A deepening respect and awe for the human being come about on the path to self-knowledge. The regular, the day-to-day, everything that is taken for granted can begin to reveal unexpected dimensions. What seemed plain and mundane is enriched and enlivened. But this path is not limited to positive experiences of deepening and growth, a notion that we might get from the popular new age wellness industry. At a certain point, it is intertwined with trial.
Exploring the deeper conditions of normal consciousness through meditation and an enlivening of thinking and imagination leads to self-knowledge. Along the way, normal consciousness can come to represent a naïve state that, at certain points, one longs to return to—particularly during a type of experience that, in its most intense form (which varies in duration and character depending on the traveler), evokes this longing. However, surrendering to normal consciousness is no longer a simple affair, and enlivened thinking and imagination, suffused with independent creative and ethical forces, become a source of pain and trial. While outer life continues as normal, it is now accompanied by dramatic inner experiences and processes of transformation.
In normal awareness, there is a simple sensation of comfort connected with the body (when it is healthy) that is largely unconscious. This is an important foundation for normal life. Yet a situation can arise where this feeling of comfort and the intense unconscious desire for it ignites suffering, a kind of inner fire. Setting out to experience oneself in life, to connect with others, to become active in even simple ways, has a similar effect. There is a separation from the simple surrendered experience of embodiment and society, which was almost entirely unconscious and naïve. This slight separation ignites an irrational field of fears and terrors that flash out in jolts and spasms, further igniting intense images, including those of violence, destruction, and lust.
Suddenly, the previously stable backdrop of the self as a more or less loved person with a biography, a sense of belonging and context, an identity and a purpose, recedes. An experience of exile, ferocity, and violence takes its place. The spontaneous urge to return to normal consciousness through surrender, to cover what has been uncovered, intensifies the flame. In this moment, an instinctive process reveals a new constitution of the self. A radical contraction and withdrawal from the field of awareness unfolds in the form of a selfhood which at first seems to have no content. While each image arises and threatens to swallow the self, this self concentrates with an intensity incomparable to normal consciousness. Initially, any part of the self or personality that can be pictured becomes a source of pain and suffering. The only refuge is to condense to a degree that nothing extends into this imaginative, contemplative space. It exists in negation of what can be pictured, as an invisible presence. While it provides a certain foothold, it is a mere sliver of a ledge over a yawning chasm of darkness. This self says constantly: I am not that, I am not that, I am I, yet what I am, I cannot say.
Under these conditions, a high degree of self-control and independence develops. They are conditions that are not conducive to qualities of empathy, love, and compassion. It is a stern existence. All feelings are, initially, contaminated by desire, fear, self-pleasure, or vanity and are sources of torment. Aspirations towards the good and the spiritual that are animated by self-seeking result in suffering, as do all dynamics of self-deprecation. The fires that engulf everything that was previously taken for granted as truth prepare the truth of self-knowledge. A dispassionate sobriety is seeded.
Three elements are not consumed by this fire. The first is an ability to sustain selfhood when all characteristics and identifiers recede. The second is a purified conscience: an emergent sense of good and evil that is not based on pleasure or pain, vanity or shame. The third is discernment: an understanding that the swirling images and forces are spiritual and not to be confused with outer perception. The trial is a seemingly unending cycle of surrender, evil revelation, and self-concentration. Feelings of helplessness and futility arise, becoming more intense with time.
This powerlessness births a mood from which the deepest and most sincere prayer can be uttered: I cannot do this alone; I am unable; I recognize my impotence and turn toward the divine. Surrender is no longer turned toward normal consciousness—this is a different act of surrender, a higher form of resignation. It is a turn to the good, not for pleasure, not to “be good,” but as a recognition that new life can only emerge from this source. It is out of one’s hands. A substance is created that can receive redeeming powers, love, and resurrection.
The good does not approach merely in the form of conscience, the truth does not approach merely as discernment, nor the self as a negation of the soul and feeling. It is a living spiritual world that reaches into one—an “overreach” experienced as a gift, as a response, as a presence that honors as well as saves. This turning point is not a thorough transformation but the humble beginning of transformation. However, for the person who experiences it, this humble beginning is of tremendous significance and accompanied by great joy, as it emerges at the height (or depth) of trial.
Spiritual knowledge requires an ability to discern the forces involved in shaping inner perception and experience. Spiritual knowledge is dependent on self-knowledge. Attachments, desires, and fears are revealed as forces connected with both illusion and suffering and intrinsically connected with normal consciousness. While these forces play an important role in daily life, for the contemplative spiritual awareness indicated here, they represent a testing stone. The ability to cultivate awareness free of these forces brings sobriety and insight in encounters with the spirit.
It would be foolish to suggest that the shape and anatomy of the human head is an invention of subjective imagination. It is just as foolish to suggest that the dynamics of consciousness are subjective fantasies. For the person who experiences them, it is evident that they carry a necessity within themselves. The shape that they take determines our experience, like a mountain determines our view of the landscape when it enters our field of vision. Approaching the spiritual, we meet a guardian who guides us through death, so that in death, we might acknowledge and receive a new spiritual life and understanding.
Photo From Shaping Light, Laura Liska, 2025.
