Consciousness & Awareness
What is consciousness and Awareness? Essays in this section explore and discuss both of these "terms" so that one develops an understanding of what they are and, in a sense, what roles they play in our lives.
Awareness and Consciousness
Over the course of my journey, I have spoken to thousands of people about awareness and examined it from various angles in a number of essays. While most had some exposure to ideas about these concepts, it remained confusing, to varying degrees, to many. What most have are vague, uncertain and often conflicting notions about it. In this piece, I hope to remove some more of that vagueness and uncertainty. Awareness and consciousness is a topic that is neither easy to understand nor explain in any detail; however, we do not need precise details to gain a better understanding. I will start this process with a basic conceptual model of what we are.
We can consider ourselves as having four aspects. They are our “soul” (the lower aspect rather than the higher aspect), another is our physical body and the last two are our mind(s) and our energy field. Do not see them as separate in the common sense for they are interconnected. Further, all of them are energy fields so the differences are the type or nature of their energy.
The Basics of Consciousness and Awareness
When I was the President of the Psychic Society of Alberta I taught meditation and awareness development or perhaps it is better stated as I assisted or guided people in exploring both of these areas. I had students of varying conscious capabilities and goals. I am sure you can understand variances in capabilities though you might think that those that would attend such classes would have the same goal of developing the abilities I referred to.
While many wanted to develop their awareness what I found was that people had very different notions of what awareness and consciousness are to begin with. They were not even sure what it was they wanted or needed to learn. Further, their very notions about such things were often vague and conflicting. As a result, on some nights I spent as much time exploring the concepts with them as in actually meditation or energy work (which is one way to develop awareness). The challenge was always in helping them to get to know more about the nature of awareness so that they could get past barriers we build around our basic consciousness and awareness.