I think it is an illusion, though a compelling one, that the content of our experience happens to us from the outside. This is not precisely to say that there are no ‘objective’ phenomenon. It is to say that without awareness, they cannot be recognized and are not available to relation for individuals or collectives in any sense.

From my perspective it as if we direct an encharactered flow into ‘the world’ — a crude analogy would be the beam of a flashlight — and we sense and make sense of experience according to the changes we sense in the response of this flow to some of the various alterations it undergoes during reflection. We have one stream of body-sensing and another perhaps of sensory-sensing and at least a third faculty in which these are summed and made recognizable to us in our conscious minds.

In what returns to us from what we project, we detect the nature, character, function, state, meaning, identity, etc. that we would ascribe to phenomenon. Yet we decisively shape the initial projection, deciding many features of its character rather consciously without either noticing or admitting this. Although we usually feel as if these things (phenomenon) are stipulated externally, and we detect them ‘as they are’, it is within the field of our awareness that the world of our conscious experience emerges to and as ourselves. We usually tack on a series of descriptions and narratives as well, but in both of these matters our approach largely stipulates what we shall discover, what we will make of it in terms of any form of analysis, and what we would render in terms of any rational description.

Perhaps we actually are the character within the stream’s shape and flow… and the stream is our own awareness and the peculiarly human and locally unique choices we make when directing it. But the real puzzle is that we do not notice this, that we do not really understand awareness as something to be shaped and directed. By and large, ours has been shaped for us by cultural forces, and is directed by habit, local tradition, culture in general, language, and a variety of other commonly ignored interlopers.

Awareness is far too astonishing in its capacities to remain popularly bound to prosecute the agendas of meme-culture, religion, industry, legislatures, media and governments. We must together retrieve the senses and abilities that will empower us to understand the fundamental nature of awareness, to protect it from extrinsic forces that would shape or describe it to their benefit, and to encourage our own retrieval and creative development of the incredible sensing and relational capacities which are the birthrights and guarantee of our human heritage.

Although I speak here of human persons, I should mention that an analogous set of principles applies to human collectives, particularly governments, legislatures, and corporations.