Awareness & Consciousness

In common parlance, consciousness denotes being awake and responsive to one's environment; these contrasts with being asleep or being in a coma.Despite the power of our innate emotional drives, the good news is that we can manage our mental processes through our unique human capacity of self-awareness. Self-awareness allows us to observe what is going on in our minds. All adults have the experience of knowing that they're feeling an emotion (such as anger), and most of us are aware that the anger is not us. We know that our essential 'self' is somehow separate from the anger. And so, by using this self-awareness, we're able to monitor our mind and its processing.

While ever we're alive, our mind is learning: it's taking in information and processing it. By consciously monitoring what we're learning and especially by being curious about new information - by asking ourselves questions about it - we can begin to gain greater control over our minds and our understanding. Similarly, by observing our emotions with detachment and curiosity, without judging or becoming caught up in their transitory nature, we gain increased mastery of our destiny. The world is no longer something that 'does things' to us, and we no longer need to be victims of our emotions. However, we must be careful here to distinguish between transitory emotions and background feelings, such as depression. Long-standing feelings of this kind are not emotions but a state of being that may require medical or other intervention. Nevertheless, as we gain more control over the effects of our transitory emotions, and over our mental processing, we're less likely to experience longer-term negative feelings. In fact, joy and contentment become our predominant background feelings.

Curiosity is fundamental to the way children's minds operate. Young children are insatiably curious, and they find joy in learning. Unfortunately, as we accumulate more knowledge, it's too easy to fall prey to the pleasurable feelings of 'being right' and so we begin an ongoing process of creating a false reality. These pleasurable feelings are induced by electro-chemical processes in the brain, which result when the mind succeeds in integrating new information with existing knowledge. Those of us who seek consolation and comfort are particularly prone to creating a false or distorted reality. That is why courage is needed - and courage can be defined as doing what needs to be done in spite of our fear. The practicing of courage may not reduce our fear, but it does make us more confident that we can deal with our fears on future occasions. Exercising courage, and managing our minds, is signs of maturity, that we've moved beyond the infantile state where everything is immediate and personal. Both courage and mental management are signs that we've become a more consciously-evolved human being.

Fortunately, the learning process also involves integrating new information with pre-existing knowledge, so we can use our brain's neuro-chemical processes (the biologically-programmed pleasurable feelings) to assist us to learn and therefore to consciously evolve. However, we must be capable of delaying gratification momentarily - we must behave maturely - for these pleasurable sensations to 'kick in' and override the initial sensations of anxiety that arise from uncertainty. The willingness to tolerate this anxiety for long enough to process the finer nuances of the situation is a crucial requisite of highly effective living. When comparing images, the quicker you decide, the more likely it is that you're force-fitting the information from the new image into your existing framework, instead of recognizing the nuances, instead of learning. And therefore the more likely it is that you're falling into delusion.

In appreciating our minds, it is helpful if we recognize our feelings for what they are: transient aspects in our lives as conscious human beings. It is also helpful if we have achieved a level of maturity which involves taking personal responsibility for our lives rather than being a victim of circumstances. If we have this maturity then we're able to respond much more effectively to life.

A very useful tool to assist us in these quests is meditation. Other valuable tools (although many will reject them) are the scientific method and logical reasoning. The principles of logical reasoning have been developed over millennia by the world's greatest thinkers, the philosophers, from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to today's finest minds. Philosophy (and science) is examples of the effectiveness of conscious evolution, although, as always, we need to manage the negative effects of applying reason without (say) compassion.