Freeing Yourself from Consensus Reality

by Marsha Bartek

A child is born naturally with consciousness and knows instinctively he or she is part of all that is. Soon the energy of this world pushes and pulls on this child's unbounded awareness and moulds it to consensus reality.

Human thoughts and emotions over millennia have created collective habitual thought forms and emotional stimuli surrounding major events in human existence. For example, the loss of a job, a very common and universal occurrence in human life, brings up feelings of insecurity, alienation and fear of the future. All the feelings of anyone who came before concerning the loss of a job have a tendency to surface. It is almost like one does not have control of their own emotions and are involuntary pulled into the collage of feelings and thoughts. Even the change in seasons brings its own set of thoughts, social script and habitual reactions.

Every human event has a set of collective energies and emotions around it from all the people who came before. Adolescence, marriage, birth of a child, divorce, aging, loss of a loved one, and serious illness are a few examples. To be truly free one should have the ability to choose how he or she reacts to life's events, rather than acting involuntarily like a trained monkey.

The experience of being human itself has a set of energies around it from the thoughts and emotions of generation after generation who came before. Much of what surrounds the human condition is fear of mortality and the need for social approval. We learn from early childhood that love is conditional and we spend our lives trying to do things which will bring acceptance and love. Churches, schools, classmates, parents, teachers and the media teach this.

It seems to be true and is accepted by most people as gospel. But it is only true because we all buy into it. It is part of the consensus reality which has been habitually observed for millennia. Parents, teachers, schoolmates, TV and books limit the pure light of God within you that you experienced as a child as you focus it outward. Soon the child is living an unreal illusion just like everyone around him or her.

Over time our light gets bent and fractionated in many ways limiting us and reducing our available pathways. We are trained to see certain things and only believe certain things. We limit our consciousness. We only associate with certain kinds of friends, and we limit the things we are willing to do and to discuss.
What we emit affects global consciousness. If you emit anger, you are contributing to more anger in the world. The same with fear, hatred, jealousy and all the other lower energies.

To be real and act independently we have to pull away from consensus reality. We have to stop reacting out of habit or emotion. We need to learn to act rather than react. The key is to stay conscious in every moment and act from what is present in that moment. There is a unique energy in every moment. We have to be conscious of that energy and act within the context of that energy. The problem is there are many things which block our ability to stay present in the moment; pre-defined social scripts, pent up emotions which need to be expressed, past traumas we carry with us in our emotional bodies, just to name a few. Some people simply give their 'now' moments away in favour of what they think other people want.

Because of these blockages, at any moment we may start reacting based on these illusionary things in our minds and emotional bodies which have no place in the present moment. This happens a lot in human interactions. For example, a friend of mine met a woman at a social situation. They had a very nice chat over lunch. Later he went to talk to her and she was not interested in talking to him at all and just wanted to get away from him. He was surprised by her reaction, so he asked her what was wrong. She told him he reminded her of her father who was verbally abusive to her when she was a child. This event in her childhood stuck with her, so whenever she meets a man with dark hair and beard (which reminds her of her father), she immediately acts as if he was her father. She said she could not help how she felt.

We can practice disciplines to train our minds to stay present in the 'now' moment, such as Yoga, Tai Chi, and meditation. But actually, at the core of many hobbies and activities is this one universal truth of human existence. The best ballet dancers have had to master this ability to stay present in the moment. The champion surfers all have learned this lesson. The list goes on and on. Accomplished pianists, violinists, race car drivers, figure skaters, football players, tennis players and writers have refined there ability to stay present in the 'now' moment.

The above practices are limited to the particular activity. But, this is a skill we can generalize and apply to many situations in life. We can learn to practice 'now' moment awareness in social interactions by communicating with people on a level of awareness even in extreme situations. For example, someone I know went to Paris for a visit during the time when the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of France were exchanging angry words with each other. Europeans, especially the French, in general were viewing Americans negatively. But my friends were able to have a wonderful time in Paris interacting with the French. They were treated with kindness wherever they went. Why? Because they were acting in the 'now' moment with every human being they met. They treated them not as 'The French' but instead they saw and interacted with the person they were, not overlaying preconceived notions and expectations on them. The French people treated them as human beings in return.

Being in the 'now' moment releases an enormity of possibilities in our life. In this state we can always allow ourselves to expand and create from the moment. We can go into social interactions without 'ego'. This is tremendously freeing! Without the 'ego' there is nobody there to get his feelings hurt or to feel abused or rejected. Since you have not put up a target, you won't draw any arrows.

Simply don't bring the one with you who can get offended. Then the only thing to bring into the moment is what is serving the moment and that is perfect for the moment. Being conscious will tell us what that is.

Finding our individual consciousness is the first step in achieving Global Consciousness. Being conscious in the moment will automatically connect us to Global Consciousness. Nothing more needs to be done except monitoring what kind of energy we are sending out to the world, moment by moment.