A client once asked me if I could only impart a single piece of wisdom to my clients (and anybody else reading this) what it would be. I assume this is because I am prone to writing long-ass articles about these topics (sorry not sorry) because they are so rich, complex, and personal. 

I sat on that for a long time. I didn’t think there could be a single answer, really. Life is so damn complicated and individual—how could I pick a single piece of advice that would, universally, help improve everyone’s? 

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Then, like a bolt of lightning through the brain, it hit me in the middle of a leg day. It hit me so hard it took everything in my power to not sprint out of the gym and immediately run to a computer to start typing out this article. 

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If I could only teach a single lesson to someone—truly, what I believe to be the most important lesson in all of life—it’d be this. 

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Consciousness does not give a fuck. And knowing that is the key to ALL of your inner suffering. 

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Ok first, what’s ‘consciousness’?

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That question is about 5 articles in itself. I’m going to take us on the spiritual freeway for the sake of brevity and just explain a few things from the jump. As always, please doubt me and investigate these statements from your own lived experience. Or, read some of my other writing. 

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1. Consciousness is the singular, “true” identity that we all share. It’s the simple fact of being alive. It’s the precondition that’s necessary for all experience. 
2. A quick way to touch consciousness is—ask yourself the question “I wonder what my next thought will be?” and see what happens. You’ll encounter, for a few seconds, a totally empty mind. That spacious, empty quality within you is your consciousness. 
3. There is a massive philosophical debate about whether or not consciousness is fundamental. EG, is it something that just emerges from a very complex brain, or, is it more like a signal out in the universe that our brain is a receiver for? We’re not touching that debate with a 10-foot pole in this article. 

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What’s important to understand is that consciousness exists prior to any thought you can have about your life experience. It’s like the blank canvas within which our thoughts appear. Our thoughts do a great job of “painting” over that canvas and at times, almost totally eclipsing them. But they never make the canvas itself go away. 

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Hopefully that makes sense because it’s a fundamental lesson for the next, big realization here. 

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Consciousness makes whatever we believe feel as “real as it can get”

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That “real as it can get” language is a direct quote from Sydney Banks’s 3 Principles. I’d highly recommend anybody that’s interested in a spiritual path check out Banks’ work, and the work of some of his students like the Pranskys. There’s a lot of powerful truth in the insights they provide. 

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But for our purposes today, what you must realize is that because consciousness is so atomic, expansive, and ultimately empty, it will take whatever thoughts you feed it and make them appear as if they are true in observable reality. This does not directly change observable reality, obviously, but it does change your felt, present moment experience of reality. Which causes YOU to thereby ACT and change observable reality over time. 

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Quite the mouthful, right? Let’s look at some examples. 

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If you believe that you are a loser—no good, irredeemable, and broken—consciousness will say “ok cool; let’s give you that experience!” The experience of being a loser, while not objectively true, will feel “as real as it can get.” You will notice things that reconfirm your loser-ness, and will also subconsciously take actions that reconfirm this belief.  

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If you believe that you are powerful—strong, capable, and able to handle anything—your consciousness revs up and goes “ok; one experience of powerfulness coming right up!” You’ll feel the associated emotions of being powerful and act from that place. You will solely pay attention to things that reconfirm your own powerfulness. 

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This is what I mean when I say consciousness doesn’t give a fuck. It is so expansive, infinite, and blank, it appears to take whatever shape our thoughts ask it to. And because so much of our thinking is automatic, uncontrollable, and repetitive, what we feed our minds over time ends up becoming the inner reality we experience, and the external reality we create when we take action from those perspectives.

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This is also how mental health distortions happen

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This little, secret exchange between our thoughts and our consciousness is the fundamental mechanic behind any kind of mental health distortion. 

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If you’ve ever had a panic attack, you’ll know what I mean. A panic attack is a catastrophic thought that connects to our consciousness and makes the catastrophe feel as real as it can get. If I panic because I think I can’t breathe, I never actually stop breathing—but I sure as shit feel like I’m about to, which induces the same fear that being literally unable to breathe would. Consciousness is so powerful it can take this imaginary thought and nearly bring it to life inside of us. 

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We could also think about a delusional person here. A delusion is a strongly held belief that’s not at all reflected in observable reality, such as a person who thinks they’re being spied on. Again, we see a thought (“I am being spied on”) working with consciousness to feel as real as that thought can possibly get—which brings a ton of fear, paranoia, and life disruption, sometimes so much so that the person acts as if that thought is true and undertakes some very strange behavior. 

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The difference between someone who’s delusional and someone who is not is simply the intensity of belief they are giving a thought that isn’t congruent with observable reality. We all have the potential for delusion of varying degrees within us. 

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Until, that is, you learn that consciousness is just doing what we unwittingly ask of it with our thoughts. 

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If you’ve been mired in negative beliefs about yourself or the world for years, we also need to be real about the speed of impact here. Recognizing that belief is nothing more than a thought story is a major, major insight. But then you may say, “Ok, if that’s not true, what is?” Which is a philosophical rabbit hole I can save you from with just a few sentences. 

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No belief is really ‘true,’ and that’s ok! 

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The only single, absolutely true thing about our experience is this—it exists. Period. Things are happening. Another way of saying that is, we are conscious. 

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There are smaller observable truths we can mostly agree on—like the sky is blue, the sun is warm, and humans breathe—but even these, to a degree, are thought stories. Someone could have a genetic disorder that makes them see the sky as red. Your version of “warm” may not be the same as mine. Ultimately, all thoughts are just stories, and no story is ever entirely true because it is not an experience. Only our experience of this moment is absolutely true.  

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Which is only relevant as an answer to the question “what’s true about me?” The only thing really “true” about any of us is that we’re conscious! If that seems boring, remember, consciousness is the precondition for everything. Ergo, you, my dear, have the potential to be literally anything you want to be!

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You can’t be that thing 100% of the time. If you want to be powerful, you’ll inevitably have moments of being powerless. That’s the result of “powerful” just being a concept in your head—it can never be absolutely, unconditionally true. 

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So when it comes to working with consciousness, asking what’s “true” about you is the wrong question. A better question is—what do you want to be true about you? Consciousness is always here waiting for you to feed it something to play with. And if you don’t intentionally pick something, your brain is going to just feed it the same stories you’ve always told because those stories resulted in you being alive here and now. And our brain only ever cares about one thing—our survival. 

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Moving forward, let your feelings be your guide

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I don’t want you to think that you need to stare at your thoughts all day long in order to make sure you live a good life. That’s not what this work is about. Once you know how consciousness works, you can let your feelings be your inner guides about how you’re moving through life. 

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When you feel neutrally peaceful, you are connected to pure consciousness. Remember, consciousness is the one absolute truth about reality. A mindfulness practice like meditation will train you to find this space more frequently throughout your day. It’s critical and essential you build your capacity to return back to pure consciousness, because this is your creative space. 

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When you feel really strong positive emotions, you’re in alignment. The presence of really positive emotions usually means you’re not actually even thinking that much because you’re too busy living. If you are thinking, you’re being a good co-creator with consciousness and conceptualizing your experience in a way that’s helpful, uplifting, and positive, no matter what that experience in observable reality actually is. 

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Some caveats about this:

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1). Some experiences in external reality are, clearly, painful. When a painful experience presents itself to you, the “positive” feeling we look for to assess alignment isn’t joy, bliss, or excitement. Oftentimes, it’s just plain acceptance, or compassion. The total, non-judgemental  acceptance of a painful external experience can create a ‘positive’ internal experience. 

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2). You can only layer positive conceptualization on top of neutral consciousness; not negative consciousness. Translation: when you feel like shit, don’t force yourself to be positive because it won’t work, as you’ll see shortly. You only work with positive perspectives when you feel calm, centered, and neutral in that space of total open consciousness.  

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When you feel really strong negative emotions, it’s game time! 

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1). The first thing you must recognize is that you are captured in a story and your consciousness is using that thought story to make it seem like observable reality is the negativity you’re projecting onto it. Mindfulness improves the speed at which you can do this. 

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2). Once you come to recognition, you might feel some relief instantly. But more likely, the negative feeling will persist a little longer as your thinking remains stirred up. The work here is to stay with the negative feeling without getting sucked into thinking more about it. Try to narrate the sensations that are happening in your body, or just focus on your breathing. 

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3). It can also be tempting to take action from inner negativity. To do or say something when we are afraid, angry, confused, or hurt because we think it will relieve the pain. It may; but it comes at a cost. I promise, you will do something you later regret if you act from negativity. Acting from negativity will also teach your brain that it NEEDS to do this in order to feel better. Cussing someone out once can quickly become a compulsion you use to ease anger. 

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4). Once you’ve returned to calm neutrality, then you decide if any action needs to take place. Do you need to tell your friend they said something offensive? Do you need to give feedback to your colleague? Do you need to leave the party and go to bed early? When we’re in that calm, neutral state of consciousness, the right actions tend to materialize automatically. 

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5). The next day, when you wake up and do your morning meditation, you may reflect on that negative experience and ask—what thoughts did I feed consciousness at that moment? Is there a different, more positive perspective I can feed it for that situation instead? If so, then you may do the work of adding in some more positive perspectives however you see fit. That can be as simple as a little promise you make yourself: “the next time x happens and I find myself feeling y, I’ll remember I’m lost in a story and that z is available to me instead.” 

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It’s worth acknowledging that beliefs can be very, very sneaky. So much so that it can be impossible for you to determine if you’re caught in one. Working with a coach like me is a huge boon because we can quickly spot a disempowering story and help you craft a new one. Please reach out if I can be of service! 

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Photo credit: Susan Wilkinson, Unsplash+