THE FOUR GIFTS

In order to explore consciousness we need to cultivate other ways of knowing beyond reasoning and the senses. In short, we need to balance our “four gifts”: the Philosopher’s Gift of reason; the Scientist’s Gift of the senses ( and methodology); the Shaman’s Gift of participatory knowing through feeling; and the Mystic’s Gift of sacred silence or direct spiritual experience. In this book I focus on two of these gifts in particular, the Philosopher’s Gift of reason and the Shaman’s Gift of participatory knowing. I show that in order to know who we are, and to find deep meaning in our lives, we need to engage in “radical knowing”—by that I mean we need to feel our thinking (not merely think our thoughts). When we are able to do this, we discover that we exist in a web of interconnection. In a literal sense we are our relationships. Philosophers call this “intersubjectivity”……… When we learn to feel our thinking in this way, we allow the wisdom of silence to find its unforced natural expression in appropriate and evocative language. I call this process “giving voice to the cosmos”.

from the introduction of Christian de Quincey’s book, RADICAL KNOWING
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I have been interested in De Quincey's thinking for a few years now, he being a consciousness philosopher. After reading the first book of his on-going Trilogy, RADICAL NATURE, and giving a talk to the UU Church about it(one of my earlier blog messages), I am currently doing a re-read of his second book, RADICAL KNOWING. I admire his insight into the idea that relationship comes first and is primary over and above the individual. In other words we are not individuals forming relationships, but rather, we are the relationships forming the individual, in a continuing process called "shared consciousness". This concept has a Buddhist origin. When it is genuine between two participants, it leads to more spiritual growth for both, and reveals the deepest understanding that we can have of ourselves. Much of the transformation in myself has come through dialogue with the other, that I continue to encounter in my daily life, even in this cyber world. Martin Buber believed, that in the I and Thou relationship with another person, you have an opportunity to sense the Divine Presence. I know it to be a continuous process in my own life's encounters...and you get better at it, as you put its practice in your life.
It is what's needed in this troubled world, if we are ever going to find peace, in my humble opinion, but the ego keeps us stuck in this separateness notion where we remain alienated behind our private walls searching for meaning that few can find.
Let us take a more adventurous path and become more world centric in our approach to others, and come to love the wonderful diversity of this Creative Universe. It is always the person's soul I'm trying to sense, when I'm in genuine dialogue with another. To me, it is a gift that transcends any material thing, and has paved my own way to more self-discovery. In some, it's easy to sense the soul, in others it takes more work.…but I deem it a worthwhile venture, nevertheless. All of us have our unique stories that need to be told and the re-telling allows the experience to live again. So engage yourself in genuine dialogue with another as often as you can, and be part of the great web of life giving voice to the cosmos. In the end, it is because there are "Persons" in the world that I can believe that God exists.

woodsman