Part 2: The Benefits Of Using A Method
Recognizing the benefits and restrictions which arise when using any method for developing our conscious perception
Recognizing the benefits and restrictions which arise when using any method for developing our conscious perception
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.
A Little Background
If you are reading this framework there is a part of you which is searching for answers. You may have searched for these for some time or may only be at the beginning of your search. Regardless of how long this process has been active within you as a part of your life, fundamentally on some level, everything you have come in contact with to date has just not been able to fill some gap that exists within you. Any questions you have are simply a biproduct of the existence of that very same gap.
It is worth taking a moment to simply acknowledge this. Once we do, we can then also begin to realise that everything we are engaged with is an attempt to try and answer those questions by filling that gap. It is not only philosophizing about Life which answers these questions, but engaging with Life also brings forth its own set of answers. Every single action we are involved with is an attempt to answer those questions only, in most cases, this is not occurring for people consciously.
This may be more obvious with the scientific, spiritual, religious, and philosophical activities that we take part in, because the process of answering these questions is then more consciously held in our awareness. Regardless, every relationship you ever had, every job you worked at, every game of sport you played was simply an attempt to answer those questions, questions that we all have, by somehow filling this internal gap which exists for many of us subconsciously. If we can understand this basic principle, we then realise that the process of trying to answer these questions will appear different for each person depending on which society, culture, and period of human history they find themselves in.
If we were living in medieval times, this same process would most likely take on a very different appearance. At that period of time, an attempt to answer Life’s deepest questions could have resulted in an individual leaving the village they had grown up in their whole lives, setting off on a journey to a faraway land in order to find a library, wise man, guru, or perhaps a hermit living in a cave. In more modern times the appearance of this process appears somewhat different, but fundamentally remains the same.
At a deep, perhaps subconscious level, you are aware that until the internal gap within you does become filled, you will never find the contentment and fulfillment in your life that you search for. No matter what extras you may try and add to your life, there will always be something missing. It seems like a dire place to start the beginning of any journey. It is not a necessity that it happens this way for all of us but, in many cases, this is the way this journey begins to unfold for many of us. Once you have understood what is outlined in this framework, you will begin to also understand why this is the case.
I endeavour to help build a world where the majority of people do not find themselves starting on this path as a result of encountering unbearable degrees of suffering, but instead as a result of being inspired by joy, happiness, and purpose. At this moment in time though, the vast majority of people only begin their search in earnest because their level of suffering becomes unbearable. This ‘suffering’ may come into their lives as a result of a number of different types of circumstances and experiences. After some time walking the path, the specific nature of these experiences becomes inconsequential because we come to realise that they were simply a catalyst for us to begin the process of searching in earnest anyway.
I will not give a full account of my own life story, or we will never get to the main body of content, but it is worth taking some time to outline some key moments in my life, as well as also looking at why a framework has been developed, which is what the focus of this part of the framework will be on. Just to briefly summarize then, in my own personal journey I also explored many avenues and paths to try and arrive at the answers to my questions.
From a young age, I was constantly in search of these answers, which resulted in me studying physics and philosophy at university. I then spent many years in business. I have been part of a spiritual community for some time and have had a number of teachers who each taught me a variety of different techniques, methods, and systems. I learnt mediation, Qi Gong, breathing techniques, holistic therapies, and Chinese Medicine. Taoist, Vedic, Buddhistic, Tibetan, Ancient Greek, and Esoteric Christian philosophy were also a part of that journey, to mention just a few, as well as having a plethora of different spiritual and mystical experiences along the way.
The important point is that none of these avenues resulted in the answers being given which are presented here, but all of them contributed to these answers in some way. The good news for the reader is that finding the answers to these internal questions is entirely achievable. It is possible to fill that gap, although perhaps not in the way that we would commonly think of; more on that later. It is precisely for this reason that I ended up developing the framework. The framework was the biproduct of my own journey and has therefore been tried and tested by myself. It represents the exact process and method that I used to arrive at my destination.
It would be irresponsible to simply learn or think about something and then suggest it to others as something they should engage with if it was something which you had not implemented in your own life as well. It would have aided me greatly to have had the information outlined in this framework available to me at the start of my own journey, but I never found a location where this information had been collated, put together, and organized in such a manner. In some regards I did have it, it was just buried deep within me, and it was the process that I engaged with which helped to reveal what was there all along.
An analogy we can look at here to understand what the framework represents is to look at how any meal is prepared. Some key stages in this process are to decide what to eat and then to find a recipe that lists the ingredients that are required to make that chosen meal. We then go and find these ingredients and bring them all together, following the instructions in the recipe step-by-step to produce the final meal. Once the meal has been completed, the only thing left to do is to eat it and digest it. The framework represents everything having been done up until these last two stages.
Within this framework is the freshly prepared ‘meal’ which we could call ‘clear perception of the true nature of reality’. A long time ago I made the decision that this was the ‘meal’ that I wanted to eat. I then found the recipe, collected all of the ingredients together, and prepared the meal. All you have to do now is to eat it, digest it, and integrate it as a part of yourself. This final part of the process is something which no one else can do for you.
