Understanding the Dual Nature of Consciousness and How It Shapes Our Personal Lives
The Personal Trap
It is not that the fist needs to open up.
It is not a matter of surrender,
There is no fist to start with.
This excerpt comes from the chapter “The Personal Trap” in the book Luminous Night’s Journey: An Autobiographical Fragment by A.H. Almaas. Almaas takes us on an intimate journey of self-inquiry and discovery as he explores the dual nature of consciousness and how it shapes our personal lives.
In the opening paragraphs, Almaas describes his growing awareness of a dimension of consciousness that forms a constant background to our everyday personal consciousness. This background consciousness is always aware of what is happening without being involved in it. Almaas has fleeting glimpses of connecting to this transcendent awareness which seems to be the source of his intuitions.
As Almaas explores this further, he becomes aware of how thoroughly he is lost in and defined by his personal life. All the roles, relationships, interests, and ideas that make up his identity trap him, even the parts he finds rewarding. Though previous spiritual insights have transformed his experience, he sees how there is still something in him that never changes.
This leads to the insight that the totality of his personality remains unchanged. Some aspects must support the personality as a whole. With luminous understanding, Almaas recognizes the dense, leaden quality at his core as the will to exist as a separate individual. This unconscious identification with being an ego is what traps him in his personal life.
Almaas understands this leaden inertia imitates essential will and gives a false sense of existence to the personality. As long as this leaden pearl of egoic will remains unconscious, he will be caught in the content of his personal life. The personality subsumes all new experiences as possessions of this false egoic self.
Self-inquiry continues as Almaas opens to the arising leaden dual nature consciousness with curiosity rather than resistance. This allows insights to unfold, synthesized by the intuitive intelligence of nous. The lead signifies the unchanging inertia that supports conditioned personality patterns. The pearl indicates the totality of the individual self. Facetedness shows objective understanding.
Almaas integrates this into the realization that the support for the totality of the personality is identification with the will to exist as an egoic individual. As long as this operates unconsciously, one cannot be free from entrapment in the personal life.
Luminous Night’s Journey is full of deep insights that shed light on the structure of the personality and open doorways to transcending it. Almaas’s account is both profound and precise while remaining intimate and accessible. His unique language and methodology of inner investigation inspire self-discovery. This book is highly recommended for anyone on the path of spiritual inquiry. Read Luminous Night’s Journey to begin unveiling your timeless true nature.
