Hi All!

Has anyone any thoughts on self-to-Self nature as enlightenment that comes through more than only their mind expanding experiences?

Regards,
Spinfo

Enlightenment by osmosis

Is expanding my mind the same thing as expanding my consciousness?

There are very many specific methods for expanding mind, and as a discussion here this idea is about using our minds to learn. Generally, to talk about learning means to talk about applying our mind power to expand our information base - be it broadly or specifically. To gain information about a subject is to add to our knowledge about it, thereby expanding our awareness and understanding - making us somehow more knowledge-full about something.

To learn, anything, from this point of view, is to engage our conscious mind - to use our mind in a very directed way to take-in information and process that information or integrate and correlate that information into our current knowledge and understanding - expanding our mind's awareness as more knowledge. When we learn something we know that we are engaged in the learning, and we not only experience the learning, we experience the outcome or product of that learning as the experience of being more knowledgeable.

In Speaker Material theory, there is a difference between expanding our mind and expanding our consciousness. While to be conscious is to be aware, our consciousness itself is understood to be something more than just a mind that is aware of itself - and enlightenment is about more than just the knowledge of our minds. This proposition of mindedness and consciousness being linked-but-different angles or aspects of our experienced make-up and nature, means that expanding our mind is not then, the identical activity of expanding our consciousness; albeit, that learning from the one point of view of conscious mind, can, but does not automatically, open into or flow-over into an expansion of our consciousness.

Most of us know people we consider very knowledge-full and capable of expanding their minds - yet we do not necessarily consider them very "enlightened" from the point of view of having an expanded consciousness. Lots of us also know people we consider to have quite an enlightened consciousness, while these same people may not be particularly knowledge-full from the point of view of studied learnedness - the ability of the mind to gather, gain, grow - expand through adding specific information.

My understanding from Speaker Material is that an expansion of mind does not guarantee an expansion of consciousness, even while the efforts made by mind can be used as an opening for an expansion of consciousness. Of course, the opposite can be said as well - an expansion of consciousness - however induced or afforded - does not absolutely guarantee an expansion into a more knowledge-full mind. The point here is to recognize that just because we are engaged in methods of learning about our mind, or learning about how to use our mind more effectively in creating from a conscious aware view or perspective, this does not automatically mean that we are necessarily much engaged in the proposition of expanding our consciousness.

It has been suggested to me that the development of mind and consciousness are mutually inclusive, for the development of either will eventuate to include the necessary skills to create a "changed " reality for ourselves. The gist of this notion was that an expanded consciousness is achievable without an expansion of the mind. My view here is that certainly we can create a "changed" reality by using one or the other aspect of learning, but I do not believe the resultant reality we create will necessarily be an enlightened reality. From Speaker Material theory, my grasp is, that to accomplish either of these sorts of expansion without the other, does not constitute the development of the express ability to create an enlightened "reality"; for a truly enlightened reality is the product of simultaneous expansion of both mind and consciousness that will create an experience and a matching expression of both as a comprehensive experience and a comprehensive expression (manifestation, actualization). Such an expansion of human ability gives us an enlightened reality.

Do we believe that enlightenment is only about an expanded consciousness - and that enlightenment is achievable without any effort to operationally expand the use of individual mind (and therefore the collective mind of humanity)? Do we believe that we can simply absorb information and digest it or assimilate it automatically to "create" wisdom? Do we believe that to learn the theory and skills of conscious creating (manifesting), means we are enlightened/wise in our creating, as if the one guarantees the other?

Do we believe that learning the methods, techniques, disciplines or belief systems of mind, automatically makes us capable of manifesting enlightened reality? Do we believe that an expanded consciousness must be an enlightened consciousness even without expanding our thinking that is the evidence of our expanded ability to conceptualize; and even while it is the thinking mind's activity that's used in the mind-driven materialization of this, or any specific/kind of reality?

Why do we even need to think about any of this - can't we just "get on" with our "enlightened" creating?!?!

On the front of my fridge I have a quote attributed to Albert Einstein, that says "We cannot solve the problems we have created, with the same thinking that created them".

Speaker Material looks beyond only the proposition of learning how to think differently, from only the conscious point of learning about our minds, in order to create differently; Speaker Material proposes that thinking is a fusion of mind-to-consciousness, self-to-Self. It is certainly my understanding that enlightened creation (as opposed to simply "changed" creation) will come about only with a tandem or partnered expansion of both the mind and consciousness that are the twinned aspects of self-hood to Self-hood. Our enlightenment, as far as I'm concerned, will only come about as we think our way from our self-hood into the expanded consciousness of our more comprehensive Self-hood, as self-to-Self thinking that comes from Self-to-self consciousness. Is this perhaps the meaning of thinking "differently"?

Happy expanding, thinking and enlightened creating!
Spinfo[/i]