Humankind’s Coming into Awareness

Louisa Punt-Fouché

Louisa Punt-Fouché

Louisa Punt-Fouche – Chapter 4 in White Berries, Green Flowers ( In print)

Oh, heaven above me, you pure and deep thing! You abyss of light! Looking at you, I shudder with divine desire. To throw myself into your height – that is my depth! To hide myself in your purity – that is my innocence! Together, we learned everything; we learned to climb up to ourselves and beyond and smile cloudlessly. Nietzsche

Introduction

I

                       The call of the light of consciousness

According to Jung, “the longing for consciousness is a longing of the world itself: All Nature seeks this goal”. We respond to the call of the light of consciousness as a process in which the world itself comes into being in that human light called consciousness.  [Roger Brooke]                                                                              

There is an ontological connection between the being of the world and the being of humankind.

Humankind’s coming into awareness is inseparably bound to time and space. [Jean Gebser] From here, different structures of consciousness follow through the archaic, magical, mythic, mental, and integral mutations.

Living on a farm in the mountains, the landscape’s thick and richly textured presence, the wind carrying the smell of wildflowers, the devilish antics of cawing crows flying over the hilltops, and the sound of water from the waterfall caught my attention. It opened gates to the sensuous surroundings, calling me to consciousness through being present and experiencing an emerging relational world, exchanging infinite possibilities.

II

Receptive awareness

“Long before a creation is completed, the artist has gained for himself another and more intimate achievement: a deeper and more receptive awareness, a sharper and more discerning understanding, a more patient openness for all things quiet and inconspicuous, an eye for things previously overlooked”.   Josef Pieper

There are countless stories about the experience of becoming conscious, each unique to the individual and their time and place. However, the one thing that remains constant is the importance of being fully present in the moment, engaging with the world through our senses, and embracing the ongoing transformation process.

There are many practices, referred to by John Vervaeke as an “Ecology of Practices”, that might guide humans to and through the process of becoming aware of themselves and their relationships with all things human and non-human.

Meditation, Yoga, Thai Chi, and the integrative, therapeutic sacred art form of the Mandala (my life’s work).

III

The work on ourselves – The Soul’s Sutras

All work, the genuine work we must achieve, is the most complex and painful: the work on ourselves. If we do not freely take upon ourselves this pre-acceptance of the pain and torment, they will be visited upon us in an otherwise necessary individual and universal collapse. Anyone disassociated from his origin and spiritually sensed task acts against his origin. Anyone who works against it has neither a today nor a tomorrow. Jean Gebser

The Soul is the centre of the living Self (mandala) that holds everything together. It is a continuous thread of revelations and sacred songs – sutras (or aphorisms). A ‘Sutra’ means to thread or string together a long chain of thoughts and feelings over a lifetime of physiological and psychological change.

The Soul is a Sutra or aphorism, rising above the din of mainstream thinking and expectation. It speaks and sings through developing awareness and acceptance of ourselves, transforming our bodies and minds into poems.

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