My sister, Laura, and my brother-in-law, Jim, are coming over today from Arkansas. We always have such a great time together. We all plan to go camping at Lake LBJ up near Marble Falls in the Texas Hill Country. It’s really beautiful there, but it’s going to be hot as hell. I’ll try to vlog about it. If we’re having too much fun, I might have to just recycle some really old posts.

This second part on consciousness really bent my mind. I’ll never be the same! 

Me: Let’s talk about the patterns again. So consciousness will take that pattern. Let’s pretend that pattern is the ingredients for a cake. Walk me through what exactly happens between consciousness and the pattern. Give me an example of what that pattern could be for.

Erik: What you’d learn from it?

Me: Well, consciousness takes energetic patterns and does what with it? I’m so confused, and I’m making myself even more confused.

Erik: This is what can make human beings get hung up on these concepts. We all think of ourselves as individuals so it’s hard for us to really be able to comprehend that that cake, existing as a cake, has always been a cake. If you separate yourself from everything and you, as my mom, take your focus away from Elisa and into the cake, like you incarnate as a cake.

Me: Yum.

Robert laughs.

Erik: Well, then for you, as Elisa, it becomes a whole different story. Then it’s all about “What can Elisa learn as an individual from having been that cake?”

Me: So it’s about projecting your consciousness into another consciousness—the rock, the cake—to learn or become aware of what it’s like to be either one of those.

Erik: In your case, it’s to remind you of how sweet you are.

Me: Aw! That’s a good one, Erik. Aw. So what are those patterns you talk about?

Erik: I’m getting to that. Patterns themselves, just like consciousness itself and everything with a capital E—

Energy?

Erik: –is infinite. There are infinite numbers of patterns. Think of a rock. That’s kind of a generic thought. It will have its own unique pattern, like a voice signature. But if you think of a speckled rock with 1000 gold flecks or a certain kind of rock like onyx, that’s a completely different kind of pattern. If you want to look at it that way, the patterns for the words you say for them are no different from what they represent. I’m just using words as one example. This gets really fucking complicated.

Me: So the patterns are something that consciousness takes and creates—

Erik: It’s something that consciousness uses in order to create motion.

Me: What does that mean?

Erik: Consciousness, energy, everything needs to be in constant flux. The pot needs to be constantly stirred. Form, consciousness, the energy that creates form combine together like a fusion reaction on the Sun. It doesn’t really have a starting point though, but because this reaction is constantly going on and it’s all staying in flux or motion, it becomes—no it doesn’t “become”—it always and has always been self-perpetuating.

Me: What is self-perpetuating? You mean the interaction between energy, patterns, form and consciousness?

Erik: Everything. All of those things. This is why I hesitated to bring this topic up. Humans have very linear minds and language, and that makes it hard to understand this shit. I can tell your brain is getting overwhelmed, Mom!

Me: Oh god, yes. So is that how consciousness creates matter, reality, etc.? Does it take these patterns and manipulate energy according to it? I mean, how does energy and the patterns interact? How do they relate to each other?

Erik: The way you said that, it almost seemed like consciousness itself creates all of those things—matter, reality. It’s really not that way. Remember, all of that already exists and consciousness is already within them. As individuals who come in contact with another individual, tree, whatever, we see ourselves as a bit of self-contained consciousness, and we have the ability to interact with those things. Think of the neurons in the brain. When one comes in contact with another, a connection is made. Think of it like that. Accept the fact that the connections from a spiritual perspective were already there, but you, as an individual living in this illusion of separation aren’t aware of those connections until you interact or bump into the consciousness of that other neuron, tree, human, rock, whatever. I can put it this way, too. God is experiencing Itself as Everything and as separate individuals, separate bits of consciousness. In spirit, you get that connection, but most in the physical world don’t. Those bits of consciousness are reaching out to remember that connection and the wisdom and information that It is Everything.

Me: Wow! Pretty deep. My brain hurts.

Erik: After all that complexity, I end up saying it in simple terms.

Me: Thanks a lot. Wrapping it up in a “dumb it down” way.

Erik: See, that’s what foreplay’s all about.

Me: Oh my god.

Robert: You’re terrible, Erik!

Me: Terrible!

Robert: How can you bring that up when you’re having a conversation with your mother?

Me: Seriously! But you know me. I’m the kind of mother that doesn’t wince at things like that.

Erik: That’s why I said it!

Me: So is there anything else on consciousness that you want to share that might help people understand it?

Erik: Now that you’ve had an introduction to what it is and know how powerful you really are, maybe you can let go of the things that are holding you back. I mean this to apply to everyone, not just you, Mom.

Me: I know. So what are those “things?”

Erik: For human beings, the main one is fear.

Me: Oh yeah.

Erik: And all the things that expand out from that, those are holding you back. They keep you rooted in cycles that you just keep repeating.

Me: Yeah, but how is what you just taught us going to help us deal with our fear?

Erik: By remembering just how powerful you are.

Duh. He already said that. Hm. Maybe I’m not really that powerful!

Erik: It’s by remembering that you are infinite, that you are eternal, that you can’t break. Nothing can break you.

Me: Sometimes it feels like we break.

Erik: Well, sure. Even pain is a goal. Even emotions are patterns.

Me: Everything is a pattern then, huh?

Erik: Yeah. And the great thing about it is when you create that connection as an individual to an experience or another individual thing or life form, it expands your ability to appreciate not just yourself, but the vastness of everything. So everybody, you don’t need to be afraid all the time. You don’t need to be anxious. Every time you have an uncomfortable feeling doesn’t mean something bad is getting ready to happen. Nothing bad can happen.

Me: Yeah, that’s true.

Erik: It’s just an experience, dammit.

Me: I know. It’s so hard, though.

Erik: I know it is. It’s that primitive part of the brain that human beings needed early on in their evolution in order to survive. Fear was necessary for survival. If you’re not afraid of some big ass lion in front of you, you’re not going to run away. You’re going to become his lunch. Survival is a necessary component of evolution. You don’t survive; you don’t evolve in the physical world.

Duh.

Me: Wait. Back to patterns.

This is obviously a tough one for me.

Me: One thing I’ll ask about patterns: Is consciousness a pattern, or does it just work with patterns?

Erik: Consciousness is both the teacher and the student. It’s not just the thing that manipulates the pattern. It’s the pattern itself. They’re not indistinguishable from each other, but they can be seen as separate things.

Me: That’s the mind blower that we humans have a hard time understanding.

Erik: Humans are getting to the point now where we’re starting to understand that there is no black or white. There is no yes or no. We’re realizing that black and white are necessary to create gray, and yes and no gives us the ability to say maybe or both. That’s higher dimensional thinking.

Me: Wow, like how can there be a yes and no to a simple yes or no question?

Erik: You go to quantum physics, Mom. That’s how you can understand it.

Me: Fascinating.

I feel so stupid!