Upgrades and Downgrades
Being fully aware of and present with all the facets of yourself, what you are doing, and the world around you – not getting identified with any one them – is the bridge to consciousness that you make through your sensitivity. It is analogous to the awareness of the environment and all the gestures made during the making and serving and smelling, tasting, drinking and savoring of the tea cultivated during a tea ceremony. It is a way of bridging to consciousness by the full exercise of your sensitivity. And one of the joys that comes out of it is clarity and peace, because more conscious energy is produced as a result of simultaneously being fully sensitive and attentive to yourself, the activity and the impressions of the activity. So you end up feeling really clear and really calm and really whole and really unified. Those are not phenomena of the sensitive energy. To the degree to which you feel that kind of harmoniousness it is because there is consciousness (conscious energy) there. But when you are, or feel like you are, no more than a reaction machine, it’s because automatic energy has taken your sensitivity captive. So, everything gets you, everything bugs you, everything tosses you around – the world of extremes, of excitation, pleasure, pain, and endless highs and lows and upheavals, is the sensitive–automatic universe that most people live in and spend all their time in. And there is no peace there. There is no sense of integration. There is no sense of wholeness or oneness. There is no sense of belonging to a larger universe than your own self…. self absorption, self entrapment.
