Part 16: The Characteristics Of A Tool

This article is part of the Unified Consciousness Framework series. To gain the maximum benefit from reading this series it would be wise to read them sequentially.

Active & Passive parts of the Path

We are slowly starting to build within our perception the fact that there is a path that we can identify which gets us to engage with a variety of different phenomena, these interactions helping us to come to realise the inherent unity that must be a part of all of these phenomena. It is these interactions with our external world that we could perhaps come to characterise as being the ‘external’ part of the path, because these interactions directly relate to our activity in the world. If we are able to characterise one part of the path as being ‘external’, it then becomes possible for us to characterise another part of the path as being ‘internal’. 

If the ‘external’ part of the path is related to our interactions with the world around us, the internal part of the path is then related directly to our conscious perception of that world. This means that that part of the path is therefore more related to the shifts that occur in the way we perceive the world, rather then how we interact with it, even though shifts in our perception will likely have an impact on our how we interact with the world. Hopefully, by now, having laboured upon the differences between these two distinctions at length in various parts of the framework, the reader is able to clearly understand the difference between this distinction. This is why engaging with this process by ‘walking the path’, eventually, once we have integrated and internally realised the various different experiences from it, results in us arriving at a far clear perception of the world around us. This aspect of the process is something that we have also referred to as the Subject ‘coming back home’.

Part of the unfoldment of this process is that the individual that is engaged with it becomes aware that there are other individuals, much like them, who can see this process and who have also become actively engaged with it. In contrast to these individuals, there are then apparently a group of individuals who are unaware of the existence of this process at any level. This does not mean that these individuals are not engaged with the process, because everyone is, only that they are not consciously aware of it, and therefore cannot be consciously engaged with it. We often see the distinction between these two groups of people, within the context of a spiritual perspective, being referred to as those who are ‘awake’ or ‘awakened’ and those who are ‘asleep’.

These words are not being used in their literal sense, but rather as a symbolic metaphor. In other words, a person who is ‘asleep’ is not someone who has gone to sleep and not woken up, rather an individual who is not yet conscious that this process exists for them to become engaged with it. Although it may appear as though there must be some fundamental difference that exists between these two groups of people, the distinction that exists between them is primarily phenomenal in nature. Once again, we are faced with an issue. How is it possible for us to maintain a unified state of conscious perception and, at the same time, reconcile the fact that these two groups of people seem to exist as a reality. In order for us to truly develop a unified conscious perception, these distinctions within our conscious perception cannot possibly continue to persist as being something real. 

We are required therefore to look into this matter in more depth to reconcile the apparent conflict that exists between these two opposing viewpoints. Therefore, rather then categorising people into two groups, those who are ‘awake’ and those who are ‘asleep’, let us instead develop an understanding of this distinction within the context of a unified consciousness framework. This is important because, if we become fixated on these two different groups of individuals, we then begin to believe that there are actually two paths that exist in reality, which cannot possibly be the case. It is this distinction, existing in our conscious perception as a block, that also commonly leads to the false perception that there are ‘spiritual’ people and therefore ‘non-spiritual’ people. Such identifiers commonly become attached to by people who become more actively engaged with the path, not realising that they are creating an insurmountable wall for themselves to try and climb over at a later date.