Billions of years ago I began my journey in a very simple body for whatever initial reason – be it natural or my own desire. I mean honestly…who can remember back that far? My first experience was experience. The joy of being something after being nothing. I do not have the knowledge to tell you conclusively why in our simplest forms we went from experiencing each other to consuming each other, but I believe it had to do with not knowing we were the animating force of the simple bodies we were incarnated in. We were incapable of knowing ourselves as the creating force in these early stages of evolution, so consumption of other bodies was likely to break them down for energy/fuel – the initial response perhaps of a desire for movement. Hard to experience much standing in one spot – ask a tree or a rock.

So our story went from the joy of experiencing to the struggle for survival. Struggle will always produce more evolutionary traction than joy will. We have no memories lifetime to lifetime so the body’s memories become our storyline. The Self is not doing something wrong or bad by believing it is the body. We have been billions of years where the body’s consciousness has been doing the creating of our storylines. The Self believes it is the body’s script even as it conceives that it is not. It gets very confusing for the awakening Self. The separation that takes place when the Self experientially finds out that it has been dreaming the body’s reality – or reading from a script – can be very painful to go through.

There are only two things present. There is a body and there is an animating force. You have to have both in order for consciousness/awareness to be present. The reason why should be obvious enough. In order to experience any thing, you have to be separate from it. For me to sense the frog we both have to have bodies. No body = no experience. The difficult part is in describing what the Self is…because the Self is not a thing in a traditional sense. How do you describe, interact and sense some thing that is not a material thing? We are not even the animating force itself – it emanates from us.

What is Self? I am Self. I am what is looking, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling out through this body’s sense organs. Awake it is outward active focus. Asleep it is inward passive paying attention. Self awareness. Why is Self capitolized? It denotes referencing first person. I am the first person, and I am the Self. We both are Selves. There is no separate ego or Higher Self. I am Self when I am awake, and I am ego when I am not. Both are me, but in different states of being.

The best way to point to the Self is not to point directly at it – since it is not a thing…but to point at what it emanates and/or knows. Self can be seen vaguely as an aggregate, or totality of your consciousness. If you imagined consciousness as a speck of goo, in the beginning it sat down in a deep valley in the shadows. It could not experience much and thus did not know itself. Over many lifetimes the goo got mobility and senses that allowed it to gain immensely from its experiences. It saw further, traveled wider and experienced more as its evolving size and features climbed the mountain for ever expanding views. Over many more lifetimes it reached the top of the mountain, and went on to explore even taller mountains in the distance. Eventually it will turn inward to explore and then the Self will eventually awaken.

Those experiences are stored within the brain. The more experiences, and the more aware the Self becomes, the more complex the brain and nervous system that is needed to house it. The body is really just an extension of the brain. The body should be seen as a sensual tool – it contains the senses needed for experience…with additional systems added so that it can reproduce, stay healthy, be mobile and be fueled over its decades here in the dream. The brain is where the senses report to, and is where the experiences are recorded and stored. Information pertinent to the Self get passed along to the next brain in its ongoing journey. Data pertinent to the body get passed along in the DNA. The Self life to life is not related to the body  – the body according to its brain capacity and overall genetic health attracts the most resonant available transitioning Self.

We simply forget each lifetime what we experienced. The emergence of the prefrontal lobe has changed the dream dramatically. With language, communications and travel barriers dissolving the Self suddenly has access to other Selves from many different storylines. You can see the evolution of the awareness since the prefrontal lobe has been added. Our identity had always been experienced as our relationship with externals, but for the past several thousand years it has been an inward gaze that leads us to more advanced and eventual Self awareness. We are in these advanced human bodies, looking out into a world populated by other incarnated Selves.

I need a brain and a body to think, to experience, to sense, to be aware and to have separation from all things that I experience. I am immaterial even as I have material to house me. I can contract to a small point where I barely experience, or expand globally where I might experience more than I can express or comprehend. I can feel you half a world away but can only know what I am feeling back here in the body where I actually am sensing you from. My reach is vast, but my ability to think and process experience is right here in this body. The body is not the enemy of the Self – sleep is.

~ DC Vision