Category: Consciousness

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Here below and on following pages we explore spiritual questions about human consciousness. They address the question of how human awareness, is related to the sense of self, the soul, altered states, and spiritual practices.

Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness. It is the ability to experience wakefulness. Also, one might think higher awareness is to have a sense of self-hood or soul. Individual consciousness has thus been described as both the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives.

Those trying to integrate ideas about consciousness have a lot to do. They need to address such phenomena as brain activity, dreaming, ordinary awareness, mystical experiences, meditative states, sense of self, and the idea of the human soul.

Consciousness and science

We wonder about how a piece of biological tissue like the brain can produce subjective awareness and the experience of the self.

Posts below explore attitudes to spiritual ideas about this.

Mystical experience

Is one affected by one’s experience of mystical awareness. This is the reported sense of awe and wonder at nature. Also there is the desire to see a better world. One with a soul. Having wholeness, timelessness, and beauty. This instead of confining one’s awareness of it to one of complexity, mass production, and ugliness.

Spiritual practices

People are practising reflection, meditation, and mindfulness. They see these and other practices as useful for the development of the self and soul. They are seeking a calm mind and stillness in the face of a hectic life of deadlines and stress.

Consciousness of meaning and inspiration

Articles address the extent to which spiritual learning might help reduce anxiety and promote inspiration. Also the desire to gain energy, enthusiasm, living life to the full and feeling more alive.

In addition, the value of re-connecting oneself with a magical or sacred place. Can this help one re-find a state of balance, composure and awareness of the divine? Is there any longing for the consciousness of childhood with its spontaneity of living in the moment.

Of interest is the spirit behind conscious awareness e.g. a team spirit, a spirit of enterprise, a spirit of patience and tolerance and so on. Linked to this idea of spirit is curiosity about the soul of a person and how to find higher awareness and meaning and purpose in one’s life.

Altered states of consciousness

The human mind has non-ordinary experiences when not in its usual wakeful condition. We can be aware of these  during trance, meditation, hallucination, and sleep.
Psychic phenomena (such as as medium-ship, hearing voices, seeing someone who is not physically present, perception of auras) might be interpreted as evidence of  a spiritual realm beyond the material universe. Of relevance here are what some people say about higher awareness in terms of their experience of guardian angels, after death awareness of one’s loved ones, and the near death experience. Evidence they claim for the immortal soul. Also of interest are accounts of an afterlife concerning an astral plane also occasionally imagined in film and fiction.