RE: A Beginners Guide to Consciousness
it is Mystery. What this mystery seems to involve is dynamics such that we cannot separate 'light' from 'dark', as dualistic thinkers do, having light versus dark where the former is said to be superior and the latter inferior and even evil. No, rather it is more that our thinking has created two terms we call 'light' and 'dark', but from there this conceptualization can assume they are independent of each other, and will even disappear an asp4ect of the dynamic. IE you often will hear New Age people, who are light/positive obsessed say eg 'darkness is the absence of light' implying that darkness is not an intrinsic part of a whole dynamioc which makes no sense at all to just be one extreme---either light or dark. Same is so with life and death, and nature or matter and consciousness or spirit.
I feel with your article there is that type of assumption , for example your assertion 'Matter is an illusion.' This goes deep because when we look at mythology, solar mythology, which is dualistic, we see that 'spirit' was associated with the 'masculine' and 'matter' (nature/the body) with the 'feminine, and with the typical idea that the former is superior to the latter. I thus see a danger with this modern myth carrying on the same theme.
RATHER we need to accept the reality of both 'consciousness' and 'matter' as not being one versus the other, and/or disappearing one part, but rather as a living mysterious dynamic where you cannot have one part or even know one part without its dynamic dancing partner.
I agree with you in terms that yes, a principle of the universe is polarity and that to marginalise matter would be a mistake. The simple fact is that there are no opposites, only scales. Light and dark are the polars of the same scale, as is up and down, left and right, right and wrong etc. So this brings together all things.
I see your point that there is danger in prioritising one aspect over another but I'm unsure whether the ancients did. They, alot more than us, understood the importance of the balance between the material, mental and spiritual aspects of reality and this is reflected in hermetics, alchemy and other esoteric philosophies. Yes, modern religions are entirely the opposite unfortunately, but this is not an age of enlightenment.
if by 'the ancients' you mean the ancient Greek philosophers? they surely were very dualistic, and this rabidly misogynist and therefore ecocidal/matricidal..
By ancients, I mean pre-dynastic Egyptian, or Khemetian, as they referred to themselves. This is a philosophy unwritten in history and most of what we term as ancient philosophies (Greek, Eastern etc...) stem from it. It is hermetic philosophy.