A Teaching on Consciousness, or Your Life in an Age of Collapse

I’m Umair Haque, and this is The Issue: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported publication. Our job is to give you the freshest, deepest, no-holds-barred insight about the issues that matter most.

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Hi. How’s everyone? Welcome back old friends, welcome new ones, and here’s some bravery from little Snowy, the toughest guy I know, to help you through the day.

Today we’re going to discuss some answers to the fundamental question you have.

Why is all this happening?

It’s another form of: 

What am I going to do in a collapsing world? What will it do to me? My loved ones? All that I have built and accomplished? What will I do now?

Let me answer that upfront for you.

Only the fullest and most developed “version” of you can now solve this puzzle before you.

We’re going to go deep. I am going to cut away your fear. You will be left feeling far more confident, strong, and aware, and understand much better the challenge before you, of what to “do” in times like these. But it will take work from you. It’s OK. We’ll do it together.

You must be a beacon of calm, wisdom, and strength. For yourself and your loved ones. We just discussed this, right? 

Now I am going to begin teaching you at a serious level. Much more so than before.

I’m going to be a little unsparing. I am now shifting away from essays to what are better called teachings. Come back and re-read this. Share it, send it to friends who can use it, above all use it. Whenever you feel unsure or worried or afraid. Few of you will master it the first time around. It isn’t meant to operate on you in that simplistic kind of way. Don’t treat it like that, at least if you want to…

These teachings (for lack of a better word) are meant to be something that you practice and that changes you. In the ways that you need now.

So these aren’t really essays anymore, critical reflections on whatever. Rather, I am now going to teach you different things in different ways. About you, us, life, and the world. And they are going to transform you. How? 

You now need a much, much different level of confidence, strength, purpose, and awareness. To navigate a world in crisis. To Not Sink With the Ship. You know that and I know that. But.

Where can it come from? It is already there within you, and together we are going to begin unlocking it.

So let’s begin.

Why All This is Happening

When we ask this question, we say: don’t they understand what they’re doing? Or: what do they really want?

No, they don’t understand what they’re doing, and I’m going to explain what they want, but not in a superficial way, in a deep and true one, one that is going to change you, but only if you let it.

Why do you think this is happening? Is it because they are uneducated? Because they are bad people? None of that matters. I am going to give you the real answer now, but like I said, the question is going to be, as it always has been, whether or not you are willing to learn it.

All of this is happening because there is a reduced level of consciousness, and an expanded one. In our world, human consciousness is receding and shrinking. To a point where people are willing to give up on humanity’s greatest accomplishments, whether they’re vaccines or democracy or prosperity or peace. All of that—trashed. 

Why would people be willing to do that? Willing is the key word here, because they are not hostages or captives. So this is a problem of willpower, and in that sense, it is a problem of consciousness. 

They have been reduced to their littlest minds. They’re atoms of rage-hate-despair-want. Beating violently against the bars of an emotional and spiritual and very real system-level prison. Lashing out in self-destructive fury. Little-mind and big-mind. Big-mind and universal-mind. We are going to discuss all this, but see, already:

All of that is the opposite of what you need to be right now, isn’t it?

Where can the level of confidence, purpose, and awareness you need right now come from, if you don’t begin to really understand the above? Do you see what I mean?

So let us go further. I am now going to teach you about consciousness, and in that way, you will begin to develop these essential qualities so necessary right now, confidence, strength, awareness, purpose, instead of feeling overwhelmed by panic, despair, and rage.

You must be a beacon of calm, wisdom, and strength. For yourself and your loved ones.

Breathe. Say it with me. I am teaching you a practice. This is not abstract intellectualization.

How to Think About Consciousness  

You have by now in your life read about consciousness in many ways. Whether from scientists, mystics, sages, whomever. You are left feeling, probably, confused. Because when we try to explain it, we don’t do a very good job. 

I am going to cut all of that away.

Consciousness is very simple.

But the way that we often think about is backwards.

A reduced consciousness is one that is fixated on the self. On its own survival. On its own gain, aggrandizement, satisfaction, hunger, want, etcetera. That is all that such a consciousness feels, knows, understands.

And you can already see that it is threats like fear, anger, despair, that lead there. This is little-mind.

An expanded consciousness is just what it says. It is expansive in the sense that it can feel, know, sense, experience, more than itself. In truly expansive form, things unlike itself. 

Note that I haven’t used the terms “higher” or “lower.” They are how this simplest of issues has become confused. In ancient times, higher consciousness meant an expansive one. But during the modern Enlightenment, it came to mean a reduced one, as human rationality was reduced to self-striving. So today we are left baffled and confused. 

Let me say it again.

An expanded consciousness is one that can feel, know, sense, more than itself, and what is unlike itself.

That is all it is.

But in that teaching is contained everything.

Why? 

Because some of you, most of you, are already gifted and special people, and you possess an expanded consciousness. You already have one. It happens in different ways. Some of us are born that way, our journey towards life so turbulent and troubled that we attune differently. Some of us go through experiences at death’s edge, and at that edge, your consciousness must expand dramatically. 

Why and how else do so many of us know that all that is happening around us is wrong? Foolish? Self-destructive? Futile? 

So with this gift, you are more attuned, creative, sensitive, empathic, etcetera, than those around you. You can feel things faster and quicker and harder. You know things without anybody telling you. You sense, just like that. You can understand what it is like to be another.

Who can do that anymore? Can all the foolish people making these incredibly poor choices? Isn’t the inability to do that at the root of all this collapse? See the link. Really see it.

This is a kind of Transformational Intelligence, by the way, but labels don’t matter here. We are talking about just consciousness.

Death is when my gift unfurled, and I won’t tell that story again, just so you know that we are not talking theoretically. I am teaching you a practice, and by developing this practice, you will expand in the qualities you need, strength, courage, purpose, wisdom, etcetera.

This practice isn’t new, of course, but I’ll come back to that, and if you’re mystified, just stick with me for a moment. You don’t need to “think” about this, or “debate” it with me. There is no need for that. I already know you at this level, and you know me, too, in this way.

You have a gift, an expanded consciousness. What does that gift do? How do I know? Because people like us, that consciousness is who we are. And we must do something with it.

So we are the creative ones. We create and create. Or we are the humanists. Or we are the teachers, artists, poets, intellectuals, thinkers, entrepreneurs, doesn’t matter—the point is that our expanded consciousness is the key to who we are, and I already know this about you, because it is who you are.

The Gift We Have, and the Gift We Wasted

Now. What does all that mean?

I’m not talking about something metaphysical. This isn’t about traveling to astral planes or what have you.

I’m talking about something mundane, and above all, practical.

Let me give you my own example. How is it that I helped reinvent branding and was chief whatever of the one of the world’s largest companies when I was still a child, basically? Because I could sense what other people were feeling. What they wanted.

Everyone around me, and in those days, my CEO and whatnot were like two or three times my age, was baffled. I just had this weird…gift.

So we’re talking about something practical here. Not just some happy place in your mind you retreat to, which is nice, but something real, that you can use, and that you must, in times like these.

Let’s take it level by level.

—At the first level, you can feel what other people are feeling, those around you. This gives the gift of smaller forms of creativity. And we can’t bottle that gift up. Because when you feel all this, it must go somewhere. We are just conduits, after all, for all this energy. This is all being is.

—At the next level, you can feel what multitudes are feeling, sensing, thinking, knowing. This isn’t ESP, LOL, it’s just empathy, sympathy, resonance, intuition. This gives the gift of greater creativity, and it is the line between being a gifted amateur, perhaps, and a truly great scientist, artist, writer, whatever.

—At the next level, you can feel the universe. This is sensed in mystical experiences, religious ones, and so forth. This is connection with the source, with the “ground of being” in Buddhist terms, with the Anima Mundi or “Mind of God” in monotheistic terms, doesn’t matter. 

What happens at this level? “Discrimination” stops. There is no more “me” and “that,” or “I” and “not I,” as all the ancient texts describe. You sense the universe as a endless sea around, of “light,” which is a bad way to put it, perhaps a better one is just energy, being itself coming and going, and the “ground” is what remains, an eternal luminous awareness.

Again, this isn’t theoretical. We are learning from quantum science that the above is true. And more to the point, because this isn’t even scientifically empirical, this is what being is. Countless numbers have experienced it, and that isn’t some sort of proof by numbers, rather, I am teaching you in the sense that I have experience all this myself, and it’s precisely—and even I was shocked by this—just as all the ancient texts describe.

After I had this set of experiences, in fact, I read and read, looking for descriptions, explanations, anything. This was when I spent years right at death’s edge. Finally, I found them in the place I least expected, which was all the most ancient recorded wisdom that we have collectively, and all of them describe precisely the same thing. Now, that’s abstract, and it’s literally thousands of years away from…here and now.

It isn’t about “proof”, by the way. Where do you think your creativity come from? Your intellect, curiosity, ability to receive knowledge, to relate, to see deeper into things? They are about all this.

Now do you see how the world got here? Isn’t it…by squandering this very gift? And retreating into the littlest mind of all, the atom of rage-despair-want?

So why am I teaching you all this?

Understanding Yourself in an Age of Collapse

Understand yourself. You must do it now. In a deep way, that you haven’t before. That is how you will find your way out this mess, and those who don’t? They are who are already causing everything to sink.

All your life, you have probably been undervalued and under-recognized, because you are different in this way. You are gifted, in the form of consciousness itself, and that is not a gift we recognize anymore. We recognize people who are talented at math, accumulating power, making money, doesn’t matter, and celebrate them. But those who are gifted at—with—consciousness itself?

We remain a mystery to those around us. My parents never understood where my creativity came from. Why was this weird kid always writing poetry and making music? With weird allegorical figures like Death and Time in them? Why couldn’t he seem to just…make normal friends…and do normal kid stuff? Why would he stare off into the distance like he was seeing things other people couldn’t see? I was experiencing the world and myself in a very, very different way.

I want you to recognize this gift in yourself now. 

Now it is time for you to value yourself in this deep, primordial, and beautiful way.

Where else is that deep well of confidence, strength, courage, and purpose going to come from?

You see, if I give you a little motivational speech, will it change you? No, it will be worse for you tomorrow, and the day after, because you will depend on me. If I do what pundits do, and tell you everything will be OK, will it change you? Of course not, and worse, you will get the sense I’m lying to you.

I am teaching you who you really are.

And you must learn who you really are now. Only there will you find the well of strength you are looking for. Where else can it be found? What else is it?

You have to understand this about yourself now. Do you see how not respecting or understanding all this is at the root of collapse?

So on the levels I sketched out for you, you can trace your own journey. I think very, very few of you will be able to say that you have had the experience of universal consciousness, and that’s OK—don’t turn this into a competitive game. Like so many Western notions of ancient thought do. It’s not about that.

It’s about self-discovery. I don’t know what level you are at on that spectrum, but I can assure you that you are somewhere on it. And it’s not a hierarchy. The universe reveals itself to us as we need it to. Only those very, very close to death will have the experience of universal consciousness, or those who are ready to truly surrender everything of themselves, and that is not some kind of childish challenge, it is incredibly dangerous and difficult and just not for most people. I didn’t choose it, after all, it happened to me. 

So wherever you are is OK. It’s good. It’s the right place for you to be.

And it is there that you are. You are. You are.

The Poisons of Now, or Squandering Your Gift

That is the the place in which your well of confidence, strength, courage, and wisdom will be found.

Not by:

—Reading the news

—Worrying about what happens next (don’t worry, I’m always here to tell you about that anyways)

—Stressing

—Joining the world in outrage and despair

—Giving up and throwing in the towel

None of those will help you right now.

None of them.

This is the root of your panic. That none of these “solutions” are working anymore.

And your panic will only subside when you cut it away. When you cut it away.

And you do that by recognizing yourself in this deep and beautiful way. That you are gifted with consciousness. And that it gives you very special powers and talents and skills. This is who you are.

Did you begin to feel a little better as you read that? Did your heart lift a bit? There, you see? You are making contact with this deep and abiding source in you, the well which can never run dry.

This is the water you must drink now. 

The rest is poison.

Now. I have just taught your unconscious something, but your conscious mind does not know it yet, so let me make it explicit.

Every second that you spend imbibing despair, rage, hater, and fear—it will be deadly to you now.

You know that you need confidence, strength, courage, and purpose.

I have taught you that are gifted in consciousness, and that is where they are found. 

But if you are wasting your time reading the news, or joining in online outrage, or obsessing over what happens next, etcetera, you are not looking in the place they are already found, are you? Every second that you spend doing all that is going to wreck and destroy you. It will make you more panicked, bewildered, and afraid.

It will reduce your consciousness. Your gift will wither. And that is what all your panic is really about right now, at the primal level.

All of that stuff is poison right now.

In a normal time, gifted people like us can bear it to a degree, and it’s OK. But in times like these? Our challenge is different.

It is to use our gift. It always is, but doubly so, now. To create, teach, lead, gather together the broken branches the folly of humankind leaves in the dirt, and make something beautiful from them. This is always our task, those of us with this gift.

Until and unless you accept the task and the challenge that is the obligation also given to you by your gift, then you will not have a place in a world like this. You will Sink With the Ship.

And that would be a shame, because you are gifted enough not to have to. 

You found your way to me, didn’t you? You understand what I am teaching you, or enough of it, no? Many, most, are not gifted in the way you are gifted.

They will Sink With the Ship. But for you, it is a choice. 

Even if it doesn’t feel like one. Even if you feel overwhelmed right now with fear and panic and bewilderment. You must excise all the poisons from your life now. And instead discover your true self. Drink from its well. That is the act that will “give you” confidence, courage, strength, wisdom, and purpose. All of those things are already you. But nobody has recognized them or taught you why they matter so.

You, the Gift, and the Age of Collapse

You have the deepest gift there is in a human being. Many have it, but we are not taught that it is valuable, that it matters, that it must be respected, that it is to be honored.

That is how we got here.

Remember the question we began with. Why are they doing this? Don’t they understand…?

The truth goes like this.

Some of them don’t understand. Because they can’t. They don’t have the gift of consciousness in the terms I’ve just taught you. Their consciousnesses have been reduced, in the most brutal form, to little atoms of hunger, want, rage, despair, fear, and that is all that is left. They have no more ability to know, sense, or feel anything anyone else is feeling than a mountain does to become the sea. They aren’t capable of it right now.

Some of them probably were. All of us are born with the gift of consciousness, to some degree. All of us. Just observe babies, and you will see that much is true. But it gets lost, beaten out of us, trashed by the world, punished away by bad teachers and parents, and in the end, we are taught to dishonor it. 

So in the end, we are left ignorant in the deepest sense there is. We cannot feel or sense or know anything at all beyond the boundaries of the ego, which is a word I haven’t used, because it’s overcomplicated as a concept, but let’s use it for now. We are just reduced to atoms of hunger, despair, pain, want, and our immediate suffering is all there is in the world.

A mind like this is no more capable of making the right choices than…it is the most broken thing of all. Even a broken branch can sow a tree. But a broken human being cannot sow anything. Not a harvest, not a society, not a civilization. Nothing.

That is why all this happening.

Really happening.

And the truth is a little more disturbing still. What has beaten the gift of consciousness out of so many? It is the monstrous systems and institutions which have left them being nothing but fear, panic, rage, and hate. And in that reduced, shrunken state, they, too, have become those very systems. 

Do you now understand how valuable your gift really is?

Why All This Matters

So how do you employ it, this gift I have just taught you you already have? What do I do with it, you might be wondering? Am I supposed to live on the fine bread of consciousness? Will it keep me safe and fed in a collapsing world?

Actually, yes.

That is the whole point. Remember when I said it was practical? That is the point of this practice, after all, to develop something you can use.

Now you must look inwards and develop this gift.

Many have never truly done that. Many of us have expressed it. In the forms of creativity, knowledge, commerce, business, whatever, and so forth, but developing it is different.

Now we must develop it in a greater sense than these uses, can I write a nice song or poem, can I teach a class, can I write a book, can I invest my money, etcetera. What can I use it for to make my way in a world like this? Even more powerfully than ever?

Developing it means understanding the relationship between yourself and a collapsing world.

Here you are, a person with this gift. The world is collapsing precisely because this gift has been squandered by many others.

What does that teach you?

Stop squandering it.

You must really use it now, which is what employing it means.

Even that sounds a little mysterious, LOL, so let me speak plainly.

This is a practice. Not intellectualization.

Now you must practice your gift every day. Your gift of consciousness. That is what will protect you and your loved ones and the things you care about. That is the only thing that will protect all that. Will outrage and despair? Will scrolling and swiping? 

This practice is how you will create your way now. Nobody has a sure path anymore, after all, do they? So now you must create one. That is what all the panic in you is about—the old solutions don’t work, and you must create a path, but you are unsure, afraid, frightened. 

The answer is to drink from the well that I have just led you to. To recognize your gift. And let it begin to lead you where it will lead you.

The more that you deny it, undervalue it, under-recognize it, the more you dishonor it, what chance do you really have of leading anyone anywhere, beginning with yourself? If you have this gift, but you will not lead it lead you, how can you protect your loved ones, yourself, what you have? Don’t you think that’s the very definition of ignorance and folly?

You must begin to honor and recognize yourself in this way. You really are different from them. Those who never had this gift, or those who did, and squandered it. You still have it, but.

Now you must use it.

I know that for many of you, your rational mind will throw up all kinds of objections, all sorts of fears, raise all kinds of doubts. I can’t do that! I don’t know how! What is he telling me—I don’t know how to do that!!

 Shush, shush. You are already this gift. Your rational mind is the smallest part of you. If you do not let it serve you, it will become your master, and it will drown with you I-can’t and I-don’t-know-how-to. It doesn’t understand the gift you have, struggles to comprehend it, because the gift is greater than it alone, and just explaining the gift to it is incredibly complicated.

The point is to use the gift. Not to intellectualize over it. Over whether you have it. Trust me, let me assure you, if you understood more than two sentences of this, you do. 

Now you must use it, and that just means what it says. What is your consciousness, this thing you are gifted with, really telling you? Not your little mind, this tiny atom of ego, that is bound by hunger, reduced to suffering, driven mad by the despair of an imploding world. Not that guy. But your gift. Your expanded consciousness. Your deeper self. The one that speaks beyond all these noisy, troublesome thoughts, and has a voice like the sea, the sand, time, dust?

What is it saying?

Can you answer that question that yet?

Probably not, and that’s OK.

Developing and Practicing Your Gift of Consciousness

This is a practice. And like all practices, it takes time. Effort. No pun intended…practice. Go ahead and chuckle.

Listening to your gift in this deep way is a high, high art. To write a good song? It takes me weeks, and then, bang, there it is. But I have been listening. The same is true for essays, which by now, because I have spend a lifetime listening in that way, I can write effortlessly. In the same way, understand how you have already been listening to your gift.

I guarantee that you have, in some way. Now just go deeper. Just open up space in your awareness so that you can hear more of it. 

This is why the rest is poison these days. These days, you really need to listen at this “frequency,” if you like, to hear what your gift is trying to tell you, where it is trying to lead you, how it is trying to direct and guide and orient you. But if your little mind, ego, thinking mind, is only full of headlines, online outrage, and so forth—you will never be able to hear it. Stay away from the poison.

Just make space in that place where your little mind usually is, more space. To listen. Just empty it more. And the voice of your gift will begin to fill it up. Not at once. Slowly, and then faster. It is like a dam breaking. 

Go deeper into it by remembering how you have already listened to your gift, at those times you needed guidance and orientation in your life. What it said to you in the forms of creativity, science, literature, art, fashion, doesn’t matter at all, all of these are forms of self-expression and self-discovery, and that is all we are talking about, only in an even more expansive way now.

Does that make sense? Perhaps this is a little too much for some of you, too abstract, too difficult. That is what you think. That is what your little mind thinks. 

What I know as your teacher is very different. You already have this gift. The world is collapsing around us because so many have rejected, squandered, wasted it. What does that tell you? Those who use it are going to have the best chance of not Sinking With the Ship.

Be still. Patience, focus, discipline. Now we are talking about the deepest things of all. It will be challenging and scary for some of you. But I know what you are capable of. You must now know it too.

And put it in the correct frame, which is the answer to the question: why is all this happening? That is your gift asking the very question itself. And it already knows the answer. You can start there, or anywhere else, it doesn’t matter. 

The point is now to develop and use your gift. That is the way to create a path out of the chaos, my friends, and only those who can will make it. The rest will Sink With the Ship that their very folly has punctured. You must find a way back to shore now, and the way to do that is by letting your gift lead you, not drinking more and more poison, and choking on despair, rage, and bewilderment.

One Final Answer

Let me leave you with one final answer. If you are still wondering how to use your gift, try to understand that what I am teaching you is an absence. As you empty yourself, the rest will begin to come to you naturally. But until you do, it won’t have room. This is an old Zen way, of course, but it has never mattered more. 

Me? I don’t do it by sitting in a temple, LOL, I just go to the cafe. I’m not telling you to be a monk or an acolyte. Keep it simple, so you can, above all, do it. Doesn’t matter how. If running’s your thing, then run. Painting, then paint. If you like shopping, go shop. It’s all OK. Just fine, as long as you are developing your gift. Just start your way of practicing now. With all I’ve taught you sort of unfurling away in you. 

Just be empty and listen for a while.

So that…you…

Do not end up like the rest. What do you think being the littlest mind of all, an atom of rage-hate-despair-want, is going to end in, for people who have let themselves be diminished to this?

Take care of yourself, your loved ones, what you have built and accomplished in this world. It will all fall apart very, very fast now. But now you see what “care” in that sentence really means.

The way to begin really protecting yourself, making a new way, is to understand yourself, at last, and listen to yourself in this deeper sense. This is how you develop your gift. I know that you can. This is the job of a teacher, to recognize this in you. You must honor it in yourself now.

Remember the three qualities?

Patience, discipline, focus. Don’t rush it. Be a beacon of calm, strength, and wisdom. That will come from listening. Drinking from the well. The rest is poison. The absence is the point. 

It is how you develop your fullest self.

Only this fuller “version” of you, which is your expanded consciousness, can now solve this puzzle before you.

Lots of love,

Umair (and Snowy!!)

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