Uncovering the Layers of Consciousness
Embracing Curiosity and Effort in the Journey of Self-Discovery
Effort always yields some form of result. This is a given.
More effort equals more result, and the opposite would appear to be true. But what kind of result?
I have learned that we all have layers of unconsciousness. When becoming conscious, it becomes clear how unconscious others are because of our newfound awareness we can see through people more clearly. But this does not mean that one day we were unconscious and now we are fully conscious.
Becoming more conscious occurs on a continuum, as there are infinite layers of underlying beliefs and thought that are waiting for us to bring into the light of day.
But it’s so easy to think (or to convince ourselves) that we are now “conscious” because we have learned, uncovered, healed, intuited. We have seen what we did not previously see, and we are now aware of what we previously were not aware of. So, naturally we are now aware and conscious (we think).
This is a common slippery slope I imagine most people find themselves on at some point in life. It’s what leads us to spiritual bypass — the process by which we utilize our spiritual practices and beliefs to convince ourselves that we’re all that and a bag of chips while continuing a roughly similar trajectory of denial, resentment, egoic behavior, and so on.
It occurs when we achieve a certain level of success in life, having secured all the usual trappings of such things (material and relational) that give us a favorable comparison to others. Then we think we’ve arrived, we have it all, or at least we have a lot, or we have more than our peers, thus we are more capable, smart, intelligent, likable, good looking, charismatic, and so on.
The challenge in becoming increasingly more conscious is that we cannot know what we are presently unconscious of because it is, well, unconscious. It’s like a blind man cannot perceive what he cannot see unless he feels it with his hands, or someone describes it in detail. Even then, it’s only a facsimile.
But if someone has been blind since birth, how would you describe colors to her? And if there are things within our psyche that we are not conscious of and have never been conscious of, how do we know of their existence?
A common maxim is that once we think we know it all we stop learning because instead of feeding our curiosity we assume we already have the answers.
So too, with becoming more conscious. With each new revelation, with each peeling of the onion, we move into a new energy of reveling in our newfound awareness. This is the perfect time to affirm our unknowing — that while we have learned there are infinite layers of unknowing yet to be revealed.
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