notwithstanding my anthropology of consciousness, when SO many others speak of a so-called shared consciousness or even a Christ consciousness, i accept those characterizations as vague heuristic devices and imagine - not a metaphysical reality, but - a semiotic reality, which is to suggest that life's shared meanings are mediated via signs as icons, indexes and symbols (think sacraments, for example, and other incarnational realities) any evolution toward higher consciousness, individually or collectively, thus involves interpretations and reinterpretations of signs, in and by communities , thereby realizing shared-meanings and shared-values and does not otherwise involve some arcane & occult metaphysical merging of a primal, ethereal consciousness as some singular (intra-) subjective reality evolves from the eventual dissolution of illusionary, individual selves, who awaken from some slumber induced by a fragmented consciousness now made whole via selfnegation instead, higher consciousness is realized both intrasubjectively, by individuals, and inter-subjectively, by communities, when new ways of seeing (be attentive, descriptively), processing (be intelligent & reasonable, interpretively), judging (be responsible, normatively) and enjoying (be in love! evaluatively) reality are realized via semiotic exchanges by otherwise discrete, bounded, quasiautonomous, semiotic realities (persons as self-ego axes)
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