What Is Spiritual Consciousness, Awakening?: It’s Not That Complicated — to Start!

If you have read much of my work, you know I place some emphasis on getting to a basic, foundational, least common denominator explanation before building any complexity. A subject like consciousness certainly entails complexity, but as I thought of it earlier today, I decided to make sure I could think about it at the simplest level.
In the sense I’m referring to it and the way most do, consciousness involves our soul and spirit. It’s an awareness that we have a higher Self, core Self, Heart which is our essence, our true reality, but that core Self dwells in this physical realm inhabiting this body. The awareness of Heart, essential Spirit within our body initiates consciousness. It’s about as simple as that, if you want simplicity. However, the ramifications of awakening, spiritual awakening, dawning consciousness, leads to a host of wonderful realities.
Many who have not awakened spiritually may very logically claim that we all have spirit, so what would be the big deal about pointing it out? Great question, I think. Not even sure I have an an… Wait, yes, I do!.
We all have Heart; however, we do not all access it. The fact that many don’t becomes evident in the picture painted by the social issues and suffering we see around us every single day. Consciousness, this purposeful acknowledgment and access of Spirit — which I call Heart — within the physical body, results in understanding, processing, filtering, and interpreting life in new ways.
How so? One who is spiritually conscious works in ways that are antithetical to Ego, and Ego is the operative force in the majority of people, which means that most social aggregations of humanity are ego-driven, ego-powered. While Ego urges conformity, it does not produce unity.
Know why? Because wherever our Ego places us causes us to conform in contradistinction to another group, i.e., Ego isolates in a very real way. Even within the group, Ego pushes us to isolation through comparing self to all others, to criticize those not quite as good as you…You get the idea.
Heart, however, unifies in all of our divergencies. Why? Because when we awaken to Heart, when we become aware of higher Self, we realize all others do, indeed, have that same essence, whether awakened, aware, conscious, or not. It’s an energy of understanding, acceptance, and love — of Self and others.
Allow me to back up a bit. When I was a teenager, I learned about the laws of the conservation of energy and matter on a rudimentary level. I transferred and generalized that to human behavior. Choices and actions simply perform transformations. I understand that’s the basis of alchemy: transformation. But just as the difficulty in transforming one element to another is a mystery, so is transforming our life from what it is now to what we would like it to be. However, understanding the power, authority, and means we have to do that is another aspect of awakening, of having a consciousness of higher Self.
Consciousness seems to me relatively simple, i.e., the principle and not the results. The simple part is knowing that consciousness is being aware of transformations. Each and every human being performs transformations, because whenever we take energy or change the form of one thing, it’s a trade-off.
When anyone awakens to Heart, they understand the issues at stake. By using Heart, accessing higher Self, we can frame the questions to capture the essence of where we will stand in relation to the transformation we desire. What am I willing to release in order to allow something else?
To sum it up for tonight, this consciousness of knowing who we are at core and creating what we want through that knowledge marks those who have spiritually awakened. Spiritual consciousness is an understanding that we have Spirit within us — which I call Heart and others call higher Self, Spirit personalized in each — and when we consciously address and access Heart, we can with understanding effect the transformations in this life we wish to experience.
Yeah, I think I like that! Good way to start the week.
Oh, a quick corollary. Since we have eternal Spirit as the essence of who we are, when the body quits, that life energy goes on. This Memorial Day, we can know those who have yielded their lives in service to us are not only honored in memory but also present in Spirit. That’s a comfort.
Blessings!