Consciousness Definition
-“the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself”
-“the upper level of mental life of which the person is aware as contrasted with unconscious processes”
Twenty years ago, I began to realize something. It was a tiny light in a sea of darkness. At the time, I couldn’t even put it into words, it was just a subtle vibe about reality and how subjective it is. What I began to recognize was the unconsciousness of my own mind. Everyone thinks they are conscious or aware. However, when you start paying attention to your mind, you realize presence constantly fades away. You slip back into thoughts, ideas, emotions, etc. I’ve always had an interest in the mind and how it works and in general psychology. All these things applied together create amazing realizations. The more I pay attention, the more I can see that problems are caused by unconsciousness.
Some examples are:
Being stuck in the past, holding grudges
Caring what other people think, judging others, gossiping
Mindlessly following others, herd mentality
Getting caught up in emotion, inability to think things through and plan
Not truly knowing yourself, not doing what you want to do, being inauthentic, getting involved in wrong situations / people
Not being present, being lost in thoughts, being stuck in stories about reality
This is pretty much the norm in society, especially in the west. It seems like our entire society is based on beliefs and illusions. The question is, what’s the illusion you want to believe? There’s a wide variety for you to ‘choose’ from. From the illusion of romantic love to the need to be successful as determined by the society and/or identify with a particular career or characteristics. For example, the overly romanticized nonsense about relationships, marriage and having kids we are bombarded with for our entire lives. This happens so early on, it’s scary. These expectations ruin most relationships because reality can never live up to fantasy. In many cases, it even creates crazy codependence and obsessions more than actual love. Another example is imagining winning the lottery will make you happy or solve your issues. When in reality, if you don’t have proper money management skills, mind development and expectations, no amount of money will solve your problems and you’ll be back to where you were in no time. I don’t think these things are bad, it’s our unconscious expectations about them somehow magically fulfilling us that’s the problem. What these illusions have in common is that the mind is using something external to resist dealing with reality, whatever that may be for the individual.
Over the course of my life, I’ve been paying attention, closely observing and it seems that most of the problems in the world are caused by the human mind obsessing about personal fantasies, beliefs and/or refusing to accept reality. You never know someone else’s true perspective. A situation can be very different for people depending on the state of their minds. This is very easy to see in others and difficult to see in yourself. But observing others to change them really isn’t the point, as you will NEVER change them. And in the end who are you to change someone? It’s ridiculous when you really think about it. It’s really about applying those observations and correcting this in one’s self. Change happens through demonstrating a thing yourself, not through forcing others. That’s why I saw the value in this. I saw how amazingly different conscious people are and behave. It makes me want to be around those people. If someone had forced this idea on me, I would have just disregarded it or rebelled against it.
I remember when I was a kid I’d sometimes go stay with my grandparents. We had the classic amazing grandparents that spoiled us a bit. So they used to take us grocery shopping and would buy us whatever we wanted (within reason of course). These trips were so exciting for me as a kid. LOL. And I remember after I got everything I had wanted (like little stupid toys, junk food, and little things my parents would have said no to), this almost sickening feeling came up. I had imagined how great it would be to get all that stuff, that I’d be satisfied, but then I felt a kind of emptiness. It reminds me of the Buddhist concept of a hungry ghost. I had the realization very early on in life that getting what you want doesn’t solve anything permanently. The mind always comes up with more to want or something else to change or improve. This is a small example of something that occurs in many different versions. This is unconscious and encouraged by the society around us as well. It’s considered normal. The more unconscious someone is, the easier it is to control them.
So what’s the solution? It’s simple in theory, but difficult in practice. Enjoy everything, but do it with awareness. Experience everything. Live your passions, do your best. Appreciate the people in your life, because everything is impermanent. But be there, really feel it. Pay attention to the vibes you get, develop your intuition. I’ve been working on this for 20 years. And I still catch myself getting caught up in my mind so often, every single day.
The problem is, we often think we are aware when we really aren’t. That’s the challenge.
Watch your mind and see how it’s often not focused on the present. Once you can be present on a regular basis – watch your life become magical. Not all the time, there are always highs and lows but you realize they never last. Your perspective changes, it’s all internal. The past no longer matters. I rarely think about it, unless I have to for a specific reason. If I get caught up in it, I know I’ve become unconscious. Things that are wrong for you eventually fall away. Because with awareness, you cannot continue to do something that isn’t right for you.
A job that I really didn’t like at first has transformed. It’s not my passion, but I feel so grateful because it has supported me to work on my passions and still pay my bills. I work with amazing, high quality, smart people. It has become a situation in which I can practice presence and see my own mind in action. As a result, I’m much better at the job than I was before and also a better person. I have a type of confidence in life that was completely absent 20 years ago. I also developed an intuition about people and situations. I used to doubt my gut feelings, now I pay very close attention because they are usually spot on. I couldn’t do that without consciousness. In fact without it I’d be blindly stumbling around, completely absent from my own life, just going through the motions.