Why Consciousness Forgets To Interact With Itself
July 4, 2024
For consciousness, to fully understand itself, it has to go through a paradox. It must forget itself. Here’s why. Consciousness in its purest form is infinite it has no boundaries, no contrast, no separation, just limitless existence, but here’s the problem.
If something is everything, how can it truly know itself. If there’s nothing outside of it – no contrast, no differentiation, then there’s nothing to compare itself to nothing to experience itself against. It’s like clinic, it’s like trying to see your own face without a mirror.
So what does the infinite consciousness do? It creates experiences, constructs an illusions of separation so that it can interact with itself. It fragments into different perspectives, different beings, different realities. Also that it can experience itself in ways it never could, as a singular, all-knowing entity. But in order for those experiences to feel real, it has to forget that it created them.
Think about playing a game or watching a movie. If you knew exactly how everything would unfold - every twist, every ending, you wouldn’t be fully immersed. The joy of the experience comes from believing in the moment that it’s real. Even if on some level you know, it’s just a game or a story. In the same way, consciousness has to create a deep convincing illusion, a reality so immersive, that it can actually forget it’s the creator. That’s what this reality is - you, me and everyone - we are consciousness experiencing itself through these limited perspectives.
And because we’ve forgotten our infinite nature, we get to explore, learn, struggle, love and rediscover ourselves in ways that wouldn’t be possible if we already knew everything. The process of awakening is when consciousness starts to lift the veil to remember, it’s when we start questioning.
Wait, who am I really, where did I come from? What is this world?
Those questions lead us back to the realization that we were never separate at all. The forgetting was just part of the journey so that the remembering could be meaningful.
In short, forgetting creates contrast. Contrast creates experience. Experience creates understanding and through this cycle, consciousness deepens its own self-awareness over and over, forever.