You probably think this article is about me overcoming some tragedy like a terrible accident or some trauma—that I once was in a dark place, and now I am happy, and the sun is shining all around me. You are half right. However, I am not talking about any outer experience of life that I have overcome, rather, I am reflecting on the inner experience of consciousness.
What is Consciousness?
Consciousness is simply awareness, wakefulness. When we observe anything in the outer world we are awake, conscious beings. There are degrees of wakefulness or consciousness. When we are tired our mind is not as wakeful or focused. When we have had a good night’s sleep, we wake up the next day feeling fresh and are so much more alert to the world around us. A baby has a limited view of the world. As a child grows older his awareness expands—or becomes more conscious—of the bigger horizon of the world around him.
There is also an inner value of consciousness—our thoughts, feelings, and intuitions. This inner value can also be cloudy when we are tired or anxious. We are more aware and awake to our finer creative impulses and thoughts when we are fresh and feeling good.
There is another level of consciousness and that is the field of our silence, consciousness, or Being. Through meditation, we can become aware or awake to this field of consciousness itself. What are we aware of? We become aware, or awake to, or conscious of a field of silence, our silence, or the transcendental field of our Being.
Consciousness is Made of Light
The interesting perception of this field of silence is that it is not a flat, dark empty field of silence but that it is teeming with energy and intelligence. Stress dissolves in our physiology through the practice of meditation, the type that is scientifically shown to be most effective in reducing stress and the technique I practice is Transcendental Meditation. As stresses dissolve, we become more awake to this mass field of dark silence. In time, we start to notice that it also sparkles with light.
It is like walking into a dark cave. In the beginning, we can only see the darkness. After a few minutes when we have become accustomed to the darkness, we begin to see within the darkness the details of the cave.
To sit in meditation bathed in this refined perception of inner light is a deeply fulfilling spiritual experience. It amazes me to think that this light is waiting to shine within every one of the eight billion people on this planet. We reflect outside to the world around us what we experience inside us. We can all become reflectors if this beautiful inner light of consciousness.
Become a Lighthouse
There are so many ways to help the word through charities, social service, business, education, art, and music, etc. If we want the darkness of the clouds covering our precious world to dissipate, it would also help tremendously if more and more people could become lighthouses— radiating the inner light of their consciousness to dispel the darkness of political division, war, and injustices prevalent in the world today.
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