also quickly comes to realize that there is a lot more going on within consciousness than the discursive, thinking, egoic mind can even begin to properly be aware of, let alone comprehend.

Although the ego may issue commands, the intricacies of carrying them out exceed the thinking minds capabilities. For example, one might decide to go empty the dishwasher. Once that decision has been made, for most people, the mind spends the duration of the task mentally wandering off into various forms of mind theatrics, daydreaming, fantasizing, etc. thereby missing what is really going on. But when the mind is completely silent and observant, and the actions and motions of the body are watched as tasks are being carried out, one may for example, observe the eye make contact with a plate or glass, and then the hand impulsively reach out and pick up what the eye was trained upon. The leg muscles engage without needing to be told by the thinking mind, and the body turns and walks over to the cupboard and puts it away. There is no way the thinking mind, if it had to command each individual muscle flexing or tendon tightening, perfectly coordinating all of the individual electrical impulses that cause all of these movements to occur, could even begin to consciously control this entire dance of events that all flow harmoniously together to produce the result requested from the thinking conscious mind (empty the dishwasher).

As if the immensity and complexity of carrying out these tasks are not already incomprehensible enough, there is also all of the various biological functions that are also being simultaneously coordinated. Everything from heartbeat, to digestive systems, to electrical and nervous system, cell growth and development, converting food to energy,  waste elimination , and considerably more are being coordinated by means of a communication network in the body that communicates at or near the speed of light. This in turn requires the underlying intelligence to be able to function at or above the speed of light.

Watching from silence reveals that there is some form of intelligence operating that is far superior in capabilities to anything our mind can possibly think or comprehend. While it may be convenient to simply ignore or dismiss this hidden intelligence and give the sub-conscious mind the credit, this does not appear to be the case to one who chooses to investigate first hand. When one is able to quiet the mind sufficiently to see all of it's activity cease temporarily, the observation of the continuity of the tasks being carried out seems to imply that the source of this intelligence is not within the brain or even within the body, and any investigation through introspection fails to find a source from within the body capable of carrying out such complicated tasks.  The brain seems to be playing traffic cop, and simply relaying signals to coordinate the flow of movement (sometimes under the misguided directions of the Ego), but the underlying intelligence can not be found.

Before dismissing the notion that this intelligence exists outside of the brain, with the brain acting as interpretor, consider this. Human life begins at the moment of conception as a single celled organism. This cell begins dividing into identical cells, and continues dividing until at some point the cells stop being identical, and start to form various parts of the body, from flesh, to bones, to skin, to organs, and even to begin forming the brain itself. Since no brain existed yet, where is the intelligence that coordinates which identical cells start to deviate and when? Who or What plays traffic cop to keep everything synchronized and in harmony? What is coordinating the heartbeat while the brain is still developing?

Even DNA can not properly explain the coordination of these events, unless DNA has access to some form of intelligence enabling it to communicate with all of its neighbouring DNA strands, and in turn cells, etc. under the immense intelligence, coordination and guidance of some form of consciousness the rational thinking mind can not yet comprehend. Communication (whether between DNA strands, cells, or even human beings) requires intelligence in order to be able to send and receive information, process it, or even to know that it is required in the first place.

Perhaps this is why science cannot explain or understand the high percentage of so called "junk" (non-coding) DNA in our physical construction. Even broken down into the various functions that science has thus far come to understand or believe about the purpose of "junk" DNA, the question remains, "Who or What is the guiding intelligence behind these individual functions.

All this considered, and in turn compared to the closely observed usual activities of the thinking mind with all of its "Important Things" that need to be thought about right now, (such as the discursive minds many false predictions of the future, mental rewrites of the past, various ways of trying to define itself and re-define itself through various fantasies and daydreams), the mind quickly reveals itself to be very trivial and producing useless unreliable information that only leads to the many negative states of mind that pervade humanity, hatred, anger, depression, fear, greed, etc..

The more time spent in pure silent awareness, the stronger the pull is to remain in pure silent awareness. The more thoughts are observed and recognized for the roller coaster effects they produce on our well being, the easier it becomes to reject them as they arise and return to pure awareness. In this way, the path becomes self correcting.

Michael L. Fournier