Consciousness Nomadism: A fluid experience of consciousness
Nomadism : A way of life in which a person or community has no permanent settlement but moves from place to place based on seasons and availability of resources
The idea of nomadism is scary to a large number of people. Present culture is deeply influenced by the idea of being rooted in one place to feel a sense of security and belonging. One thing that majorly uprooted this idea was the internet revolution.
This revolution opened the door to a new kind of nomadism – the Digital kind. There are a variety of names being used for people who have taken up this work style — technomads, cyber-nomads, flylancers, or simply digital nomads. This trend has been gaining popularity as the presence of the internet becomes ubiquitous. I too took advantage of this when I quit my job at Amazon.com and rooted myself in the jungles of Brazil. Even though I’m a techie in most if not all cells of my body and mind, I still find it fascinating that I can sit in the “middle of nowhere” and develop software. Having this skill certainly gave me the golden opportunity to pursue my equally important passion of developing my consciousness.
A bit of required background to understand where this piece is coming from: I was born and brought up in India and lived there for the first 21 years of my life. I can say that I was more than a little happy to get out of there when I went for my masters in the US. One of the things I vehemently disliked about India was the overwhelming pressure of religion and spirituality from nearly everyone you encounter. Having no interest in religion or spirituality at the time, it was less than fascinating to be present in such an environment. While I had managed to create enough psychological barriers and protections, a part of me always felt suffocated in an environment where most people were completely incoherent in the words they preached and the acts they performed. But… BUT!
I cannot express how grateful I am today for this bizarre experience. This immense pressure helped me to have my own experience beyond the need to believe in what others talk about, whether it is preaching a text or an interpretation of their own experience. It gave me the compassion to give people space to have their own experience without forcing my opinions onto them. And it helped me become who I am today — A Consciousness Nomad.
From TechNomadism to Comadism
I started my journey in consciousness as a technomad — a techie who could work from anywhere and at anytime. What I loved about this was the freedom. I never accepted spirituality and religion because I found it to be very limiting in the way it was preached and practiced. But then something magical started happening. I started realizing I don’t have to do it the way it has been done before. Maybe there is something different out there.
So… What is Consciousness Nomadism??
In my view, and since to my knowledge and google research, I am the one coining this term, comadism or consciousness nomadism is an experience of consciousness that unlike the traditional concept of having a static rigid belief system. It is where a person does not belong to a specific belief system. It is the ability to wander and experience any system or construct without getting attached or belonging to it.
This allows the consciousness nomad — “comad” or “knowmad“, to experience any and all systems without any limitations. Comads are free to take or leave any part of a system. They can choose to flexibly and dynamically, use and apply, any philosophy, construct, or resource. The most advanced and intelligent comads will develop the ability to dynamically assess a situation and use the tools and ideologies that they feel best fit the present moment — they will have the power to shape their belief systems, and consequently, their experience of reality.
This way, even being thoroughly skeptical of all belief systems, no matter how rational or practical they appear and sound, I found the freedom to study different spiritual, religious, and scientific philosophies and practices without attaching or fixating on any one of these systems. Rather, I have been growing my abilities in the way described earlier.
A different view on the traditional concept called Dharma
One of my interpretations of the words attributed to the Buddha are explained below. The Buddha said:
The Dharma is Unknowable, I vow to know it
While this seems bizarre to the rational and logical mind we are accustomed with, it makes perfect sense when you incorporate the irrational mind. For those unfamiliar, the Dharma is the way of being, the way of life, or the proper way of acting according to Hindu and Buddhist traditions. There are many interpretations of the Dharma, and there are abundantly more philosophies on the way of being and living. But from my experience, I found that most of the philosophies fail when taken out of the context in which they were created.
This led me to the realization that perhaps the Dharma is unknowable… only, it is unknowable as a thing or piece of information that can be learned or known beforehand.
In my understanding, knowledge of the Dharma appears in the moment one is fully awake to the present. When you can be present to life without the personal and collective baggage of the past, you can know the proper way of acting in this moment directly from within you. For me, my work in developing consciousness is to move towards this state of being. This is what I understand as the state of Consciousness. A state of complete presence in which knowledge for the present moment arises from a pool of wisdom that we are inherently connected with.
Comadism: Going Beyond the Mind
Going back to comadism, and steering the ship back from the space of old-age spirituality, we come to the topic of mind and consciousness. Perhaps the most common belief in our world today is that “mind is the ultimate frontier”, or that “mind and consciousness are one and the same”, or “mind, body and spirit are inseparable”. My work and study with many people over the last five years and my personal experiences have given me a very different understanding.
Consciousness is a completely different experience from mind, body and heart. The way I experience it, consciousness is a multidimensional experience which facilitates and brings life to anything. And this consciousness can be separated from that which it is animating. And that consciousness can then be directed or experienced to animate any other thing. Or even multiple things simultaneously. In my understanding, consciousness is a mystery that belongs in the domain of the unknowable. But it is very much in the domain of the experiential. Not only can it be experienced, to me it is an experience that must not be missed, for without it we may completely miss out on experiencing life as something to be lived.
We describe consciousness as an experience that integrates many dimensions, some of which include:
Find out more about this in our introductory booklet A World Beyond
The Journey From I to Infinity
I is the source that we inherently know. Apart from something we have experienced as I, everything else is simply theory. We cannot ever say with absolute certainty that the big bang is real, because no one that speaks about it has experienced it in the way it is described — an explosion that arose out of the mysterious nothing billions of years ago. If someone does experience it in an extraordinary state of consciousness, that is simply their experience, and all we have is their interpretation. It is still not our experience. And if you are the one who experienced it — unless you live out the billions of years following that, you cannot say with certainty that that explosion you experienced has led to this very moment.
Any origin story is simply a theory with a high degree of uncertainty. The only thing we can be certain about is the uncertainty. Whatever we believe to be certain today has the possibility of being upended by a paradoxical experience tomorrow. We have all experienced such paradoxes throughout life, some are small and some are big, but each is significant in realizing that there is nothing certain. The nature of the universe is highly mysterious, and as we gather more experience and evidence, we are only realizing that it is far stranger than we can even imagine.
To enter this mystery, to take the journey into the endless enigma, requires courage and skill. Wandering into the non-discipline of the unknown requires discipline and tools. These tools are developed by exploring the mysteries within us. “I” as we know it, is very superficial. I is not even really I. Most people believe that I is for Identity. They believe it is the character that they play in their everyday lives. But I is something entirely unknown to most people. And when they enter the journey of knowing this I, either voluntarily or forced by circumstance, they may come to realize deeper levels of the identity without still realizing the real I.
This real I is the consciousness that is animating and experiencing life and reality. It is the deepest level of being alive, that which goes beyond all concepts of the mind — beliefs that hold together an illusory web over reality. To know this I requires going beyond everything we know and associate to being human, including our beliefs, disbeliefs, and illusions. When we know this I, we gain the possibility of entering the journey to infinity. We get a chance to experience the endless bends beyond the rational confines of the mind. We get to witness reality for what it is rather than what we believe it to be.
For a comad, I is the source that we yearn to know, and the destination is Infinity, which may never be found… by the I we believe we are today…
The Infinite Zero Experience
We term this experience of consciousness as “The Infinite Zero Experience”. To us it is an experience that is beyond the description of words. It is an experience that is beyond the realm of words and has no knowable end. We use words to paint an image for your image-nation, with the hope that you don’t just get lost in the words, but find motivation to enter the mystery.
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