Discover the wisdom of one of the greatest spiritual philosophers of the XX century.
Everything goes fast these days; everything changes at lightning speed. So much so that I often don’t know what decision to make or what to do with my life. Because what’s good for today may not be suitable for a year from now.
And it overwhelms me.
It overwhelms me to become obsolete; it overwhelms me to stop being necessary; it overwhelms me to be left out of the market; it overwhelms me not to recycle myself in time; it overwhelms me that nobody needs writers or creatives or publicists in a few years. It overwhelms me that artificial intelligence will take my place.
It also makes me sad.
It makes me sad to live in an increasingly dehumanized world, and it makes me sad to see how we are increasingly disconnected from each other and nature; it makes me sad, but I can’t get depressed because if I do, I will have a new problem: depression.
And I don’t want to fall back into old patterns of self-destructive behavior.
That’s why I’ve relied a lot on my intuition and the signals the universe sends me for a while now. And this way, I don’t spend the day trapped in obsessive and recurring negative thoughts.
And, of course, doubts come to me, but when that happens, I remember Alan Watts’ theory of the two consciousnesses, and I go on with my life.
I share it with you after helping you refocus the bad times with another piece of advice from Alan Watts.
Dealing with bad times.
“The thing you need to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets is that there is an inside for every outside and an outside for every inside.” — Alan Watts.
This sentence by Watts always reminds me of one of the seven laws of the Kybalion; the law of correspondence, as above, so below, and as within, so without.
And it is fitting because reality often reflects how we feel inside.
There is a story by the psicoanlatist Jorge Bucay which explains it perfectly.
The story tells us about a king who, every time he woke up happy, treated his subjects well, and when he woke up in a bad mood, he raised taxes on them 🙂
The thing is that this king realized (probably after reading the power of now or watching Rupert Spira’s videos 🙂 that in the here and now, he was sometimes a jerk and sometimes too generous; he had no middle ground.
And he asked all the wise men in his kingdom to make him a potion to be calm every morning and treat everyone with justice and balance.
Nobody came up with a potion that would solve the king’s bipolar problem (pharmaceuticals hadn’t been invented back then :-), but from far away, a boy arrived with a chest for the king.
The king opened the small chest expecting to find an amulet, but instead, he found a small parchment with a sentence inscribed on it that read,
“This too shall pass.”
Application
As watts says, our state of mind conditions our reality. But on the other hand, if we are aware that both good times and bad times will end, we can live without giving so much importance to what worries or distresses us because it is just a trick of the mind, and it too will pass.
The theory of the two consciousness
“We have two kinds of consciousness: the spotlight and the floodlight.” — Alan Watts
Alan believed that we have two kinds of consciousness operating simultaneously. The first is the spotlight, our ego. And the second (the floodlight) is our unconscious.
The spotlight consciousness seems to be the one that takes care of everything and does the hard work, such as dealing with the mother-in-law, going to work, dealing with the jerks, balancing the bills and money at the end of the month, doing the taxes, making good decisions, and so on. But you are nobody without the help of floodlight consciousness.
That consciousness allows you to curse your boss mentally (spotlight consciousness) while driving (floodlight consciousness).
Your floodlight consciousness is the one that breathes for you when you sleep, walks while you think, and dodges snowballs at Christmas.
Floodlight consciousness is an infinite intelligence that seems to do nothing and may give the impression of being lazy, but it is not. It manifests itself as instinct when the situation calls for it. Or it operates in a secondary mode making everything work, like growing your nails or your ears 🙂
Application
When I get anxious about the future, I remind myself, as I said in the first point, “This too shall pass,” and that I have to be calm within myself because as within so without.
And then, I remember that we have two consciousnesses and that the one afraid is the first, the ego. And deep down, it is normal because what the ego does is fear, so it can continue to believe in its separation from the whole.
But I am also the double consciousness, the floodlight, which gives me access to the infinite wisdom of the cosmos. Therefore I remind myself to trust my intuition because intuition is one of the languages with which the floodlight consciousness communicates with us.
Takeaway
- Spotlight = ego consciousness.
- Floodlight = cosmic consciousness.
You are made of the two. So you have to believe in your guts because it is the cosmic consciousness knocking on the door of your life. And if you heard it, everything will be ok. Because of that, I am still writing: I believe in my intuition because it is how the cosmic consciousness speaks to us.
A virtual hug
AG