Awakening and Conscious Awareness

            When we talk about “awakening”, what we mean is realizing Truth in our conscious awareness.

An individual consciousness is made up of conscious awareness, the subconscious, and the unconscious. Conscious awareness is what you are aware of right now in your mind, including what you see with the body’s eyes. The subconscious is what is just out of your conscious awareness, like when you are looking for your keys and you remember seeing them recently. You may or may not be able to call that memory up to your conscious awareness. The unconscious is what is out of your awareness but still in your mind. That would be most of consciousness.

When you have no awareness of Spirit, It is still in your unconscious. When you feel the Presence of Spirit but are not seeing as Spirit, It is in your subconscious, just out of your full awareness. When you see as Spirit, Which is to See Spirit (Love, Oneness), It is in your conscious awareness and you can be said to realize Spirit. Then you are enlightened or are awakening.

Truth comes into your conscious awareness usually first through intellectual concepts. If you accept those concepts, then you can be said to understand Truth intellectually. At this stage, you have no real shift in your experience. It’s “all up in your head”, just a bunch of nice ideas. Spirit is still mostly in your unconscious, and if It rises to your subconscious you probably don’t recognize It yet. For example, your enjoyment of reading spiritual material and hearing spiritual teachers is an experience of Spirit. But except for these limited experiences, your experience of consciousness has not changed.

Next, you come to be aware Truth is true. You may say about a Spiritual concept “I get this more than intellectually.” You have had a shift in your experience as Spirit is in your subconscious to some degree. You may also experience It sometimes in your conscious awareness, but you do not live There yet. At minimum, serious spiritual students reach this stage to some degree.

Finally, you realize Truth. You have shifted consciousness, meaning, your conscious awareness has shifted, and you live in and from Truth consciously. Your experience of consciousness and existence is radically different from what it was in ego-consciousness.

 

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If you have a question the answer to which you feel may be helpful to others, send it to Liz@acimmentor.com and I will answer it in this newsletter/blog.

Comments

will said…
Over the past 18 months I have been shown A review of who I have been in the dream. My life. Who I have been as a person. It isn't an ego review. It comes in bits and pieces.
9:48 AM
will said…
Ego reviews are full of shame. Attacks on my person.
These reviews just kind of leave me without emotion but with the awareness I have not been the person I thought I was.
9:59 AM
will said…
The review is not a movie. It is more like doing a jigsaw puzzle.
11:04 AM
will said…
As a Catholic boy I was taught the last judgement was a review of my life with God as seen through the ego's eyes. For maximum fear and horror. It was something the priests cooked up to keep the faithful in line. The Holy Spirit nor God are into fear and horror. But still, it persists, in one way or another... They did a good job at indoctrination.
11:24 AM
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