by Marilyn Muir, LPMAFA
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When you are studying a deep subject such as philosophy or the evolution of consciousness, any explanation that cuts to the heart of what you are studying and reduces it to simple terms is very welcome. I prefer to use analogy and/or metaphor. As we study this series on metaphysics, I will continually refer to humanity as being asleep in matter within a Sea of Consciousness. It is so easy to think of Universal Consciousness (philosophically the Creator) as an absolute primordial soup of unmanifested potential. The act of Creation (by a Creator) expresses some part of that potential as physical reality. It does not matter if the Creator simply thought or blinked physical reality into existence, spoke “The Word” or waved whatever Creators wave when creating. We will probably never know, but guessing stretches the mind. On some unknown command of the Creator, the physical universe manifested (think Big Bang) and is therefore the expression of that original Universal Consciousness.
The manifest universe is that which was created, whether it was done by a creative principle or simply exploded into being as scientists postulate. From this primeval event to this modern version we call “civilization” and “intelligent”, the manifestation of that act of creativity is expanding, evolving, growing, becoming on so many levels of being and doing and in such diversity that we probably will never have a clue of its immensity. That is okay; we are going to school to learn.
Creation exploded into reality out of what existed at that moment, the unmanifested primordial soup of potential (nothing concrete). So creation itself had to be manufactured or blinked into existence out of what existed at that moment of creation, the Creator itself. Something, the unmanifest universe, scientifically called the singularity, exploded into manifestation at some point in history, for some unknown reason. Obviously something must have been present to cause that to occur, but with our limited consciousness we just don’t know what that something might have been. To the science community it is not a being. To the religious community it is God by whatever label.
A metaphysician will refer to this all-ness as Universal Consciousness, a sea of possibility. We are all droplets of what we call Universal Consciousness, with the potential of all that is Universal Consciousness. Each drop of the sea has the potential of the whole sea inherent in its makeup. However, the drop is not the whole of the sea, but the sea as a whole is composed of its droplets, indivisibly. In addition, as children of the Universe, we are the heirs to the kingdom called the Universe. That means that all of it is both a personal and a collective “ours”.
The best metaphor/analogy I can think of for this Universal Consciousness and our individual place within it is an iceberg. In your mind’s eye think of a freshwater iceberg floating in the sea. A massive ice peak lies above the water and an even more massive ice body lies below the surface. Ten percent is visible, 90% is hidden beneath the surface of the sea. Think of your conscious, analytical, visible mind as the 10% that is above the level of the sea. Think of your subconscious or unconscious as the 90% that is below the level of the sea. We tend to believe that the whole of your personal and available mind is a combination of your conscious and your unconscious. However, that is not all the mind that is available to you.
The iceberg originally came from a freshwater ice shelf that floats in that salty sea. The sea itself evaporates into the air surrounding the planet, condenses, and then falls to earth as rainwater or snow, a cycle of renewal. The ice shelf itself, vast as it is, came from that sea and floats itself in that sea. As it breaks apart and melts into nothingness, it returns to that sea.
Our potential mind is not limited to our personal conscious and unconscious minds. We have the vastness of the whole of the iceberg, the sea in which it floats and which created the iceberg, plus its full series of manifestations. Metaphysicians call this concept of the whole of the Sea of Consciousness as the super-conscious mind.
We live in our conscious minds and only occasionally get in touch with our unconscious minds. When we are able to work with both constructively and progressively, the marriage of the two can give us access to the larger mind called the super-conscious. It is potentially available to all of us. It has to be earned by our personal effort in uniting the parts of our minds under our personal control.
We are all part of a much larger mind. What we do and achieve benefits all the other minds in that universal Sea of Consciousness and the universal consciousness itself. Why? What would be the point of a universal consciousness unless it had the potential of becoming more itself? What others do and achieve benefits each of us just as our efforts benefit them. We are in this effort together, whether or not we are aware of it or responsible to it.
Published on EZine online February, 2010, republished with slight editing.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.