To Live Consciously

To live consciously means to become aware. It is to stop acting from a place of wounding and to seperate ourselves from the versions of us that run on autopilot based upon the conditioning that we have received and the programs that have been installed onto our subconscious minds — through parenting, by interactions with peers, and society as a whole.

It means to become curious and to begin asking questions of oneself and ones’ behaviours — to recognise where judgment arises within instead of the curiosity to ask why we do certain things or behave in such a way.

It is to bring into the light, (conscious mind) patterns, habits, behaviours and thoughts from the dark shadow (unconscious mind) that we all find safety and comfort in.

When we begin to live consciously, we seize control of the helm of our ship, and take responsibility for the direction in which our lives are heading. We no longer fall victim to destructive behaviours that send us into a rapid and helpless descent of self-sabotaging thoughts that compound and add further weight and pain to our emotional body.

We learn that these behaviours and patterns are just mirroring those that we witnessed when we were children. When we choose the conscious path, we realise that we are more than our learnt behaviours, limiting beliefs, judgments and conditioning. We become, over time, the watcher of ourselves and the witnesses of our bodies and programming.

When we realise that we are just, on one level, impulsive sacks of meat, bones and blood acting from our memories of pain and pleasure in pursuit of love, we can find forgiveness for our often nonsensical and irrational behaviour.

We become then, no longer the victims of the circumstances into which we were born, pointing fingers and blaming other people for the way that we are in justification of our own laziness, greed, selfishness, lying, cheating and cowardice. In the conscious mind, there is no room for blame. We see beyond the separation of the ego and realise that no person was ever at fault — that people are simply differing in their levels of awareness; that some people’s wounds are deeper than others and fears are greater, which prevent them from accessing sufficient courage to face them and realise that, on the other side, is a love that is pure and unconditional.

To live consciously then, it could be said, is to be courageous, and to know that, beyond all irrational behaviour, defensiveness, withdrawal, avoidance, separation, conditioning and beliefs, there is only love and fear — between which we make a choice from moment to moment. When living consciously, the choice, more often than not, is the one of love.