Consciousness means many things to many people. It’s one of those words that can range from “I lost it after the 10th beer” to deep implications of spiritual enlightenment.
I like to think of consciousness as “awareness,” and there are different levels of awareness going on pretty much all the time. Are you aware of your breathing at this very moment? Isn’t it cool how you are suddenly “conscious” of it now, but up until that point, it was still happening.. without any input from you? Were “you” breathing? Did you have a say in it? Notice how you do now. You can take deeper or shorter breaths.. you can change it.. you can enjoy it. That’s consciousness at work – awareness of what’s happening.
For me, this viewpoint of the word covers the simplest meanings to the most complex. What else is going on, even right in your our own body and mind, that has been running in the background? As with the breath, you just needed something to point it out to you.
I’m the last guy I would have ever thought would be into this “consciousness” stuff, but with this perspective, it made total, logical sense. Something I needed at the time. It also had practical value. The more I’m aware of, the more I can enjoy, and the more say I have in the matter.
Clearly, all sorts of activity is going on within you and around you, seemingly without your input. Ever have an addiction? Talk about auto-pilot. The more consciousness you bring into it (“my body wants this experience,” “I’m doing this to forget about xyz”) the more choice you begin to have.
The more you play with this, and have more things pointed out to you or by you – the more interesting everything becomes. Even simple things are more fun, and they can start working better. If they suck, you’ll most likely get insight on how to change them. Perhaps most important, you can learn to accept them in the mean time (which is the only way to change anything, as much as I don’t always want to hear that.)
Some of us delve into this and never stop. Hence the “Consciousness Junkee” theme. We love material that lets us play with this and work with it in different ways. The mind loves variety, and at the very least it’s more interesting than watching TV.
We also like GOOD stuff, that produces results. Like anything, there’s a whole spiritual / consciousness fad where people see dollar signs and will sell their “how to speak to your angel guides.PDF,” a $6000 value for $19.99 for a limited time!
So the intention here is to be a place where you can go and find all sorts of good stuff compiled in one place, where we can contribute what we find, etc. And since a lot of us are addicted to buying this stuff (irony?), hopefully we can let each other know what is good and what is BS.
Most of the consciousness / development stuff out there fits into a few different categories for me, and they all seem to flow and integrate in a certain that’s how this site will be organized
