What exactly is this consciousness we are striving to achieve?
Hello again and thank you for continuing on this journey. A warm EM welcome to anyone joining us for the first time.
On the premise that everything is energy and has a vibrational frequency that can be affected by external forces and thereby changed, I want to take a first look at the concept of consciousness. I had never encountered this word in my insular and limited up-bringing, in any other context than if someone fainted, after a period of time, they regained consciousness. It was small wonder then that I found myself so lost and confused in life. I was wholly unaware that I had control and command over my actions all along and that choice was open to me. I had been schooled hard that I was not to rock the boat or make waves and I should just do as I was told. Subsequently I was living a deeply unconscious existence playing out learned patterns and behaviours that bought me no joy at all. It took a lot of hard work and self-reflection to understand this and I am delighted to be able to share this with you today because I truly believe I am not the only lost soul on this binary planet. I’m sure there are others who have lived sheltered or perhaps protected lives where they have been taught that everything is either black or white, right or wrong, up or down, in or out, and for whom choice and self-expression are also frowned upon, if not forbidden.
So, what is consciousness and why is it so important to embrace it? Well the dictionary defines it thus: noun. the state of being conscious; awareness of one’s own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc. … full activity of the mind and senses, as in waking life: to regain consciousness after fainting. awareness of something for what it is; internal knowledge: consciousness of wrong doing.
Cognitive psychology says: Consciousness refers to your individual awareness of your unique thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations, and environments. Your conscious experiences are constantly shifting and changing.
And the people’s choice Wikipedia tells us that: Consciousness at its simplest is sentience or awareness of internal or external existence. Despite centuries of analyses, definitions, explanations and debates by philosophers and scientists, consciousness remains puzzling and controversial, being at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives. Perhaps the only widely agreed notion about the topic is the intuition that it exists. Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied and explained as consciousness. Sometimes it is synonymous with the mind, other times just an aspect of mind.
In the past it was one’s inner life, the world of introspection, of private thought, imagination and volition. Today, with modern research into the brain it often includes any kind of experience, cognition, feeling or perception. It may be awareness, or awareness of awareness, or self-awareness. There might be different levels or orders of consciousness, or different kinds of consciousness, or just one kind with different features. Other questions include whether only humans are conscious or all animals or even the whole universe. The disparate range of research, notions and speculations raises doubts whether the right questions are being asked. Examples of the range of descriptions, definitions or explanations are: simple wakefulness, one’s sense of self-hood or soul explored by looking within; being a metaphorical stream of contents, or being a mental state, mental event, or mental process of the brain; having phanera or qualia and subjectivity; being the something that is is like to have or be it; being the inner theater or the executive control system of the mind.
As you can quite clearly see this is not a question that is easily answered. I shall leave it to the academics and big brains trust to continue to pontificate on the matter and share with you what I believe. I believe that consciousness is a personal and individual construct. The amount of words, terms and opinions in that Wiki description actually had my eyes rolling back in my head, but I was delighted to see that they captured the essence of my personal belief and so using their words, the distilled essence of all that chatter and how consciousness showed up in my life:
Consciousness is a simple wakefulness, one’s sense of selfhood or soul, that is explored by looking within.
This is incredibly exciting to me because if you drill down to the energy and essence of that sentence, as I did all those years ago, you may find that it is telling you a) you may be sleeping on the job in your own life; b) you are a unique and individual soul and c) it is up to you to look inside yourself and find your own true essence, which brings me to d) you are in control of your own destiny. For me that is a total mic-drop moment! It was the blueprint that I used to crack the lid of my own learned and extremely limited beliefs; to pry open my clam-like mind; and to free myself to invite the simple joy of living into my life.
As always, I offer you my understanding of this concept and how it has applied to my life. I encourage you at all times to question and decide for yourself what you want to accept and onboard. I’m always interested to hear your opinions and I encourage feedback. If you disagree with me by all means, own your different perspective, but as we journey together through the quantum space, it is essential to understand this vital truth:
We don’t have to agree on a single thing to be kind to one another
My objective is to always listen with EMpathy
and help EMbolden you to dream.
As you EMerge from your learned way of being,
I will celebrate with you as you EMbrace your full potential,
As you EMancipate yourself from your limitations,
you EMpower yourself to love with greater clarity and joy!
Until next time when I shall take a look at Consciousness vs Spirituality, be kind to one another and honour yourself as the unique and incredibly special soul that you are.
© Copyright 2020 – Janice Melmed
Janice Melmed 