The Path of Consciousness

I’m as anxious as any one else for world peace, particularly peace in the Middle East, peace between fellow Jews, harmony within families and most important, the inner peace of each individual. What worries me, however, is that we have tried every kind of peace making techniques known to man, but still to no avail. I’m astonished every time I think that mature, educated, intelligent statesmen cannot agree on policies that would benefit the people they represent. I, personally, take another path to peace, one that’s subtler than demonstrating publicly but I think more effective, the path of consciousness.

I believe that the way to change the world and ourselves most effectively is by changing our own consciousness. Mohondas Gandhi best expressed this notion in a quote, I came across recently: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world“. Changes happen every day, but most of us are much too busy to notice it. We need to find ways of slowing down to pay attention to what’s happening moment by moment.

Throughout our studies in the Torah, we’re often faced with a statute and restitution for transgressions; an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. “When a man steals an ox or a sheep, and slaughters it or sells it, he shall pay five oxen for the ox and four sheep for the sheep (Exodus 21:37). Besides maintaining social harmony, the Torah is alluding to the general principle that everything in the universe must exist in a state of balance. If I do something wrong, I have to balance the offence by paying for it. The Torah further suggests that for any wrongdoing, which represents one side of the continuum between right and wrong, that some opposite must also exist. This notion is obvious throughout all of nature—day and night, warm and cold, love and hate—and between all extremes must lie a balance point, a neutral center.

In the course of each day, our minds are flooded with thoughts and we also encounter all kinds of emotions and sensations. Most of it we merely dismiss as meaningless annoyances, but sometimes one of these demons occupy our entire field of consciousness, in other words that’s all we can think about. But if we can remain alert to these phantoms of the mind, rather than being consumed by them, we enter the first stage to making peace with them.

Take any strong reaction you may have experienced in the past, realize that it’s the extreme end  of possibilities and then try to logically determine its opposite. Say, for example, you recognize the feeling as fear; you might determine that it’s the opposite of love. Now you have a clue that perhaps unconditional love, for whatever reason, is some thing you may have suppressed; and by nurturing that love, you could conceivably balance the fear.

People suppress and even repress aspects of themselves that have been a source of emotional pain from early childhood; sometimes we call that suppressed energy the shadow side of ourselves. By choosing to foster and acknowledge those suppressed parts we in effect expand our consciousness. There is now more to the repertoire of ourselves. Once we restore the missing pieces, our lives become whole and we’re in balance. Consciousness is the sum total of what we know and what we experience. It contains the possibility of opening towards new horizons; it’s like muscles that can be strengthened and enlarged with proper exercise.

Consciousness has the potential for growth on all levels of existence: the physical, the emotional, the mental and the spiritual.  It is possible to expand awareness in all of these components of life. As many of us exercise our bodies regularly we can also exercise any of the other dimensions by practicing awareness—paying careful attention to every aspect of our daily experiences.

Consciousness contains an infectious dimension. As we expand our awareness, we find others noticing the changes in our personality, which could encourage them to institute changes in their lives. About twelve years ago, we came upon the Kripalu Center for Yoga in Lenox, Massachusetts. We don’t practice Yoga but we found the extraordinary landscape--the mountains and lakes of the Berkshires—to  be one of the most serene vacation spots we ever found. It was ideal for short bursts of spiritual renewal. We had some idea that many of the guests were Jewish. One  Friday night we checked in a little late, while dinner was already in progress, and on a bench outside the dining hall I spied a pair of candlesticks, a prayer book and a kiddush cup; then we knew for sure that many other Jewish people had the same idea we had. Ultimately we kept going back through the years and what we found, without advertising our vacation hideaway, was that lots of people we know—friends and family—learned to find spiritual retreat at Kripalu also.

Can you imagine the sweeping impact that changes in our consciousness could have in the world? If enough of us become the “changes we wish to see in the world”, we could influence statesmen and politicians to view the world from a peaceful perspective. It sounds inconceivable, but modern physics has taught us that the entire universe is made of the same nuclear stuff and a change in just a single particle affects the whole.