Your Pool of Consciousness
There would be few of us who have not had the opportunity to throw a stone into a perfectly still pool of water to watch the ripples move out from the point of entry to the edges of the pool. Like many of you, I would throw several stones at various intervals to watch the counter-effect of crossing ripples. This effect led to turbulence across the water surface.
Casting the Stone of Change
The pool of consciousness that we each possess is not too dissimilar. And like a pool of water, cast too small a ‘stone’ and the effect lasts just seconds and doesn’t expand far enough. Too big a ‘stone’ and you create a tsunami effect. Too many ‘stones’ and your create chaos. The right sized ‘stone’ will create the right amount of effect. In terms of consciousness, the stone is change.
The Ripple Effect
The fifth principle of the Enhances Awareness Program states that ‘Transformation Happens like a Ripple Across a Pond’. This alludes to the idea that one well place and weighted ‘stone’ will have the most balanced impact, in terms of both the reach and force. This principle suggests that to effect all of your consciousness, you don’t have to attend to every corner of it by throwing lots of ‘stones’. You just need one well placed and weighted stone which reaches across the whole pool. And obviously the more to the centre of the pool the more balanced the effect.
At the centre of your pool of consciousness – the way you experience the world through your body, your mind, your desires and your soul, are the things you value. For the majority, these values are inspired by the collection of beliefs, attitudes and expectations (the story) that arise from your formative years. These values are responsible for the ripples that move across your pool everyday. It’s what keeps the disturbance in the pool, what erodes the edges and causes troubled waters.
Typically what you try to do is to rock-wall the erosion, pour oil on troubled waters, or avoid creating too much of a splash, if you get my inference. In other words, like most of us, you try to FIX the symptoms arising from unsustainable values. All the while, nothing is done to resolve the cause, which is the story you hold about yourself that is the framework of your values.
Adjusting Your Consciousness
All that is required to resolve the pond issues, is to adjust what is happening in the middle of the pond (change your values). EAP uses awareness as the means for adjusting the nature of the impact in the centre of the pond. What we have found is that as you become more aware of your story, and aware of the rippling effect that has throughout your life, you will be inclined to make choices about how you engage life, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. This enhanced awareness eventually results in you becoming more of an observer of the pool resulting in less ripples, less erosion and less chaos. There is a point in your place of awareness where you no longer feel the need to throw stones into the pond at all. You relish the mirror-stillness and all of its associated beauty. Stillness arises from the awareness.
Of course this stillness can be disturbed by external forces. There is a beautiful biblical story that tells of Jesus crossing the Sea of Galilee by boat, accompanied by some of his disciples. During the night a raging storm arises and while Jesus sleeps through the tempest, his companions begin to fear for their lives. Eventually they decide to wake him. A hymn from my childhood beautifully depicts their fear.
“Master the tempest is raging! The billows are tossing high! The sky is o’ershadowed with blackness. No shelter or help is nigh. Carest thou not that we perish? How canst thou lie asleep, When each moment so madly is threat’ning, A grave in the angry deep?” Jesus ‘was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow and on being awakened he arises and says to the sea,‘…peace be still. And the wind ceased and there was a great calm.”
When you find yourself in these moments of turbulence and strife, you too can arise from your ‘sleep’ and invoke stillness through moving out of your story and into awareness. Stillness is the natural state of awareness. It is in that place where stillness replaces the ripples through the pool of your consciousness, which sees your fear disappear. Whether its external forces disturbing your pool of consciousness or whether you are responsible, both require you to awake from your slumber and through enhanced awareness declare ‘peace be still’. Stillness is achievable. It’s worth noting that anytime you are out of stillness, then you will most likely be in your story.
Take a Moment to Consider
Just observe through the next couple of weeks, those times when you are out of stillness.
And then take note of how much you would like to experience more peace in your life. Of course, at EAP, we help you to establish more peace and stillness in your pool of consciousness.
This Weeks Video
Read More From This Series
Read About The Other EAP Principles
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