The Lake of Consciousness.

A teacher of mine likened the psyche to a great lake, with the consciousness being the water, and the subconscious (‘egos’) being the mud and silt at the bottom of the lake. Normally it’s as though the settlement at the bottom is all stirred up, causing the water to become dark and murky. This is how our consciousness is when we begin the inner work, we are clouded by the egos.

But then, we learn some practices. We learn how to concentrate, how to meditate, we do some mantras, and we learn how to astral project. As we do these practices, we begin to balance our energy centers, and the mud and silt begins to settle at the bottom of the lake. Slowly the water becomes clearer, and as it does we are able to see reality – we begin to get esoteric experiences; some astral experiences, perhaps some spiritual teachings, and some moments of inner peace. But the mud is still there, it’s just resting at the bottom, ready to be stirred up again by some curve-ball of life. At any moment life will throw us some mishap which draws up frsutration, negativity or fear, perhaps anger and so on.

In order to permanently clear the water, we need to extract the mud out of it. And we do this by using the events of life that allow us to see the mud that is within us. We don’t want actively do things to stir up the mud, like drinking or taking drugs or actively pursuing situations that will feed our egos – if we do that, the water just gets all muddy and we get lost in the darkness. Instead, we do our practices and clear the water as best we can, then just be alert and vigilant and life will bring us exactly what we need to extract the mud. A situation will present itself, and if we are clear we will see the particle of mud – the ego – that it brings up from the bottom of our psyche. When we see it, observe it and comprehend it, we can apply the elimination technique, and that particle of mud is extracted out of the water. Then life presents another situation, and we do the same. And like this, little by little, particle by particle, ego by ego, we extract the mud and permanently clear the water of the consciousness.

This is why it’s not enough to go and live like a hermit or a monk, off somewhere far away from society in a temple or deep in a forest. Sure, we may do lots of practices and get lots of wonderful experiences, but we still have all that murky darkness within, it’s just settled at the bottom of the lake of our psyche. If we isolate ourselves from society, we deprive ourselves of the wonderful opportunities life presents to see and extract the particles of mud. Then as soon as something really bad happens, even if we have been meditating for 20 years, all that mud gets stirred up and the water gets murky again.

If we want to permanently change, meditation, mantras and astral practices alone will not get us there…they will only help us to see. It is in seeing the egos, and then eliminating them with the help of the Divine (otherwise known as the ‘death’ of the egos), that we will clear the waters of the consciousness, permanently.