Monday, July 31, 2017

A Cornmeal Bath

A cornmeal bath can be a wonderful way to enjoy some time in the sun.  It draws out toxins and gently exfoliates while leaving your skin soft and lovely.  Please enjoy this very short video explaining how to give yourself one of these delightful skin treatments.

© Josephine Laing 2017

Saturday, July 1, 2017

Consciousness



We use the word consciousness in two different ways, but it is mostly recognized to mean just one thing, awareness.  The dictionary meaning of the word is to be aware of something, to be cognizant of it, to be able to hold it in your conscious awareness.  But we do use the word in another way too.  We often speak of a greater consciousness, as in a group mind, world mind or universal consciousness.  I often like to speak of the fundamental consciousness that pervades everything.  This broader context certainly holds the first definition within it. 

Perhaps the interesting thing of note here is that when we hold something in our consciousness, thinking about it, noticing it, bringing it to our awareness, it then enters a realm where it is possible for it to come into the awareness of our group mind.  If several of us notice something, it might have a greater chance of entering our group awareness than if only one of us paid it our attention.

Here might be an example.  Back in the 1969, the Cuyahoga River became so polluted with petrochemicals floating on its surface that it caught fire.  This certainly came to a lot of people's attention.  When attempts to put out the fire using the customary fire hose of water failed, it entered the awareness of not only the residents of Cleveland, Ohio, but it also entered the awareness of the citizens of our nation.

Back then someone who noted the situation coined the term, 'water pollution,'  and that idea entered into our world consciousness.  We all now have a global understanding about what water pollution means.  And I think this degree of understanding goes even further than that.

Since consciousness seems to be able to increase exponentially from the level of an individual awareness, through group consciousness, to that of a much more extensive global perspective, why would it not go beyond?  

Surely the animals who swim in our seas or live in our lakes and streams are aware of changes in their environments.  The trees and plants that process the molecules of air and water arising off the land would also on some level of their physiological processes be in awareness of the changes required by the shift in the chemical matrix.  All of the systems of life and even what we consider inanimate processes like evaporation or the hydrologic cycle of rain would, "notice" a change.  Clouds that have been "seeded" respond.  

What if we had a solar dimension to this where the processes of living things and non-living things responded and shifted according to changes in the field.  Would we call that consciousness?  I think we might.  Changes in the solar winds are certainly registered by our earth's protective magnetic field, the magnetosphere.  And we all become aware of this when the Aurora Borealis or the Aurora Australis vary from their normal parameters.

We also speak of a sub-conscious, conscious and super-conscious mind.  The sub-conscious being that which we are typically not aware of in our day-to-day reality, but can access if we try.  Herein lie deep-seated beliefs, habits and family or group patterns that often guide our lives.  We may think that we are making all of our choices consciously, from our conscious mind's awareness, but often it is our old patterns that are running the show.  Then there is the super-conscious, where our inspirations and true guidance lie.  This is often thought of as our God-self or the part of us that is one with everything.  If we bring all three of these, our inspirations, our day-to-day awareness and our habit mind into alignment, we become a unified force of awareness.  As we do, we enter a very congruent and relatively rare Gamma brain wave state.  Some refer to this as mastery.  

As we come into a similar alignment, on a group level, like what happened with the Cuyohoga River, a large sector of the population got all parts of themselves on board to try to address the problem.  When this happens big changes can occur.  The situation is felt.  On some level, it is perceived.  It ripples through the larger field of awareness.  Then insights and answers come into play and join in with our immediate reactions and our ability to choose.

Taking this back out to the global level and beyond into our solar system, whose streams of electrons and massive solar winds reverberate against our earth's magnetosphere, what if shifts and events in our group mind or global consciousness could be felt out there?  As above, so below.  

If I get a "bug" in my gut, that part of me that I am typically unaware of, suddenly rises to a place of great awareness in my mind.  If a nuclear blast, the size of Hiroshima or a release of radioactive pollution the size of Fukushima's entering the ocean were to be likened to a bug in my digestive tract, how could that type of event not be 'felt' on a global or even solar dimension.

Similarly, as I take action to address a bacterial infection and start moving some charcoal through my system, perhaps the sun with its recent proclivity for huge solar flares might choose a knock-out blow that could seriously affect humanity.  The coronal mass ejection following such an event could take out all of our missile systems, food inventories, communications and computing power in an instant.  But the sun doesn't do this.  It hasn't.  

Despite all of the 'off-the-charts' solar flares in the past decade, our earth has remained relatively unscathed.  The soar flares sent their subsequent massive streams of plasma and magnetic fields flying into the solar winds and out from the sun in other directions.  But not toward us.  Why is that do you suppose? 

It could be simply luck.  But I think that it is because we are all trying to find our balance, the good bugs, the bad bugs, all of it.  Just like a father letting his progeny work things out amongst themselves, maybe our solar system is consciously waiting to see if we can find our balance from within. 

But our sun is just one tiny little star in a distant "arm" of our galaxy, the Milky Way.  What if the imbalances on earth are being registered by the consciousness of our galaxy, like a small hangnail on her baby finger as she dances across the Universe.  Perhaps she is similarly in full awareness of every star filled muscle and sinew as she moves with momentum through space and time.

This makes me think that it's a good idea to frequently remember to consciously choose to enter into a sense of group awareness.  We can pause anytime and embrace our state of oneness.  This happens when we come fully into the present moment.  We may notice the beauty of a flower or open our hearts in love and interconnectedness to those who are around us.  If we choose to, through our experience of oneness, we can become consciously aware of the greater consciousness of mind, the fundamental consciousness, that I believe we all share.


© Josephine Laing 2017