Consciousness Rising

Copyright © 2020 Thomas Capshew, Ph.D.

Author photo by Melvin Brown.

Illustrations by Fahmida Sultana

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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All Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-4610-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-4612-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-4611-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020907080

Balboa Press rev. date: 08/06/2020

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I

Who We Are and How We Work

Chapter 1 The Human Value Proposition

Chapter 2 Feeding at the Trough of Fear

Chapter 3 Choosing Love

Chapter 4 Relationship Is the Primary Building Block of Existence (Connection Is an Indivisible Unit of Existence)

Part II

Individual Energy Bodies

Chapter 5 Physical Energy Body: Seat Is Nucleus Accumbens

Chapter 6 Emotional Energy Body: Seat Is the Amygdala

Chapter 7 Intellectual Energy Body: Seat Is the Cerebral Cortex

Chapter 8 Spiritual Energy Body: Seat Is the Heart

Part III

Collective Energy Bodies

Chapter 9 Economics = Collective Physical Energy Body

Chapter 10 Culture = Collective Emotional Energy Body

Chapter 11 Politics and Religion = Collective Intellectual Energy Body

Chapter 12 Love = Collective Spiritual Energy Body

Epilogue

Glossary

About the Author

Endnotes

ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Types of relationships

2. High-vibration individual immersed within a low-vibration environment

3. Low-vibration individual immersed within a high-vibration environment

4. High-vibration individual connected to Source immersed in a low-vibration environment

5. Physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual energy bodies in balance

6. Comparison of balanced and underregulated physical energy body

7. Overregulated physical energy body

8. Comparison of balanced and underregulated emotional energy body

9. Overregulated emotional energy body

10. Consciousness and the brain

11. The social brain

12. Underregulated intellectual energy body

13. Closed loop of pleasure-driven and fear-driven brain

14. How narratives develop out of universal Consciousness

15. Narratives as subsets of universal Consciousness

16. Narratives as neurotransmitters between individual consciousnesses

17. Investment thinking

18. Brain wave categories

19. Balanced energy bodies

20. The process from desire to mastery

21. The topography of potential

22. The process of discovering our life purpose

23. Our heart’s five spiritual senses

24. Senses of the heart loop

25. Equation for living into our dream

26. How stars grow

27. Four collective energy bodies

28. Endless cycle of consumption

29. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) dispute

30. Example A: Physically and intellectually compatible individuals

31. Example B: Physically compatible individuals

32. Example C: Spiritually compatible individuals

33. Pleasure and fear cycle in our current culture

To the potential within each of us instilled by our common Creator.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

EARLY ON IN the writing of this book, I was guided beautifully and gently by beta readers, Julie Pence, Kay Lumpkin, Catrina Horton, Tarver Harris, Cheryl Howdyshell, Nicole Horn, and Kalleen Ragan-Pepper. My wife, Christine Capshew, has been a constant and steady support throughout the process, both in encouraging me when I faltered and in staying out of the way when I was caught up in inspiration.

Thank you, Creator, for planting the seed of life into me and creating this unique expression of You. Thank you, my family, for being the ground from which this seed sprouted. Thank you, my friends, clients, and loved ones, for being beautiful teachers and guides along my seen world path. My hope is that any harm I have done along the way has been healed. My goal is to leave the seen world a better place by having been here.

INTRODUCTION

THE TIME IS now. The place is here. Human consciousness is in the midst of a major leap forward in awakening. Everyone is affected. Nothing will be the same.

The shift is happening all around us in every part of our lives. Many of us do not see it because we are looking at it through the lens of our mind rather than the lens of our heart. Our heart is the home of our eternal and omnipresent consciousness.

The purpose of this book is first to present information that illustrates the limits of living through the lens of our mind, then to present information that demonstrates the ongoing shift to living through the lens of our heart. The book provides practical and time-tested paths away from our head and into our heart. The Buddha shared this truth: suffering results from grasping.

DISCLAIMER #1

NOTHING THAT IS said in this book is new. In fact, the information and propositions have been repeated in a myriad of ways in all of the religious and spiritual teachings and traditions known to humankind. What has changed is the audience—our collective human consciousness. We are at the cusp of being able to see, collectively for the first time, what has been there all along: we are made of the stuff of Consciousness and are part of pure Consciousness. Just as a cell in our body can be isolated and identified, it does not, and cannot, live in isolation. It is part of something bigger that feeds it, cares for it, loves it, and defines it. Each of us is part of something bigger that feeds us, cares for us, loves us, and defines us. Suffering occurs when we ignore that truth. Thriving occurs when we embrace that truth. We can look to nature and see this truth happening all the time all around us. A leaf on a deciduous tree will bud, sprout, live through the summer, lose its chlorophyll, and drop from the tree at the end of its short life. While we can identify each leaf as an individual, it has no life without its connection to the source of its life. As humans, we can live the illusion of having the freedom to disconnect from Source. When we live this illusion, we begin to die a slow death, sometimes lasting years, culminating in physical death. Or we can live connected to Source and live our physical life full and juicy until our physical body wears out, like a leaf at the end of a season. Our relationship to the Source of our being is the primary relationship of our lives. Every other relationship is secondary.

The advances in the current digital age have provided us major steps forward in our collective human consciousness: energy is everywhere, whether we can experience it with our senses or not; information is unlimited, and when accessed, information gives the user power; we are all connected to one another and to the universe. Never before in the history of our species has humanity had such quick access to information for transformation. What used to be only accessible to a select few through accident of birth or the gatekeeping of other humans is now readily available. While there remain a few enclaves of information that continue to be hidden and protected, all we need to evolve our consciousness as a species is readily available both within our individual hardware and all around us as the wisdom traditions have propelled their teachings and practices into the collective space we call the internet. More people on the planet than ever before in our history are connecting their human consciousness to the Consciousness that created the universe through the wisdom and practices now available to all. We are no longer left fighting over scraps in the seen world; we now are accessing the Creative Force of the Universe to manifest our seen world from the unseen world, learning the same technology our Creator uses in this beautiful creation in which we find ourselves.

Through our collective history, there are individual humans who have pursued enlightenment. The technologies for being enlightened have different cultural flavors, yet they are all the same at the core: practice seeing the seen world as an illusion, practice connecting to the Source of your being, practice living in the eternal now with the knowledge that the unseen world is real and the seen world is an illusion. Release a sense of individuality and embrace and embody connectedness. At bottom, there is nothing to pursue; simply wake up to the consciousness that you are, connected to the Source of all being.

DEFINITIONS

THIS BOOK OUTLINES the movement of human consciousness toward joining with the Consciousness that created the universe. A rising tide lifts all boats. In human form, I am limited in my ability to create a comprehensive compilation of all the manifestations of this movement. Perhaps if I direct your awareness to a few boats lifting, you will awake to the rising tide. It is my hope that the examples in the book will awaken each of us to the magnificent flow of Consciousness in which we are all embedded and of which we are all an integral part. To introduce the book, let us start with some definitions.

CONSCIOUSNESS

CONSCIOUSNESS IS UNDEFINABLE because it pervades all of existence. It is the unseen fabric from which the seen world is made. It is the cloth from which we are cut. Consciousness existed before the big bang, exists through the life span of the universe, and will continue to exist beyond the life span of the universe. Consciousness is beyond space and beyond time: it is the eternal now, the ubiquitous here. As humans, we experience Consciousness as a force we label Love. Love brings light and life to the material plane. Love creates an oak tree out of the emergent properties of an acorn. Love creates a strong, loving, competent, and creative woman out of the emergent properties of an infant. Love creates a planet that provides for the basic life needs of the plants and animals living on it. Love creates the conditions for any life to thrive and live into the potential gifted to it by the life-giving source we can label Consciousness. Consciousness creates everything, from the simple building blocks in the material world to the most complex systems investigated by humans, including the human body and nervous system, ecosystems working in harmony, and solar systems and galaxies. As far as the eye can see—both unaided and aided, and as far as humans can imagine and beyond—has been created and is maintained by Consciousness. Humans are both embedded in and pervaded with Consciousness.

Compared to the rest of the seen world, humans are currently at the most dissonance with Consciousness. As humans with a limited and limiting brain, none of us can have a complete or comprehensive view or understanding of the depth and breadth of Consciousness. All religions proposed or espoused by humans are but a grain of sand on the beach of Consciousness. All religious claims of exclusive access to Consciousness are false statements of human ego. True religion invites its followers into the mystery of being a grain of sand on the beach of Consciousness, first recognizing that the grain is part of the essence of the beach and then expanding awareness to realize that everything else is part of the beach. Everything. Including other grains of sand near and far, larger and smaller, lighter and darker. Everything. Including the driftwood and other dead and live plant life, shells and other dead and live animal life, and the water, earth, air, light, ambient temperatures and other elemental forces that bring, deposit, and break down the substances that keep the beach alive. Just as one human cannot assert in truth that they are the only human alive, one religion cannot assert in truth that it is the only path to knowing the Creative Force of the Universe.

All of the collective violence in human history can be seen in its proper context as grains of sand fighting over claims of being the beach or fighting from the illusion created by fear that there is a limited supply of resources on the beach. Humans create dissonance from Love by energizing fear. Fear has many faces—the face of lack, the face of powerlessness, the face of danger, the face of death. And all the faces of fear are illusions. There is no lack, there is no powerlessness, there is no danger, and there is no death. Consciousness creates everything. Consciousness is the source of all power. Danger only exists in a truncated view of existence. Death only exists in a truncated view of existence. When human consciousness rises to a higher level, approaching the all-pervading Consciousness, the wider expanse of existence comes into view, and both danger and death lose their significance because they become part of the ever-changing manifestation of Consciousness of which we are all a part.

HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS

HUMANS ARE MANIFESTATIONS of Consciousness, just as is everything else in the seen world. Humans have created dissonance in the seen world by seeing themselves as individuals and then using that misperception for individual gain. Our history has been that many of us first misperceive reality and then live our entire lives out of that misperception, never knowing or examining the underlying misperception. We have generated and perpetuated a collective delusion that we are individuals, unconnected to everything else unless we choose to be. The truth is we may have individual aspects of Consciousness within our orbit and control, but we are always inextricably connected to all that is. Our brains, the largest and most complex nervous system we know of, have been trained over millennia to perpetuate this misperception of individual existence by making the seen world primary over the unseen world. Our heart, the seat of our human consciousness, is where we experience the unseen world. As we have pushed further and further into the astounding capabilities of the human brain, we have become infatuated with its abilities and potential. This infatuation with the brain has turned our focus away from the even more astounding capabilities of the human heart. It is as if we are so focused on how big we can build our computer, ignoring the potential of connecting to the internet to access more resources than we could ever hold in our individual hard drives. We fight over a scrap of meat like ravenous dogs, not realizing that there is plenty for all just beyond our awareness.

In response to the cult of individuality, humans have throughout history found ways to get out of their head, escaping the prison of our minds. Ecstasy, literally standing outside oneself, has been a desire for humans since before recorded history. The ability to expand beyond the confines of individual consciousness has been in turn revered and regulated as long as humans have gathered together. When we respond to ecstasy with Love, we revere and are inspired by the event or person. When we respond to ecstasy with fear, we stigmatize and eliminate the event or person. Great leaders have the ability to stand outside the worldview of the people and culture they serve and provide a perspective that expands the collective consciousness. People who respond with Love see the vision, expanding themselves to become more than they previously could imagine. People who see the visionary as dangerous to the current order of things respond in fear and work toward minimizing the message or eliminating the person. Jesus, Muhammad, Joan of Arc, Mohandas Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and countless other women and men have created this polarizing effect by seeing and speaking a vision of a better world. Many had their lives shortened by people acting out of fear of the message.

Our human nature seeks to preserve our being. Our spiritual nature seeks to expand our being. Our current level of collective human consciousness has built a world that focuses on preserving our being. The shift of human consciousness that is currently underway is moving beyond preservation, embracing expansion. This desire for expansion is found in all of the spiritual discontent today, from questions like What is my purpose for living? to Is there more to life than this? In fact, the accumulation of wealth and power are distorted attempts to answer these questions, misdirecting, through fear instead of Love, the energy to live a meaningful life. There is one purpose for human existence: to bring Love into the world. There are innumerable ways to express this purpose. Each human brings a new expression of this purpose through the unique landscape of the potential planted within their human consciousness by Consciousness.

Human consciousness is the sense of being alive. It is not a single quality but a collection of sensations or experiences, a "functional complex.¹ As such, it is an emergent property, both arising out of and transcending the biology of being alive. What makes human consciousness difficult to describe, and even more difficult to research, is its invisible and subjective qualities; consciousness cannot be seen, nor can another being’s individual consciousness be directly experienced. We can gain a crude measure of consciousness from its products: beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, both verbal and nonverbal. Human consciousness includes all its products and exceeds all its products. In Buddhism, human consciousness is often called the observer self." It is the part of our individual existence that connects us to the all-encompassing and all-pervading existence of Consciousness. Human consciousness is the funnel through which Consciousness pours itself into human experience. If you hold your index finger straight, and you curl it toward your palm, your finger is like an individual human, able to both receive information and act on it. It is not your brain that is like Consciousness in this analogy but the part of you that is aware and makes the choice to bend your finger. Your brain simply executes the directive of your human consciousness. The chooser: what we call free will. If you placed that finger on a hot stove, a different part of your brain would jerk the finger off the stove, a reaction to danger from your midbrain. Choice is overridden by survival. Our current culture is built on giving humans the perception of danger, which takes away choice and allows redirection toward the activity that helps people in power accumulate more power through wealth and resources.

Another difficulty in studying or researching human consciousness is the tool we often use to study or research it with: human consciousness. If you live inside a house all your life, you will never know from experience what the outside of your house looks like. No matter how much self-examination one does from the position inside themselves, the data is incomplete. Completing the data takes stepping outside oneself. It takes ekstasis, described more fully in the next paragraph.

From my experience in both psychotherapy and spirituality work, the seat of human consciousness is our heart. More specifically, a space directly behind our physical heart. Each of us have an energetic space within us that is inviolate; no one else can enter. For most of us, it is located between the physical heart and the spinal column. It is what makes the heart the center of our physical existence. I call it the sacred heart or the temple of the heart. It is a space that has one attendant—you. If you do not attend to the temple of your heart, it is left unattended. Empty and unused, the temple of your heart becomes like an empty house ready for an occupant and full of untapped possibilities. In transcendent experiences, we can join others in a collective consciousness through our sacred heart. Examples include one-on-one intimacy—whether physical, emotional, intellectual, or spiritual. That sense of joining with someone else outside yourself creates the sense of collective oneness. Ekstasis²—being outside the place one is standing. This collective consciousness experience can happen in larger groups as well. Our drive and interest to belong can lead us to experiences of collective consciousness—concerts, sporting events, nationalism, pride movements. All provide the opportunity to become one with something bigger for even a brief moment. Again, ekstasis—being outside the place one is standing. Ekstasis is a basic human drive, not often recognized in our current collective human consciousness that is focused on the misperception of individual existence.

RISING

HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS OFTEN sits at the threshold between the unseen world and the seen world. The seen world is but a shadow of the unseen world. Everything we see in the manifested universe arises from the power and potential in the unseen world. For most of human history, we have operated submerged in the seen world, often not even catching a glimpse of the unseen world. An analogy we can use is comparing the seen world with a body of water and the unseen world as the air above the water. As humans, if we do not develop the capacity to swim in the water, we can drown in the sea of life. And as humans, no matter how well we learn to swim, if we do not learn to also fly, we miss a big part of what we were created to be. When we do catch a glimpse of the unseen world, it is like being underwater and coming up for air; the relief and freedom experienced is deep, and the memory is lasting. The work we are called to do in our current human consciousness is to raise our human consciousness out of the water, then raise the other parts of our being out of the water, so we are first floating and then flying above the surface of the water and can choose to dive into the seen world when we choose. From the place of the unseen, we then engage the seen world at will. Instead of the feeling of being underwater as the norm, the feeling of floating or flying above the water is the norm. We choose when and where to engage rather than feeling tossed about by the waves and currents of the water.

This book is about recognizing that we are both water creatures and air creatures; we have a seen part of us and an unseen part of us. For many of us, we have been told a lie. The lie we have been told is that the seen part of us is more important than the unseen part of us. Believing the lie cuts us off from our power. Believing the lie cuts us off from our essence. Believing the lie cuts us off from the Source of our being. As our human consciousness rises, we reject the lie and return to our Source, knowing deep within our heart that we are connected to the energy of Love that created all of the seen world. We each are individual expressions of that Love. We each have unique purpose of manifesting that Love.

DOMINATOR CONSCIOUSNESS

DOMINATOR CONSCIOUSNESS IS a collective human view of reality that focuses on limitations: limited power, limited resources, limited potential, and limited connection. It is a belief system embedded in a lack mentality, struggling in the seen world to acquire, often by any means available, the necessities and comforts of physical existence. Dominator consciousness creates zero-sum games with winners and losers. It is the ground from which grows greed, judgment, indifference, and violence. Its main perpetuating process is fear, which feeds upon itself, creating a negative spiral into darkness and death. Dominator consciousness creates our current perpetrator/victim mentality.

Once we catch a glimpse of Consciousness rising, we realize that our current collective human experience is being fed fear to keep us from awakening to the beauty of Consciousness rising. Fear is the drug we are fed to keep us asleep to the potential within ourselves and one another. The dominator consciousness has us feeding fear to one another, sedating us to the beauty, power, and awe of being alive. Our current existence has most of us, even the ones benefiting from the dominator consciousness, convinced of an illusion—the illusion that the seen world is more powerful, valuable, and meaningful than the unseen world. As we each wake from this collective nightmare, we ride the wave of Consciousness rising, recognizing the stupendous awe and power of the Creative Force of the Universe, relentlessly driving all of us to an awakening of our participation in the unfolding of Consciousness. We join the chorus in the song of creation.

OUTLINE AND ORGANIZATION OF THIS BOOK

PART I OF this book begins with a deconstruction of the illusion of individual existence and value. In the human value proposition section, we look behind the current practices in the seen world of finding value in other humans through various incomplete beliefs. These incomplete beliefs have the effect of valuing some but not all human life. It is like saying that only the topmost leaves on a tree are valuable, or the biggest leaves, or the ones closest to the trunk, instead of seeing the value of all the