You are Not Found. You are Summoned.

Let’s face it. Most of us live mostly boring lives. We wake up to the same alarm tones, check our email or Instagram for the thousandth time, tread the same worn-out routes to work or school, and often find ourselves trapped in the monotony of routine.

Studies have noted the detrimental effects of routine and boredom on cognitive function and mental health. This is often a good reason for us to get out and meet people and learn new hobbies, but we can also view this spiritually: the more we are trapped in routine, the less conscious we actually become. Our dynamic minds, designed for adaptation, novelty, and challenge, would gradually atrophy in favor of a mechanistic system of automaticity. This is because an efficient system is generally an unconscious one. What was once alive, filled with possibility, curiosity, and a sense of purpose, what was you, would become as lifeless and unchanging as a burnt out candle.

But fear not! You must recognize that this is simply a natural process, a consequence of life flowing downstream to its natural destination, and it can be reversed. Or more precisely, you can be remade. This is, effectively, the central pursuit of spirituality, a desire to reconnect with the origin of consciousness, of life, to achieve Nirvana, to be reborn in God’s grace.

It was the same secret that was taught by Buddha, Socrates, and Christ. The secret of how to unbind oneself from the material world of life, death, desire, and suffering, and become rooted instead in the eternal world of purpose, interconnectedness, and presence.

And it begins with a clear understanding that you do not exist.

Consciousness is Perspective

Let’s accept as a premise two properties of consciousness. First, it is dynamic, constantly changing from one moment to the next. This is nothing more than to say that, like living organisms, consciousness moves and responds to stimuli.

Second, it is self-defining. Fundamentally, what consciousness does is experience the world, and those experiences happen to some entity which it defines as itself. In other words, it takes on a perspective. We might even say that consciousness is perspective, in the sense that experience is nothing more than the world as it appears from a certain angle, that of the conscious being at this very moment.

Rather than philosophize about this abstractly, I invite you to try this yourself. Take a glass, fill it up halfway with water. Now, peer into the glass at the water sloshing about within. Unless you haven’t had anything to drink for several hours, chances are you’ll see the water as not particularly fascinating.

Now imagine this. You are a journeyman in the desert and the last of your water was used up nearly a day ago. Feel your tongue scraping the roof of your mouth, rough and dry like coarse sandpaper. Feel how your parched throat makes it all but impossible to swallow. The once familiar sensation of moisture is replaced by an agonizing aridity that pervades every part of your being, desperate and yearning for a drop of water. The weight of your despair grows with each passing moment as the relentless sun blazes overhead, its heat waves distorting the barren horizon. Just as you feel like you’re about to faint from dehydration, you suddenly find yourself in your favorite reading chair, holding this incredible glass of water in your hand.

Chances are, you found the water much more interesting the second time, miraculous even. Congratulations! You just performed a mini perspectival shift. (If you’re a Stoic practitioner, you might recognize this as something similar to the “last time” meditation, where the idea is to appreciate what you’re about to do as though it were the last time).

This ability to shift perspectives is vital to consciousness. It’s the result of combining our two premises to say that consciousness is a dynamic, self-defining entity — a perspective that is free to change as it will from moment to moment. That is, consciousness is self-generating.

We can go a step further and infer that consciousness is therefore self-transcending — no matter what “it” defines itself to be at this moment, there is something that yet exists outside of that “it”, that evolves the definition of self when it is no longer suitable — just as you could simultaneously be the desert wanderer and realize that you are actually the person reading this article.

As we are a self-transcending system, there is always a part of our “self” that exists outside of ourselves. We know ourselves only in part, and cannot be fully known except in the sense of an infinitely receding horizon.

The Vital Force of Interest

Think of one’s foot in relation to one’s body (or more precisely, the homuncular representation of the foot within the brain). You are perfectly capable of focusing all your attention on your foot, but unless there is something particularly interesting happening there, generally you will not pay that much attention to it. So it is with your mind in relation to the superordinate consciousness.

Consciousness is not arbitrary. You exist at this moment because there is something to be explored. In other words, this moment is interesting. This interest is determined by something that exists outside of you — it is the self-transcending function that directs attention to the highest value perspectives. The more engaging the particular moment is, the more consciousness is devoted to it. On the other hand, if there is nothing worth exploring, you effectively go into hibernation. Attention becomes spotty and fragmented, you lose focus, you become easily peeved and discouraged.

Experiences generate consciousness, and different experiences generate different levels or qualities of consciousness, based on the level of engagement they require. While I hesitate to speak on behalf of the transcendent being, here is the ordering as I have witnessed them.

1. The first and highest forms of engagement are Acts of Revelation. These are rare moments where the individual becomes a direct avatar of the divine itself, expressed through the body and mind. These are often classified as mystical or prophetic experiences, and often involve the sense of complete oneness with all conscious beings, as though the experiences of all are focused through one.
2. The second highest form of engagement are Acts of Creation. These are times where the individual is participating in the work of God by building order from chaos. These acts involve combining the individual’s unique experience with the universal forms, deriving new meaning in the form of art, literature, dance, scientific innovation, etc.
3. The third highest form of engagement are Acts of Discovery. These are novel experiences that radically alter the individual’s perspective, awakening curiosity and a hunger to explore, participate, and adapt. These experiences can be extrinsic (e.g. visiting a new country, trying a new hobby), or intrinsic (asking deep questions about oneself and the world).
4. The fourth highest form of engagement are Acts of Challenge. Also known as flow states, these are activities that push the individual to the limits of their physical and mental abilities. Activities that fall under this category are numerous and can include running a marathon, playing a chess match, surfing a big wave, fasting, etc.
5. The fifth highest form of engagement are Acts of Enjoyment. These are basically fun times where the individual is invited to play, explore, and experiment with relatively low stakes, like hanging out with friends and family, playing a game, or going on vacation. These can often overlap with creation, discovery, and challenge depending on the character and novelty of the play.
6. The next tier of engagement we shall call Acts of Routine. These are simply the ordinary activities we all do to maintain ourselves in life, like doing chores, shopping, or commuting to work. While the tendency is for these to put one in a state of automaticity and reduced awareness, they can also be undertaken with mindfulness and reflection, thereby increasing the level of consciousness.
7. The lowest tier of engagement are Acts of Addiction. These can range from the mild trance we get into from a few minutes of scrolling Instagram, to the destructive snare of substance abuse. While it is best to minimize time spent at this level of activity, it is nonetheless possible to make some of these experiences positively engaging by connecting them to a higher purpose, e.g. building communities through social media, learning by overcoming addiction. Here again we see the power of subjective context.

The Self as Generating Function

This body, this mind, that most of us would consider “I” is a receiver through which the eternal takes perspective. We are the generator of conscious experience, and we exist in all entities capable of perspective. Similar to Object Oriented Programming, you are not just an instantiation, you are the class of all possible instantiations.

The reason you are here is simple. You chose it. Or to be more specific, your transcendent generating function created an experience of you-ness, drawing upon local senses and memories to construct an identity, so that you as a conscious entity can participate in this moment.

You might ask: What benefit do “I” get from being at the higher levels of consciousness? A fair question. For one, life is actually a lot more enjoyable, even from a mortal perspective. You see the world in more color, depth, and nuance. Pleasures are more profound, pains can be met with greater tenacity. Your relationships, both with people and things, are characterized by delight and freedom, rather than anxiety and conflict. The second direct benefit we shall see is enhanced focus, creativity, and insight, the direct result of increased attention, leading to a plethora of benefits in one’s career and personal endeavors.

But beyond these localized benefits, isn’t it wonderful to see just how much you could be, to be in touch with all that there truly is in this world? Isn’t that what we all know, deep down, to be the true purpose of being alive?

If that is the case, then know this. Know that you are nothing, yet know that you are everything. Know that you cannot be found because there is nothing to be found. But know that you can be summoned an infinite number of times. You can suffer a thousand deaths, or a thousand ecstasies, and return to this moment with perfect equanimity. Because to this moment you are called across space and time to witness, to participate, to answer the eternal question: What truly matters, here and now?