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.

 

>>>>> 

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
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ask: What is meant by "extend Love"?

I wonder exactly what is meant by "extend love" or how one extends love. Is it a loving intention toward the person, or a wish for them, or what? Can you give an example? – JO “Extending love” means replacing unloving thoughts in your mind with the awareness of Love in your mind. For example, your peace of mind is disturbed while watching something on television. Your peace is gone because you believe that what you see is reality. You extend Love in this situation by turning inward to Truth (God), feeling Love’s Presence within you, and remembering that It, not the images appearing, is What is Real. It may take you a while to accept that only your own thoughts cause you pain. So at first you may feel that you need to extend Love “out there” to the images that seem to be causing you pain. Or you may extend Love to another who is sharing their painful story with you. You can do this by imagining the situation or the person in a Loving Light. Or you may use some other image to
Read more

If the World Isn't Real, Why Ask For Guidance?

Every now and then a student asks me why they should follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance if the world isn’t real and if it has nothing to do with God. What difference does it make how you live in the world, then? All that you made can serve salvation easily and well. The Son of God can make no choice the Holy Spirit cannot employ on his behalf, and not against himself. (T-25.VI.7) The world is your perception that you are separate from God. Calling on the Holy Spirit to guide you in it corrects this misperception. You are no longer separate from God when you are following the Holy Spirit. What you ask the Holy Spirit and what the Holy Sprit answers is not important. What is important is that you asked and that you accepted an answer . When you follow the Holy Spirit the purpose of every circumstance becomes a means to be with the Holy Spirit. The world that was made to make separation from God real to you becomes a means of remembering you are One with God. It doesn’t matter to God ho
Read more

More on Emotional Satisfaction or Freedom

Last week’s article ( http://acimmentor.blogspot.com/2017/02/emotional-satisfaction-or-freedom.html ) about the two possible approaches to spirituality and how one way to characterize them is the pursuit of emotional satisfaction for the self or transcending the self led to a lot of comments and questions that I will try to clear up here. (The article was a follow-up to two other articles I had written on the same topic. Some of the questions readers had could be answered in those earlier articles and links were provided in last week’s article. If you still have questions I suggest reading those as well as last week’s article for a fuller look at the topic). The emotional satisfaction I wrote about in the last article was not referring to what one seeks in relation to others. It was referring to the desire for an emotional connection with Truth (God) that one would characterize as “warm”. I was highlighting how which goal we pursue in spirituality can often be revealed by the
Read more