The cloud of unknowing

• 22 December, 2022
• consciousness
• dream weaving
• mindfulness

The significance of space and emptiness

Take a good look around you, what do you see? You see a lot of stuff together in an environment. Doesn't matter where you are and what you're looking at, the one thing everything will have in common with everything else is that it will be surrounded by empty space. Now imagine that space did not exist. At all. How would you know what everything was? How would you be able to figure out any connection or relationship between one thing and another?

However space is also consciousness, and consciousness is the basis of existence. There's also akasha or spirit, but I want to deal with that in another blog post. This post I just want to stick to the basics of mindfulness, dreamweaving and development of consciousness. So for now let's stick to consciousness, which can also be space, but which is still consciousness. Don't worry. Let's work with a Gestalt image to make this all clear.

Okay so left to right we have three black and white images used in Gestalt psychology to teach something known as polar thinking. Well there's actually six images left to right, but the trick is you will only be able to see a maximum three images left to right at any one time:

Image on the left hand side

On the left you should see either a black Rubin vase or two white faces in profile facing each other.

Image in the centre

In the centre image you should see either a black tree and birds or a white gorilla facing a white lioness.

Image on the right hand side

On the right hand side you should see either a black silhouette of a man playing a saxophone or a black and white image of a woman's face.

Now the issue you have here is that the universe and environment are both coming at you constantly in a multi-dimensional continuum of sensation and experience. This means that everything is happening everywhere all the time. By contrast your focus of conscious attention (which is essentally your Ego) is extremely narrow and limited and can only handle one, two or maybe three variables at a given moment.

What happened when you were looking at the images above was that the narrow focus of your conscious attention, thinking in terms of polarity and duality, selected one image through consciousness, giving it form and existence, and ignored the other possible image, perceiving it as background, environment or space, thus defining the chosen image. All three images above in reality are non-dual, because it's possible to see either one image or the other, but your mind and brain at such a basic and immediate level of consciousness cannot handle non-duality.

If you spent a few minutes looking at the images and switching back and forth between the possible images, you will be so familiar that you will know that each image you see will be actually made up of two images. This is what is know as polar thinking. Polar thinking is about able to perceive both existence and non-existence together and understand that it's all both existence and reality.

The four components of existence

Here I'm going to give you the four fundamental components of existence, each of which interact with the other three to make up existence both in physical and meta-physical terms. Please note that these are my personal definitions based on my own study and what I have learned from my journey, my path and my direct personal experience of life.

On the basis of this cosmology I developed Creative Law, a simplified alternative to Creative Law or Natural Law. The only difference between the two is that Creative Law emphasizes motion and the process of creativity and interaction, and thus the principles of existence and a dynamic cosmology out of trauma, which is always the starting point for any process of creativity and interaction when it comes to existence. So while Qultura may seem very similar to Taoism and the Tao Te Ching, it has a completely different cosmology.

There are two very important mystical principles which give you the Qultura version of the ground of being. These are:

• All existence is change, all existence is relationship.
• The environment creates, the individual (organism) grows.

This gives us the definition of environment as space in which many different things are interdependent and interconnected, so what you have as examples of environment are the universe, the planet, the mind, and the human body. These are all environments.

Furthermore as all the four fundamental components are interconnected and interdependent, we have what is known as dependent arising or mutual arising, which can be neatly summarized by the following statement.

• As this arises, that becomes.

The necessity of space in relationship

As you can perhaps now understand and appreciate, space is fundamental to relationship and it is essential to create and give space to all your relationships and environment, because it is space which gives form and existence it's reality and definition.

This is not just extremely important when it comes to physical form, dimension, and shape. It's also important when it comes to motion, direction, physical action (karma) and trauma. You see if we were to imagine empty space in which there is a sphere or a planet, all we would know is that there's a sphere or planet in space. The space would tell us of the existence of the planet. But if there were two planets in space we would have a relationship between the planets themselves and also a relationship between the planets and space. Let's say the planets are moving away from one another and becoming more distant, we would know that there is motion in the relationship but we might not be able to tell whether one planet is moving or both are moving.

As you can see it's not just the form or the focus of our attention which matters, the existence of something. What also matters is the reality, its environment and background. In fact it's the space and perception of reality or environment which matters the most, because it will always give us some insight into the principle and the process of whatever the focus of out attention is. The principle is of course the form, and the process is the action and motion, the trauma and karma.

Which brings us finally to what I refer to as the 'cloud of unknowing'. I've created the term from the title of a book written in the 5th or 6th century by Dionsyius The Areopagite, and obscure Syrian monk who was an influential figure in relatively early Christian mysticism. I'm using this as a term to describe or define the fundamental basis of mindfulness and what is known as 'discipline of faculty' or mastery of the mind, memory and both perception and conception.

For any spiritual awakening, development of consciousness or path towards mindfulness, the cloud of unknowing is the fundamental basis. This is therefore one of the more significant posts in my blog and further subsequent posts will either link back or refer back to this post.

"It depends..."

Let's consider the above statement or phrase. For a start it's a statement of an almost universal truth. All existence is mutually dependent on everything else in existence, so whatever it is you're referring to you are - if this is your opening response to a question - pointing out the reality of something. But the other incredibly useful thing is that it creates space in the relationship and brings to mind the reality behind whatever it is you're referring to.

This is incredibly important.

You see in everyday Ego mode we are rarely given anywhere near sufficient space in our relationships, nor do we give other people sufficient space in relationships either. Modern living in many ways resembles participating in a horse race such as a steeplechase. It starts early in life when a kid goes to kidnergarten, then school. Then of course in school there's subjects to learn, tests, grades, homework and exams, not to mention shut up, stand in line, get on with your work, wear this, do that. Then if you're lucky you get to go to college or uni and have a few more years of the same, then at some point you are sent out into The Real World to get a job, earn a living where you can have even more people on your case.

By the time you've reached retirement and are in a position to enjoy life you're older, you've lost your looks, you don't have the energy, some of your teeth are missing, you have to pee frequently, you develop 'old person' habits, bits of you are failing and you sometimes wander into rooms and forget why you're there. Often the only thing you have to show for it are a couple of drawers or cupboards full of all kinds of stuff which you keep meaning to sort out but never get round to it.

Let's be honest with each other here, developing and maintaining an Ego in today's society is hard work and involves having to jump through lots of hoops and experience wave after wave of bullshit, most of which offers very little in return or any tangible benefit. It forces you into having to play all kinds of psychological mindgames with other people as you struggle for self-esteem and what many people seem to think is 'respect'. Furthermore it forces you to buy into different societal and cultural illusions such as:

• separateness, between you and the environment, between you and other
• permanence
• continuity
• cause and effect
• self-love
• self-improvement
• the law of attraction
• the Profit Incentive

Development of Ego, which is done on the basis of morality and moral reasoning, is what dis-empowers you by locking you into the dichotomy of external authority and Ego. This is the root cause of mindlessness and domination culture. You are not in control of anything, either your mind, your being, or your life. Someone else is, and that someone is always an authority figure representing whatever ideology or belief system you're basing your Ego on. In believing that your Ego is who you really are, which its not, you get caught up into a culture of competitiveness and conflict with other people where you constantly have to prove yourself to win over other people for their self-esteem, so-called respect and validation.

Ego culture is all about right and wrong, good and bad, better and worse. Ego culture is all about judgment, constant judgment, entitlement, fault, blame, so-called personal responsibility, and being deserving and worthy. All you're doing is playing childish games of:

• "I'm better than you."
• "I'm more attractive than you."
• "I'm more educated than you."
• "I know more than you."
• "I'm more intelligent than you."
• "I'm smarter than you."
• "I make more money than you."
• "I'm wiser than you."
• "I'm more popular than you."

So it goes, on and on and on and on. Furthermore all this digital technology, internet and social media is exacerbating it and making all the competitiveness, social divisionism and lack of space in human relationships much worse. You get judged far quicker, often you don't know why, because nobody will tell you simply because it's not in their interest and they're trying to score points anyway. As a result it gets harder to find any meaningful social interaction, much harder to make friends, find relationships, and this in turn reinforces the sense of isolation, alienation and marginalization you feel and experience.

This is how society is fragmenting and breaking up, all on the basis of Ego and domination culture, a lack of empathy and community and a general case of Your Belief Is Not My Belief And You're Stupid. In this culture it hard to find anyone willing to seek and find any affinity, to find friendship, emotional support, or human empowerment. More likely you will find people more willing to put you down, exploit you, cheat you, or abuse you.

So you go through life living in a constant state of Amber Alert.

Being reactive v. being responsive

So tell me, how do you realistically expect to be able to achieve any sort of mindfulness or indeed, any sort of quality of life, on the basis of Ego and your mind? This is not a rhetorical question. I've laid out the mystical principles above which govern existence, and I'm genuinely curious to learn about any alternatives or any belief system which allows you to go through life in Ego mode and gives you a reliable path through being reactive to mindfulness.

But see this is the thing (yes I know, a cliche) this is not about being in control or having any sort of power. You are not in control. Nobody is in control. The universe is in control. The environment has the power. So all this domination culture, Ego and talk about being in control, having power, and knowing what's going on is foolish and a dangerous illusion. It's nonsense. All your Ego is is a snapshot of who you think you are against who other people believe you to be. It's an image, a concept, is not based on reality. It's not even based on that much of your existence. It's just your name, your identity, your so-called achievements, whatever role you're identified with and not much more than that.

Are you real? Or are you just a mere concept? Think about it.

Mindfulness, however which way you want to define it, is all about being responsive, and being real. Reality in this universe is space, empty space, because space is also consciousness, and consciousness is the basis of all existence. You don't have to believe me or take my word for it. Simply take a look around you, have a look at what's there all around you. It doesn't matter what you see, it will all be connected by, and defined by, the empty space it exists in. Your mind is not your Ego, your mind is empty space, the space through which you perceive your environment, and the space into which you project all your thoughts, feelings, emotions, ideas, memories and so on.

Your mind is the environment for everything else that is you. It's the connection between you and your environment. Therefore in order to be mindful, your mind needs to be free and clear, not cluttered up and messed up by the constant thoughts, emotions and feelings and the ceaseless chatter going on in your head brought about by the judgmental opinions of Ego and its running commentary. If your mind is not clear and free from your Ego then all you're going to be dealing with is memories of different people demanding that you please them, be more like them, and think and believe what they do, and your constant projections and comparisons of what you believe, what you think, what you need, what you desire, what you intend to do, and so on.

All this is quite literally brain ache. You're putting your brain, that organ which actually does exist inside your head under constant pressure. This is like using a dozen applications on your computer or smartphone while trying to keep 30-40 tabs on your internet browser open. Eventually you're going to fry your computer, transform your smartphone into a brick, or run into mental health issues. This is not just a possibility. It's a given. Your brain is a brilliant quantum, electromagnetic organ. It's about as complex as you can get in terms of biology or human anatomy. It cannot be replaced. You've got to take good care of it.

Taking good care of your brain requires mindfulness. Mindfulness requires making the connections and learning the basic mystical principles to develop a meta-physic.

When all else fails read the instruction manual

If I were to give you the latest 5G compliant Android smartphone or iPhone, would you be bothered to spend some time reading the instruction manual and learning what the smartphone is capable of, or would you skip that step and just use the phone without bothering?

Your brain might not be as quick when it comes to processing physical data from memory as even a cheap smartphone, but your brain is far more powerful as a processor than any computer out there. While a computer processor is octa-core or 12-core, your brain is 5,000-core. But you need to give both your sensory nervous system and memory enough space to work in and you can only do that by having a clear and open mind.

A fundamental part of mindfulness - in fact the basis of all mindfulness whatever method you use to centre yourself - is the mystical transaction. i.e. the relationship between you and your environment. Nobody else needs to have control of your mind. Got that? Nobody. This means no religious or political figures, no ideology, no belief systems. The only thing which needs to have control of your mind is the universe and the environment. My style of approach to mindfulness is very WYSIWYG - or What You Perceive Is What Is. The key is understanding that space and emptiness is the only reality out there.

Everything else, consciousness, energy, physical reality, is always transient and impermanent. In the wisdom of trees I go into what matters about being in the moment and why that is so important.