Analysis of the Self: Use of Consciousness

Self-consciousness is one of the first steps to both cosmic consciousness and cosmic citizenship. We simply must be fully aware of ourselves if we are to have some idea of where our thoughts and actions are taking us throughout life. This determines the direction and strength of our soul growth. It helps us truly appreciate our choices, our abilities, our achievements, and our character development. What is the quickest way to begin this step? You would have to deviate away from the workings of the subconscious and take an active role in understanding your personality and habits, and this begins by analyzing past, present, and future thoughts and actions.

Humans are often directed by their subconscious either unwillingly or unknowingly, and the only way around this is to engage the conscious mind in every minute decision appearing in one’s life, so much so as to not just knowingly decide, but to understand the root causes of why such a decision is the best course of action. The problem is that this expends two primary resources: energy and time. Humans have a finite amount of both, so people take shortcuts while making up their mind by trusting their gut. That gut reaction is the subconscious mind choosing the best alternative based on the current information stored within the brain, even if that information or the logic which stems from it is not perfect. More important decisions most certainly require conscious decision making, while smaller decisions are normally okay to be left to subconscious decision making.

Contrary to normal belief, big decisions should not be left to the gut, because this is ultimately left up to a previously constructed system that uses current knowledge, but this system can easily be inferior to a new method created on the spot. Relying on the subconscious only has its strength when the issue is not so much deciding the best course of action, but recalling the right fact. Here, the subconscious mind is the best link to memory since the subconscious, in order to create an answer to a list of possibilities, must rely on that memory to function. Therefore, when we must recall facts to figure out what to do, we should trust our gut, and when we must use facts in some form of logic to figure out what to do, we should not trust our gut.

That being said, it is wrong of us to let our subconscious mind judge others or use our present set of values to evaluate pretty much anything. As stated previously, the subconscious can only be used appropriately by recalling past information, and much of that information is going to result from our active use of the mind to understand the world around us. If one only uses the subconscious to recall past judgments, there is usually no issue (provided that judgement took an active involvement), but all future rulings must depend on the conscious mind’s ability to use and manipulate the information present. This ensures that we do not rely on old biases, or reject new information because it does not seem to work with our past views. And with that, we have taken a step towards a better form of consciousness by tempering its use.