Consciousness: The ability to focus on your behaviors in the now

Consciousness is a word that we hear quite often and its meaning seems to be whatever the user decides it is. Never mind the dictionary definition; there are numerous spiritual, psychological, religious and metaphysical meanings. Nearly everyone who uses the term winds up having to tell you, the reader, what it means.

I’m no different. When I use the word consciousness, I’m using it to describe the ability that we have as humans to focus our attention on our behaviors in the now. This focus has a specific function. It provides just enough energy to disrupt the behavior for a brief flicker of time so that we have the very real potential to change the behavior.

Your Habitual Behaviors

It’s a fact that most of our behaviors are simply habitual. This is one thing that nearly everyone in all of the self-growth programs agrees on. Some of these habitual behaviors are hard-wired, that is they are encoded in our personal DNA. Some of them are learned.

Depending upon what program or belief system one follows, one practices the raising or use of consciousness in different ways toward different ends. For example, some people want to become one with the universe, or have some exotic experience, or achieve bliss.

Self-Growth and Consciousness

Personally, I’m interested in self-change and in personal transformation, in personal empowerment, and in living within the ongoing process of self-improvement. I’m interested in actualizing my fullest potential. Not everyone is interested in this, but I know that many people are. The use of consciousness to continue this process is critical.

Actual change doesn’t result simply from thinking, studying, or knowledge. It usually originates there, but to actually change you absolutely must do differently. Now, this can be relatively easy in that you can change what time you go to bed or get up or eat dinner, but that has little to do with actual self-transformation.

“The Way” is Self-Growth

Self-growth, self-transformation, personal growth, self-realization all refer to a continuous process in which you are always discovering yourself and reorganizing yourself for optimal benefit. Self-growth isn’t really something that is oriented toward achieving a single goal such as money, a spouse, or a better job. Those things may well result from self-growth along the way, but it is the “way” that is self-growth. And following the way empowers us.

It is the way of strengthening your weaknesses and polishing your strengths. It is an ongoing relationship with yourself and your own becoming – your own changing over time. Self-growth is not a goal – it is a process, a journey.

Your Unique Self

We often think that because we know what we think, we know ourselves. Or we feel that being aware of our feelings means we know ourselves. Yes and no. Yes, in that knowing what you think or feel offers some clues as to who you are. But no, in that you aren’t what you think or feel. Those are only aspects of you.

Another way to say it is that those are costumes that you adopt in order to play specific roles. The roles are the themes of you and the relationship between the roles, and your awareness of them is close to what constitutes your unique “Self”. That is the self that is specific to you – not the universal self as a whole but your personal unique contribution to the whole.

Your Deep Themes

If you are really interested in self-growth, it’s your own deep themes that await discovery and refinement. I’m not talking about psychological issues here. I’m not talking about Oedipus complex, identity crisis or separation issues, or anything at all dysfunctional or “abnormal”.

The challenge is that these behaviors are so deep, so visceral that we don’t have any clue whatsoever that we are acting them out. Absolutely not a clue. These behavioral themes are operating so quickly at such a deep level that to be conscious of them requires some real preparation.

Human Drama

These are behaviors that have sustained human beings and helped us to survive in many different circumstances for countless millennia. We live such brief lives that we never, as individuals, fully grasp the scope and magnificence of humanity. We just see things from our own very narrowly focused agenda.

The drama of the species is continually playing out. Every single individual person on the planet is genetically designed to act out, with no training, certain various behaviors that are useful to the species. And each of us is designed to learn to act out other behaviors that are useful to the species. Furthermore, we’re all very different in the combinations of what we are designed to do and what we are designed to learn.

Surprisingly we aren’t really taught much about these behaviors, at least not in any cohesive fashion. Yet these behaviors, these deep themes, are the foundation, the bedrock of self-growth. For each of us, our own personal greatness lies in our ability to discover these themes in our own lives, to claim them and live them with gusto.

Consciousness and the Human Design System

This information is so deep that it has to be brought into your consciousness from an outside source. In 1987, Human Design burst on the scene as the most important tool available to help us do that. All of the other systems use generic, one size fits all, tools. If you try enough of those systems, you’re bound to find some things in them that will work for you.

As a system, Human Design details the great themes that dominate human behavior and it provides every individual a way to connect with their own design in order to live it. It exposes these deep behaviors to your cognitive mind for you to reflect upon.

Once you have specific information about your own design – a detailed map of your Deep Themes –then can you become conscious of them. In other words, once you know something is there, you can start to look for it. That’s when the fun begins and the rewards accrue. Step 1 is to identify the themes. That journey begins with Human Design.

Photo by Matthew T. Rader

Tags: human design system, human design analyst, manifesting generator, generator, projector, manifestor, reflector, astrology, iching, chakras, aura, higher consciousness, soul growth, who am I, paradigm shift, inner journey, life purpose, self-improvement, personal development