The Sea of Consideration


What we have called the Sea of Consciousness is not, actually, a sea of consciousness but a sea of consideration.

Within there are endless motions of consideration, views of reality, definitions of importance, perspective and quality, desire and resistance, beauty, non-beauty, ad infinitum.

The wave-form we call a self is like a soliton formed in this sea, a transient hump that somehow keeps its form and travels through the sea of consideration as a unit. This is an interesting thing, since the dynamics of the sea are such that continuity is next to impossible. But in the miracle of perversity called organized life, we somehow manage to convince ourselves of the timestream and each of our tracks through it as an 'individual', without any problem.

The odd phenomenon that sensitive people encounter at the death of a loved one seems described by this model. They sense that the deceased is very present at the funeral and often for sometime thereafter. Sometimes he/she visits various friends or old favorite locations. Then, a fade-out occurs where his/her presence seems to have been subtracted. No matter how one scans the psychic horizons, old Jack isn't answering up. He was last seen in the vicinity of New Orleans, where he wanted to hear Dixieland music or some such, but as a being he is 'off the scope' of psychic radar.

It may be that the soliton of wave forms in this sea of consideration has simply 'disbanded' leaving the persona-operator unrecognizable, as the key beliefs which held 'him' together in the lifetime just ending have evaporated.

Another amusing aspect to this model derives from naval experience. There, we had a scale of conditions of the sea, called the Beaufort scale, ranging from 'Sea like a mirror' (force 0) to an insane maelstrom of mountains of white foam endlessly being beaten to smithereens on a cacophony of wind and water (force 12). In between are gentle ripples, light waves, firm waves, big waves and wind, and so on up to hurricanes.

In the sea of consideration we are all familiar with Force Zero -- the quiet harmony where no self is needed because a tranquility of considerations obtains. As the forms of selves and their pet ideas and right/wrong conflicts and dynamic desires and resistances grows one can sense the sea of consideration moving and heaving up through the scale from light chop to full gale, the utter swamping confusion of full-blown overwhelming transition in all parts of all lifetimes NOW.

The next question, of course, is what are the rules of navigation on this sea? How does one find one's place, one's destination? Are there valuable cargoes, pleasure cruises, smuggling operations and a Coast Guard in the Sea of Consideration? As a sailor on this sea, what conditions cause sea-sickness? What brings joy? Do you grin in the teeth of the gale and whoop as you slide down the face of thirty-foot waves? Or does a light breeze send you to your bunk?

This is not just whimsical analogizing. The dynamics of every motion of your existence are tied to these questions despite their cheery tone. And the analogy is useful.

Imagine, for your own entertainment, what the rudiments of coast-wise navigation are in the Sea of Consideration. How do you fix your position? What mathematics do you use? And what is the name of your favorite lighthouse? For that matter, what constitutes solid land, the invisible basin that contains all parts of the Sea? Fix yourself to that and you will certainly be ready for some adventure.

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