Awareness and Consciousness
When I was the President of the Psychic Society of Alberta I taught personal growth, 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 they all had different notions of what awareness and consciousness are to begin with. The consequence of this was they were not even sure what it was they wanted or needed to learn. This is certainly understandable given their notions about such things were tended vague and even 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). My focus was on helping them to get a better understanding of the nature of awareness so that they could get past the common barriers people tend to build regarding around it and even that of our consciousness.
I will digress for a moment to clarify what I mean by awareness and consciousness because it helps to understand what we are referring to. If you look up awareness there are a various definitions that refer to it as subjective awareness, the ability to experience feelings, wakefulness, or having a sense of selfhood. Max Velmans and Susan Schneider wrote in The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness:
"Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives"
The nature of our consciousness is certain an enigma. Edmund Husserl spoke to the last part of the above quote when he stated:
"One cannot separate the conscious state from the object of that state."
What he states is not actually the case as it is possible to do; however, it is exceedingly difficult to perceive and realize that our mind as something "separate" from our consciousness. By this I am referring to the ability to separate what is doing or performing the thinking from the thinker. There are some, such as philosophers, metaphysicists and theologians and so on that consider and even question consciousness, but most do not. Instead the majority tend take it for granted though even among them some have question and wonder about it. what being conscious is and the the nature of it.
The entire topic has become more complicated with psychologists and neuroscientists entering the discussion/ The focus of most research is on understanding what it means biologically and psychologically for information to be present in consciousness—that is, on determining the neural and psychological correlates of consciousness. What does this mean? Hm, it all sounds so complicated, but it need not be. To understand it we ought not start with thoughts about consciousness at our level of evolution but as Aristotle suggested when he stated:
"He who thus considers in their first growth and origin - will obtain the clearest view of them."
On this basis we can break it down consciousness to its fundamentals. And what are they? Simply put, the first basic element of consciousness is awareness, where awareness is the ability to reaction to a stimulus. Consciousness is then defined as awareness plus memory. In its first growth and origin it is not complex or beyond the capabilities of anyone to understand. It has been hard to define and when it is the definition is vague, insufficient or too complicated to be of practical value. The tendency is to conflate awareness as defined above with our thoughts about whatever it is we are aware of and consciousness with mental processes.
We do a similar thing with the terms perceive and perception. The former is essentially awareness of something due to our reaction(s) to a stimulus, how we noticed it, and the latter is the result of our thoughts and emotional reactions to what we have become aware of. To reiterate...
Awareness ⇒ ability to react to a stimulus
Consciousness ⇒ awareness + memory
People tend to conflate terms like awareness and consciousness as well as perception of something; however, they are different. Awareness it simply the ability to be aware of something, which we do by reacting to or perceiving it. At this root level awareness is our initial reaction, much like the rods and cones in our eyes react to light. Our eyes do not consider what they react to, they do not evaluate or come to conclusions about it. Eyes, react and their awareness of it (the information of what is perceived) gets passed to our mind via our brain. When our minds receive this information it reacts to what was perceived with whatever thoughts it holds. This leads to our perception of it. We would not be able to have any perception of it if we did not have the ability to remember what we perceive for we would have no thoughts to do so with. It would be like the proverbial tree in the forest that falls but makes no sound. Fortunately, we can and do remember what we perceive. This why consciousness is defined as awareness plus memory.
When we consider our consciousness and the complexity of our minds this view seems like a gross oversimplification. However, a consciousness as developed as ours did not spontaneously come into being. It started from humble beginnings and has been built up by countless reactions to experiences and the interactions of memories and perceptions of them over millions of years.
Even though our notions of awareness and consciousness tend to be vague we over complicate both because our rational mind (RM) has to define, categorize, relate and correlate its mental constructs about things. We want to understand awareness and consciousness even more so in the hope that by getting a firmer handle on its definition we can explore it and learn more about it and ourselves. The problem with this approach is that we tend to get lost in our thoughts about it. Trying to understand consciousness this way is much like trying to understand the forest from a few leaves on a tree within it.
At their root level, or first principle, awareness and consciousness are not based on thoughts as we know them. They are even further from the kind of thoughts we have when incarnate as the elemental particles of matter such as quarks, leptons and bosons are from the International Space Station. Our higher self has a form of thoughts as well though they are not as complex as our mental constructs. They are what one could refer to as Knowings without words and though far simpler actually greatly transcend them.
We can consider our consciousness as having two aspects. These are our individuality, which is commonly known as our higher/true self and can be viewed as the set of stereotyped reaction-capabilities it has built up over the eons. The other is our personality, that we build when incarnate. This is what we refer to as "the self", I or me. Our individuality changes gradually over lifetimes while our personality changes during each lifetime as a result of our reactions to experiences. Saying this does not diminish the importance of personality for it is by our reactions and the changes they lead to that introduce new factors into not just our consciousness but the Cosmos itself. The relationship between the two aspects can be expressed as "that which is Personality today will be part of Individuality tomorrow".
In the Cosmic Doctrine by Dion Fortune (1) there is a an excellent presentation of the evolution of what we call consciousness. I will not be restating the entire section, but will start with this quote from it:
"You will perceive that we are still speaking in terms of dynamics. It is not until a high degree of evolution has been achieved that we can speak in terms of psychology"
The Cosmos and all in it, which includes consciousness, evolves due to the interaction of energy. When energy interacts they create a new movement that is tangential to the two interacting movements. The new movement created while independent of the components contains the basic "motions" of the energies that interacted. The ability for them to react, in its essence, is awareness. Consciousness is capable of remembering its reactions. The high degree of evolution referring to in the quote is the result of an essentially countless number of remembered reactions interacting with each other. This is what it takes to create the degree of complexity that is required for what we call psychology, and by extension thinking, with all its various components. Here is the next part of section the above quote came from including the last part of it...
"It is not until a high degree of evolution has been achieved that we can speak in terms of psychology, there is an unbroken line of development from movement to thought. Tangential movement is a simple form of reaction. Thought is an infinitely complex form of reaction. It is a question of difference of degree, not difference of kind. Fundamentally there is no difference of kind in anything, because all can be reduced to the prime central stillness..."
Hence our consciousness and our awareness, while seemingly impossibly complex, starts as nothing more than action-reaction and memory. So how does this relate to personal and spiritual development, meditation and developing our conscious awareness? To begin with these four are not independent of each other. They are all either dependent on or affected by the quality of our mind and the thoughts within them. Further, spiritual development cannot happen without personal growth, which becomes easier the more we understand our mind and how it develops and functions. Meditation helps us access our thoughts to a far deeper level and with greater clarity. As a result it helps all three of these help things as well as the development of our awareness.
Thoughts are highly interconnected and built up from and affected by the thoughts we hold when we create them. Also, when we create new thoughts we add more complexity to our minds (and also the Cosmos). If we are not mindful of the ones we create at both the conscious and non-conscious levels they can blind us. One might believe that we have no control over our non-conscious mind but this is not the case as we created all the thoughts in our mind including the ones below the conscious level we tend to be unaware of and/or ignore. Over time thoughts form stereotyped action-reaction capabilities or programmed responses we use all the time without thinking about them. They affect everything from how we pick up a pen to how we react to people or events. We develop so many of them that they blind us to our true nature and relatively speaking to its inherent simplicity.
Overtime we get caught up and lost in the complexity of our minds and the mass of thoughts in them it. Thoughts are built up from other thoughts and without being mindful we continue to do this until their roots are obscured by countless layers of them. We also become so accustomed to using our minds for everything that we come to identify who/what we are, what is often referred to as "the self", through the countless layers of mental constructs/thoughts we have created. This is what is meant by the saying that "reality is an illusion". Getting past this illusion is part of the path of awakening.
In the earlier essay on The Nature of Thoughts (2) we took a look at how our minds react to what is perceived and continue to do so until it has been fully integrated. The more thoughts that we have the more connections there are and the more our minds use them to arrive at a perception of what was perceived. The result is even more thoughts, which add to the illusion. We are able to interrupt this process first by being aware of it and then working on reducing how much our minds process what we perceive, which adds more complexity and expands the illusion.
Both personal and spiritual growth require us to work on our minds by dealing with the thoughts within them. Greater mental clarity is achieved by reducing the complexity of our mind. One key part of doing this is by not filling our minds with inconsequential thoughts about the past, such as regrets or hurts and pains, and expectations of and hopes for the future as well as notions that are inaccurate and false.
Meditation is a key part of the equation as it helps us get beyond the complexity of mind by not letting our minds and the thoughts within them getting in the way. Many of our thoughts can be fallacious and lead to illusion about the nature of what we perceive and our experiences. Given that it is the complexity of our minds due to the vast number of thoughts they contain and their relationships with each other being able to see through their complexity is immensely beneficial.
Now, returning to the idea we started with, that of learning to meditate and developing our conscious awareness. In meditation we can see that when we do this we are reducing the thoughts we have about what we experience and of course our thoughts about those thoughts and so on. This leads to a quieter mind that allows us to focus our attention on smaller sets of thoughts and eventually to single thoughts. If we are diligent and practice regularly we can get completely beyond our minds to be be conscious without being conscious without using any thoughts at all.
This is crucial in terms of developing our awareness, something most surrender or give up when they are young due to the development of our minds and egos. We start life very aware but lack in thoughts. From the essay The Nature of Thoughts (2):
"...a child perceives energy of various levels or sub-planes though is not consciously aware of them in the way and older child or adult is capable of being. At this stage we have not yet developed integrated thoughts about what we perceive or ones related to control over our bodies. Nor are we aware that we are developing the interface between our consciousness, what some refer to as our soul, and the manifest universe. We are simply exploring the vibrant world around us based on our nature. To learn to walk and talk, to recognize objects, smells, tastes and so on takes a considerable amount of repetition in order for the mind to develop the thoughts to do these things. Creation of the thought forms required comes first, followed by its strengthening through repetition."
As we move from being a child to being an adult a transformation takes place (from Limiting Aspects of the Rational Mind (3):
"Ask a child a question and they will tell you their most honest answer, unless they have already learned to be afraid of their honesty or to gain advantage through deceit. This is the how and why of our loss of natural honesty over time. We fear hurting someone’s feelings even when there was no such intent, we learn to be afraid of angering people, or negative consequences when we are honest about what we perceive. Part of the reason we lose our honesty is it does not take long to forget about a lie, or our reasons and feelings around it and then the next sequence of events in life are upon us. We are not even aware of what we programmed into our minds, a new block or filter, and simply carry on our activities without knowing why.
While degrees of awareness vary, all children come in seeing what adults no longer see as they have built up blocks to them. Parents, trying to help their children survive and prosper, teach them to “use their heads”, to “get real”, even to quit making things up such as supposedly imaginary friends (though some really are only in a child’s imagination). Parents mean well; however, most are unaware of the consequences of their efforts."
To develop our awareness we must listen to that which have not listened to, to feel that which we have not consciously felt, and to experience using our new "ears" and "senses". Next time you meditate do not just try to quiet your thoughts, also allow yourself let go of what your physical self and feel what you perceive rather than think about what you perceive. I refer to this as withdrawing our attention from our bodies and thoughts. It is highly beneficial when meditating to avoid labelling, contemplating, analyzing, considering, exploring what is perceived and simply allow the perception "to be present". You will not miss it, or fail to grasp it as it is, in fact you will not be able to do so if you do not let go. It is not something most people are used to doing, which is why they miss many an intuitive or telepathic thoughts or even the subtle interplay of energies in and around them.
We do not have to think about everything we experience, that is something we have come to do over time. We want to relate everything to something else, to its place in the world around us and from it our own. But this is the personality working through all the reaction capabilities it's experiences resulted in. This will happen regardless of whether we focus our attention there or not. So, why not just let it go? Just allow yourself to feel and be in the moment. When you find yourself wanting to do something in your waking conscious state don't hesitate, don't worry that someone might find it silly or odd, or out of place. When those whispers come from within go with them....
All of what I have just said came through in the below poem, which I have shared before. When you read it, read is slowly, one line at a time and allow for a slight pause between each line.
Whisper to Me
Whisper to me
As you have for so long
Whisper to me
Those faint
Luminous shards
More than a glimmer
Less than a glimpse
Whisper to me
And I shall try to listen
For
Though my ears be dull
And senses
Not wholly within
Would run away with me
Still I shall turn them
Turn them away
Away
But not without
And small success
Surely following close
Will be quick
To sense opportunity
Whisper to me
At this point in our discussion it is time to turn our attention on our awareness and consciousness. Over the course of my journey, I have spoken to thousands of people about both terms and examined them from various angles in a number of essays. While they are commonly used terms they are actually poorly defined and not well understood. The lack of clarity of what they mean often leads to vague, uncertain and often conflicting notions about them that can hinder our growth. The purpose of this essay is to try to reduce some of the vagueness and uncertainty.
Awareness and consciousness is a topic that seems easy to grasp at first but when you dig into it you find it is as challenging to understand as it is to explain in any detail. Fortunately while our minds like details we do not need precise details, certainly not like we would of physical objects, to gain a better understanding of them. I will start this process with a basic conceptual model of what we are.
We are a consciousness and can figuratively view ourselves as having four aspects. Of course one can come up with a more detailed view but this will suffice at this point to communicate the essentials of what we are. These four aspects can be referred to as our higher self (it has several aspects which are not pertinent here), which some refer to collectively as our soul, our mental, emotional and physical bodies. Do not see them as separate in the common sense for they are interconnected as the latter are within the former. All are comprised of energy but energies of different degrees.
We only take on the latter three of the aspects I listed when incarnate. You can view each of them as matter of different densities where our physical vehicle is the densest and our higher self/soul as the least dense. There is a wealth of resources on the nature of the planes available so you can research this in more detail if you feel inclined.
While our consciousness, often referred to as the monad, is not its aspects IT is at the root of them. IT is not the aspects I referred to but is present in and aware through all of them. Some refer to our non-physical aspects collectively as our energy field though most can only consciously perceive the lowest two - our emotional and mental bodies/aspects. Our physical body is connected to them via our etheric web, an aspect I have not mentioned before.
The etheric web is part of this field as well and lies between the lowest one, our emotional body and our physical one. It is the intermediary between our physical bodies and higher aspects. In a very real way it is the framework around which our physical bodies are constructed. It is also how vital energies flow down through us.
Now, our consciousness does not reside in a place, nor is it like an arm or a leg. In order for us to function as humans, our consciousness wraps itself in the matter of the mental, emotional and physical and in a sense works through them. The mental and emotional matter as well as the higher aspects that lie between them and the monad itself comprise our energy field or as some refer to it our our aura/auric field. Imagine it as a collective of fields of energy of various types rather than discrete “packets” of energy such as a thought or emotion.
You are reading this essay using your conscious mind. It is our primary vehicle for learning when incarnate. We have looked at the two aspects of mind, the Rational and Non-Rational Mind (RM and NRM) earlier in this section of the curriculum. Our RM is the aspect our consciousness builds when incarnate and is comprises of thoughts be they ones about physical objects or conceptual and abstract ones such as beliefs, ideas about things and so on. The Non-Rational Mind (NRM) is that aspect of consciousness and can be referred to as our higher mind. It has thoughts, though they are not of the kind that we use to think, but not emotions.
It is our NRM awareness that gives us the ability to work with energy, empathy, telepathy, clairvoyance and so on. While many have ideas and thoughts about these abilities, they run into some difficulty in connecting the words to anything they can identify in any detail. Unlike physical objects, which we can perceive with our physical and assign labels or names to. People can always tell a chair when they see one; however, they cannot always say - “that was an intuition” or a Knowing, which comes from our higher aspects.
We all are aware of more than thoughts, feelings and physical objects though most of us tend to lump all these awareness’s together. By this I mean we are aware of physical objects through our senses and that we have thoughts and feelings but tend to not be aware of that which comes from our higher self. We usually know the difference a thought and a feeling but are not generally aware that they are matter of different sub-planes of energy. As a result, while we may be occasionally aware of “things” other than thoughts or feelings, such as intuitions, Knowings or what are often referred to as psychic perceptions.
Another factor that makes it challenging to notice non-rational awareness from our thoughts and feelings is that our rational minds take most of our attention. While there are moments when we may recognize an intuitive thought, which comes from within or our higher aspects, most do not do so on a regular basis. This is why I have explored how to have a more active awareness (there is an essay on this in the next section - Section 2A: Core Growth Elements) and how to be more in the moment in so many different essays.
All of the NRM skills I referred to (empathy, telepathy etc.) are awareness’s of our consciousness. We have the capability to react to energy of all the planes of energy that we have in our vehicle and use them, at least a little, during the course of our lives. A good salesperson uses empathy to read a customers energy and get a feel for what would get them to buy a particular product. Musicians use a form of empathic telepathy when they play; it allows them to perform as a group rather than a collection of individuals. In addition, there are times when we get a thought about something external, such as an intuition about a friend in need. The question is, how does all this work? To understand this we need to look at the mind in more detail.
From the moment we are born, we have experiences. We react to every experience, an experience being a stimulus. The stimulus is what we receive as input; however, the moment we perceive something we react to it. This is our awareness of the stimulus, for we cannot be aware of it without reacting to it. We are conscious because we retain the memory of the reaction.
We react based on what we have experienced and reacted to before. Our reactions are what manifests thoughts, which in turn manifest emotions. All our thoughts are, collectively, our RM and both our thoughts and emotions become part of our energy field, or our consciousness' clothing. We tend to focus our attention on our thoughts or our reactions to experiences. That is, we live in our thoughts. The result is we associate ourselves with our thoughts rather than that of us that is not comprised of thoughts (our higher self). We are not consciously aware that we interact with the Cosmos around us all the time. Said another way, if we refer to the lower aspects as the clothing our consciousness wears during a life then we tend become them.
The energies we interact with are those manifested by other consciousnesses and those of the Cosmos itself. These other energies interact with like energies in our field and we react in turn, though imagine it as more a form of an impression of one vibration onto another versus a chemical reaction. It is not just a piece of our field, which includes our RM, that reacts. All aspects of us that is of the same plane to the stimulus or perception can be affected by it. Further, we react to each of these reactions until we have fully integrated the experience (covered in more detail in the next section of the core material) as well as in a number of other essays including The Webs We Weave (4).
Each step in the integration process takes us a little further from the original stimulus. That does not mean the original impression is lost, for as I mentioned, the initial reaction becomes part of every new thought we create in the integration process. Unlike chemical reactions, which ends when all the reagents have reacted, the integration process is not always completed. This is what is going on when we have conflicting thoughts about it that lead to unresolved issues and our continuing to think about an experience long after we have been through it. This can carry on for some time, even our whole lifetime. Another example of this when we have an impulse that we struggle with.
One of the best examples of this is the difference between an impulse and an intuition. Intuitions come from within whereas impulses arise from the doings of our mind. Sometimes we get an intuition but then the mind gets in the way. An uncertain or conflicted mind will question even intuitions, which leads it to continue to try to integrate it. The ongoing integration creates layers of thoughts around the original impression or reaction making it hard for the mind to determine the actual root impression.
Impulses tend to waver back and forth, for instance in the case of simple yes and no situation it will not be able to settle on one or the other. Each time it cannot settle on one we add another layer. Those with clearer minds get the “raw intuition” or impression mostly unfettered by additional reactionary thoughts. Their mind simply translates the intuition and being open to it become consciously aware of it. What varies from person to person is the way we are aware of this impression or any other impression, not the mechanism itself.
Each of the awareness’s mentioned earlier either utilizes a different aspect of the reaction mechanism or the same mechanism applied to different planes of energy involved. Empathy is awareness of others the emotions of others, just as telepathy is awareness of others thoughts. In both cases, what the observer is doing is “decoding” the impression of either the emotion or thought they perceived. What varies is the plane of the energy of the impression as for many they are unaware of what was perceived directly and only become aware of it through their thoughts about it.
All energies we become aware of utilize the same mechanism, that being we interact with energy that makes an impression on energy of like kind within our field. This applies to our physical bodies as our minds do not see objects, our eyes are able to react with the reflected energy off them and then our brain processes it.
What we perceive is also not always in “real time”. Certain types of clairvoyance have a time component relative to the observer in that an impression received now may be that of an event that in a chronological sequence of time has not yet occurred or happened long in the past. We are aware of such things through a different aspect of the mechanism.
When we react to a stimulus be it of the physical or non-physical we have a thought about it as our RM decodes it. Whether we are aware of it or not depends on how we have trained our minds as well as how reliant we are on it. When we do become conscious of it each of us does it our own way. If we encounter someone else’s thoughts, our RM will decode it too. If and when we do become consciously aware of thoughts, emotions and so on from others we are not going to be consciously aware that the source thought was not ourselves though we can learn to do so. It is possible to do so because every thought and emotion we manifest has our "energy signature" imbedded in it and those of others have a different one.
Clairvoyance related to past events utilizes the fact that every event that occurs leaves a track in space that can be perceived even though it can be buried within other reactions such as the thoughts and emotions people create about them. It is possible to peel away the layers of all these influences and perceive the individual influences on them as well as the original impression created with sufficient practice (unless the skill is blocked by our higher self) or if one was born with the gift to do so. This can aid one in looking back through their energy or that of others. We can also do using the energy imbedded in objects such as one people have touched or thought about directly.
It is exceedingly difficult to go back through the past without some connection to the events or without assistance or impressions from the higher planes or some other source. Clairvoyance related to future events is far more mysterious and somewhat problematic. The reason is that the future is not rigid, it can be hard for the mind to translate impressions where there is no history involved and can be affected by acts of free will, which most have little of. I say this because few of us are prepared to accept that we have free will hence less influence over events in our lives than we think.
We believe we have free will, and while we do, we rarely exercise it. We live our lives mostly reacting to the influences upon us. In doing so we come to believe and like some things and not others. We usually do not notice how much stronger they become over time. They turn into wants and needs for them and from these come intentions, expectations, hopes and desires both of the present and for the future. These thoughts, which are of the past, become very influential and we live within their confines. The result of this is that we become greatly encumbered by our past, which limits the ability to be able to consciously act from within.
The more clothes our consciousness wears in a given life, that is the more programmed our minds are, the more our thinking and choices are determined by what was. This reduces free will, which is something we all see in how hard it can be to change. We come to do certain things because they are habits or because the influences affect us particular ways and so forth. We tend not to notice this because we are reacting to influences rather than noticing the influences themselves. When we try to foresee the future and make plans we find that we are trapped by these influences from our past and end up doing so based on a progression from how things are now.
In his book titled “Clairvoyance”, C.W. Leadbeater (5) eludes to this in relation to perceiving future events:
"There is no doubt whatever that, just as what is happening now is the result of causes set in motion in the past, so what will happen in the future will be the result of causes already in operation. Even down here we can calculate that if certain actions are performed certain results will follow, but our reckoning is constantly liable to be disturbed by the interference of factors which we have not been able to take into account. But if we raise our consciousness to the mental plane we can see very much farther into the results of our actions.
We can trace, for example, the effect of a casual word, not only upon the person to whom it was addressed, but through him on many others as it is passed on in widening circles, until it seems to have affected the whole country; and one glimpse of such a vision is far more efficient than any number of moral precepts in pressing upon us the necessity of extreme circumspection in thought, word, and deed. Not only can we [Page 122] from that plane see thus fully the result of every action, but we can also see where and in what way the results of other actions apparently quite unconnected with it will interfere with and modify it. In fact, it may be said that the results of all causes at present in action are clearly visible - that the future, as it would be if no entirely new causes should arise, lies open before our gaze.
New causes of course do arise, because man's will is free; but in the case of all ordinary people the use which they will make of their freedom can be calculated beforehand with considerable accuracy. The average man has so little real will that he is very much the creature of circumstances; his action im previous lives places him amid certain surroundings, and their influence upon him is so very much the most important factor in his life-story that his future course may be predicted with almost mathematical certainty. With the developed man the case is different; for him also the main events of life are arranged by his past actions, but the way in which he will allow them to affect him, the methods by which he will deal with them and perhaps triumph over them - these are all his own, and they cannot be foreseen even on the mental [devachanic] plane except as probabilities.”
The way we are able to use the skills of our NRM that I have mentioned is due to the mechanics of how energy interacts though we need to develop them. We summarize these as follows:
Sensing energy or thoughts in the present: We are able to sense energies for which we have a corresponding aspect within ourselves. We translate the impression of the energy just as we translate our own thoughts, for example, into words or images. There is a correlation between our ability to be consciously aware of them and how we have worked on becoming more aware of subtler energies.
Decoding thoughts or emotions: If we are able to sense the energy, we can also translate what we receive. This is the basis of empathy and telepathy whether we are conscious of such impressions from without or not. We do this with our own energy all the time as we must do so to be consciously aware. Our ability to translate an impression from a thought relies on our having the language to express it. For example, one who has not developed a high level of awareness regarding mathematics is unlikely to be consciously aware of perceptions received from without of very complex mathematical thoughts.
An additional factor in being able to sense other vibrations is how clear ones RM is. Someone who has a clearer less noisy mind is more likely to be consciously aware of a perception and may be able to express it figuratively or even when lacking the language to express it. Whether they realize the energies they perceive have an external source is another matter as it also depends several factors. The main ones are how aware the awareness of ones own energy signature, the degree of sensitivity to subtle energies and how much attention they are paying in the moment.
Reading the past: When energies interact, aspects of these energies become part of any new thought or vibration manifested. If we manifest a new thought, the new thought is an integration of the other thoughts. The new thought created contains the new vibration we have added as well as the original vibrations of the thoughts that were involved in the integration process. This holds no matter how many times we may have reintegrated a thought or energy. Our minds are capable of reading the past thoughts or energies that are part of any thought by looking within the energy of it. Doing so is a form of unravelling the various energies that are part of a thought or vibration of any kind.
The challenge in doing so accurately is one would need to either know or be able to deduce the past influences on the vibration. However, it is not necessary that we be conscious of the deduction process only how to engage and guide it. This is a skill that can take a lot of time, even lifetimes to develop.
Foretelling the future: As explained above, foretelling the future is exceedingly difficult and never a 100% sure thing. The mechanism for telling the future is similar to reading the past. However, rather than decoding the influences a vibration has been subject to, one must be able to sense the vibrations of someone or something that has not yet occurred but at some point in the future WILL BE. This requires the ability to suspend ones thoughts about the future to allow our powerful consciousness to do so for us. IT can correlate immensely complex interactions to “deduce” where things are headed. Again, one must have the language to be able to express it and enough clarity to allow the thoughts to come through unhindered.
It is important to note that the future is mostly but not fully predetermined. The reason is that contrary to popular belief most of us have little free will. In order to have full free will one must pristine minds, which is attained in part by having done away with their ego and let go of all personal attachments, needs, wants, desires and so on. This is something most of us are nowhere near close to doing at this point in our evolution.
Note: There are other ways one can acquire a knowing about the future, these being impressions for without or "above". Time is a relationship. How, when and where it operates remains a great mystery, one I am still exploring. Perhaps I will write about it... in the future.
We all have these capabilities; they are part of our consciousness. Our ability to be consciously aware of them depends on how transparent or clear our minds are and how subjective, noisy and reactive they are. If we are constantly reacting to our feelings and thoughts then we are not paying attention to the moment as such thoughts add to the clothing our consciousness wears and inhibit the free flow of information.
As you work on your own awareness, you will find that what I have communicated here will be of value to you. My intent is less to inform your mind and more to train it. If the intent to develop these skills is clear and unambiguous then you have already told your mind that you want to explore these areas. These words will then give your non-conscious or subconscious mind ideas it can use. It will work behind the scenes to aid you on your journey.
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Note: The above essay is an edited combination of two essays from the previous version of the website titled The Basics of Consciousness and Awareness and Consciousness
© 2011 Allan Beveridge
Last updated August 24, 2023
References:
- Dion Fortune. The Cosmic Doctrine. York Beach, ME: Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
- The Nature of Thoughts
- Limiting Aspects of the Rational Mind
- The Webs We Weave
- C.W. Leadbeater "Clairvoyance": http://www.anandgholap.net/Clairvoyance-CWL.htm#7