Why Consciousness Matters: III

Your Path to Growth is Crucial to Your Well-being

This is a review and addition from former blogs on “consciousness:” One and Two.

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Did you know that we’re all struggling to achieve a higher state of consciousness? It’s evolution.

Our biology is constantly pushing against our mind, body, soul, and environment physically, sexually, socially, relationally, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, etc. When you feel stuck in any area, your soul is begging you to find a way to increase your consciousness! This is why, if you’re conscious of yourself, you’ll often feel an angst with yourself and your surroundings. When our internal consciousness is mismatched with our external—either higher or lower—it’s frustrating to feel stuck.

Here’s my third-grade definition of consciousness and why it matters: consciousness is your ability to work through stuff. So the higher consciousness you have in any realm, you possess an increased ability to work through something. Therefore, the more you work through things in your life, the more intimacy, peace, freedom, and connection you’ll experience.

Consciousness is when discomfort and adversity is experienced and reprocessed in healthy and productive ways. Our cumulative ability to work through adversity in different fields roughly represents our consciousness as individuals and collectives. Communities, cities, and countries also have a collective consciousness —countries that work through issues such as health and wellness, economics, individual freedom and rights, efficiency, etc. have higher consciousness.

Now you might be asking, “How do I grow in consciousness?” Or in other words, how can you work through more stuff?

First, you must expose yourself to new stimuli and then work through it. You gain consciousness when you…

…consistently attend a new workout class.

…visit a new country, exposing yourself to different languages and customs and figure out how to survive on your own.

…confront your past and dig into the feelings you’ve been unconsciously repressing or projecting deep so that you can begin to experience yourself and others in new ways.

Unprocessed trauma is a consciousness killer. When we feel we’re at the end of our ability to emotionally process, we self-medicate. We project. We deflect. We make excuses. We tune out and distract ourselves. Or, we do the same methods we’ve always done.

In a nutshell, therapy is working through your thoughts and feelings in healthier ways. Over time, your ability to take on an emotional workload will increase. Before you literally may have been unable to process an emotion — this is normal — many new clients have never fully processed an emotion (i.e. I am feeling “angry,” “unsafe,” “alone,” etc.) and communicated this to a partner. Unless you’re working through thoughts and feelings, you’ll unconsciously live out the same patterns resulting in a stuck state of consciousness.

What are other examples of growing in consciousness?

If you eat healthier meals (which takes work!) you grow in consciousness.

If you hit a new PR (which takes work!) you grow in consciousness.

If you ask your boss for a raise (which takes work!) you grow in consciousness.

If you choose love over negativity (which takes work!) you grow in consciousness.

If you see another person’s point of view even if you disagree (which takes work!) you grow in consciousness.

Have you ever heard someone say, “Yoga has changed my life! You need to do it.” Or, “Therapy changed my life…this diet changed me life…etc.” They’re saying that new, habit-forming practices allowed them to become an evolved version of themselves. Essentially, consciousness raised; each area of life improved.

If you’re shy and you ask your boss for a raise, I can bet it’s gonna grease the wheels for you to talk to your partner about an unaddressed issue. If you hit a new PR at the gym, it’s more likely you’ll choose love over negativity because of those endorphins and newfound encouragement that you can achieve things you never have. What’s happening? You’re waking up to a truer version of yourself and objective reality.

If you want more info on stages of consciousness, colloquially referred to as “Grave’s Spiral Dynamics,” I included a colored coated chart below (www.spiraldynamics.net). Spiral Dynamics, originally coming from Clare Graves is like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but on crack.

Consciousness is energy that ties everyone together: connecting us with ourselves, others, the environment, and the divine. When people are getting in arguments it’s usually a different of states of consciousness.

If you look at the chart, let’s say one person is in a state of consciousness that’s based on power and control (Red) and the other is in truth and security (Blue), they’re constantly going to clash. Same with if one person is in the aforementioned Blue and their partner is more inclined to think about their own personal achievement and advancement (Orange)—there will be clashes in communication as both think they’re in the right. They’ll both feel like they’re trying to survive and they’ll both feel their partner doesn’t understand what they’re experiencing. Why?

They’re operating under completely different values systems because their ability to work through stuff is at different capacities. This model of consciousness can be applied to just about any area of life.

A few notes:

every other stage of consciousness switches from an individualistic to group lens. So Purple, Blue, Green, and Turquoise and more group oriented while Beige, Red, Orange, and Yellow are more individualistically oriented.
Since it goes every other, often people think they’re two stages above where they’re at as they can mirror the same value set. Additionally, people who are in higher stages can understand where the lower stages are at (because they were once there and put in the work to ascend).
People who interact with higher stages can get a glimpse of where they’re coming from but can’t really ‘get it’ because they just don’t have the experience. Either way, it often causes discord on both sides from communication.
The higher a stage of consciousness the more a person needs to explain in theories, analogies, and parables followed by examples. The lower a stage of consciousness people explain themselves in absolute statements, advice giving, and using power of authority.

Best of luck on your consciousness journey!

If you’re interested in learning more about consciousness, I heard a set of podcasts from Personality Hacker that got me interested. Also, look up “Graves Spiral Dynamics” to begin seeing how different levels of consciousness are intertwined between your individual self and your environment.

Why Consciousness Matters: III