What is consciousness? by Andrew Schneider

What is consciousness?

One of the most difficult issues of life to define and understand is consciousness. Yet it is a word that is used everyday and people don’t think much about it. Self-help books and personal growth courses often use the terminology of consciousness but frequently don’t really understand what it is all about. Most confuse consciousness with awareness. They are similar ideas but in some ways opposite each other.

Clarity about consciousness is all important. If we cannot properly name something we do not know it. And not knowing it, we have no influence over it. I wish to share with you a few basic insights about consciousness.

We are entering a period of human growth and development where consciousness needs to be a priority focus for each of us if we are to live a meaningful and purposeful life. Meaning and purpose are the primary fruits of consciousness development.

Consciousness is what makes something what it is. It is what defines a person as to who they are. It is the essence of a thing which reveals both its universal truth and its unique individual characteristics. Consciousness is the soul of any reality, it is its essence.

Everyone and everything has an essence or a soul and everyone and everything has consciousness. Each person or thing is unique as individuals. But we are all part of something greater as well. It is consciousness or soul which links us to our greater, universal nature, sometimes called the Divine.

When you have consciousness you are using your heart, your intuition, or your faculties of knowing that transcend the mind. Heart, intuition and these other faculties exist in the realm of soul. So when you know with consciousness you are not separate from what you know. You merge with it. You identify with it as you experience it. It moves you in a way that you experience it as a part of your greater self.

When you have awareness you are using your mind to know something in an objective way. You know something about something. You possess or have knowledge, but as the one who knows you are separate from the thing you know. Awareness happens as a mental reflex whenever the mind is exposed to something, The only choice involved is what we want to pay attention to, or the extent to which we want to learn more about something.

You could call consciousness ‘soul knowing’. The beauty of soul knowing is that soul is not separate from what it knows or contacts. It sees itself in the other. In knowing it fully we touch its essence, and in doing so we love what we know. As soul beings we are essentially love. And through this knowing with soul we grow and expand our sense of who we are as soul beings. We find peace and harmony in our relationships with those people and situations that we approach with this consciousness.

Can we change our consciousness?

We cannot change who we are, but we can shift our identity from being the personality to being the soul. This is a shift from identifying oneself as one’s self-image to identifying with one’s essence. In truth, we really ARE the essence, the soul. And we HAVE the self-image or personality.

To say that we ARE the personality is tantamount to saying that we are our sensations, our emotions, and our thoughts – which we are not. We do not HAVE a soul. We ARE soul and HAVE a personality.

In ages past, people did not speak of changing consciousness. It was not relevant. Consciousness is identity. In the past, people were their personality. And still today, the majority of people identify with their personality as who they are. However, there are more and more people able to disidentify from their personality and identify with their essence, the soul.

In many ways, these two levels of self, of ‘I,’ are opposites. It requires an extremely radical shift in perspectives to make the change from identifying with the personality to identify with the soul. One must re-evaluate all previous ways of understanding, of thinking, of acting, and of being motivated.

The change in consciousness from personality identity to soul consciousness can only occur when a person is ready. Readiness is determined by:

Having sufficient experience from which one has learned a great deal about oneself.
Being willing and able to face the subconscious realities that one has previously repressed.

Having built up a strong ego, so one is able to withstand the vicissitudes of life.
Being independent and responsible for one’s own well-being. Taking responsibility for the consequences of one’s choices.

Can you help someone else change consciousness?

Changing consciousness is not a matter of a desire that can be fulfilled. Instead, it’s a growth process that occurs from within. You cannot make a flower bloom – it will bloom when it gets to that particular stage of unfoldment. But just as the flower needs nourishing and support to get to that stage, so too every person needs nurturing and support to move through the stages of unfoldment.

We can assist people to fulfill their needs. If a person is dependent, we can help them to become more independent by supporting them to recognize and meet their own needs. We cannot help people take responsibility for their choices, which is part of the process of becoming independent, but we can encourage them to take responsibility.

If a person is independent, and is ready to move on to soul growth, we can assist them to understand what those stages of growth involve. We can also invite them to participate in group activities that are soul-based. This might involve group meditation or service of some kind. We can also exemplify through our living the qualities of soul consciousness, which then creates a resonance within others.

Every step of the soul journey necessitates a free and conscious choice for GREATER INCLUSIVENESS. And therefore, there is a letting go or sacrificing of something personal that might inhibit one from being more inclusive. This would be some thoughts, ideas, attitudes, or behaviors that are exclusive, separative, self-centered or judgmental.

No one can help another to make such shifts of perspective. We cannot force such shifts in ourselves, either. One arrives at that stage when the choice is a natural step based on the loving, intelligent unfoldment of heart and mind.

The step toward inclusiveness is inspired and supported by the soul within rather than based solely on personality efforts. When the personality releases its blocks to soul expression, the choice is simply a consciousness assent to the life and impulse of the soul within.

How long does it take to shift in consciousness?

This is a personality-based question that really has no answer in terms of length of time. It takes as long as one lives. Change is a fundamental reality of life in time and space. Change is occurring constantly, but often we don’t recognize it as it may be quite subtle.

The personality is also always trying to keep things the same. Often changes are occurring but we are unconsciously living as if they were not. When this happens, we tend to be out of step with what is happening in our life and in our psyche. As a result something does not work, things go awry and we are not content.

Sometimes the changes that are going on within us and around us are not the changes we want or like. This is because we do not understand them. And this is why they exist.

There are basically two causes for the changes we experience.

1. One cause is the necessity of subconscious, repressed content to surface into consciousness. These are frequently what we would consider to be negative things – something that exists within us that we are not aware of. It is something that we reject and do not own as ours, something for which we have not taken responsibility.

Because we are not aware of some aspect of ourselves and it wants to come into our consciousness, it is therefore causing many things to occur. We usually become aware of it by projecting it onto people or situations outside of ourselves so that we have the opportunity to see it.

It is a fact of psychological life that whatever is unconscious must in time become conscious. So there is always something from the psyche’s shadows seeking the light of awareness. If we do not pay attention to it, it will then get our attention through negative expression of symptoms.

In the Soul Journey, we explore hidden content deliberately so that it no longer controls us, and so that new pathways for soul development and expression can be created.

2. The other cause of the changes we experience is the soul’s activity within us. The soul is constantly emanating its presence in the endless forms of love, intelligence and power. It is the soul’s power or pressure that triggers the subconscious content to surface, because if there is something blocking the soul’s expression within the subconscious then a pathway for expression in conscious life must be cleared. The principle involved is that the soul can only express itself through the path of least resistance. Removing the subconscious blocks that are selfish, ignorant and fearful eliminates specific resistance to the soul’s expression.

When there is no or little resistance within us, the soul will express itself based on our awareness of need within ourselves or around us. The changes we experience through soul expression at those times are greater integration between personality and soul. We inevitably then experience aspects of Beauty, Truth or Goodness. We become more the true Self that we are.

Developing Soul Consciousness and Overcoming Challenges


In his book, Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore says that the greatest illness of modern times is ‘loss of soul.’ I do not think that we have lost soul, but simply have not yet discovered it, and therefore live in a soulless way.

The new consciousness on the planet today demands that we no longer neglect this vital aspect of who we are. Ignoring this reality has dire consequences, as Moore points out: “When soul is neglected, it doesn’t just go away; it appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions, violence, and loss of meaning. Our temptation is to isolate these symptoms or to try to eradicate them one by one; but the root problem is that we have lost our wisdom about the soul, even our interest in it.”

Becoming soul-conscious or expanding consciousness is not a choice. It is a deep and natural urge within all of us that is being emphasized by the needs in the world today. The only choice is whether or not we will cooperate or resist the expansion of consciousness once it begins happening. And consciousness expands in all aspects of life where we have gained sufficient awareness and learning.

When we resist this movement of soul within we become ill, we have accidents, we are unhappy, we have money problems, emotional pain is experienced, relationships don’t work well. In general, our life sends us signals to which we must pay attention. Through developing soul consciousness, we learn what these signals are, how to interpret them, and then what to do about them. The Soul Journey will assist you with this.

The evidence of the drive for expanded consciousness, or soul, is found in everyone’s deep yearning to be free. The liberation we want is the release from duality – the very stuff that the challenges of life are made of. But we cannot find this freedom unless we deal effectively with the challenges.

All challenges that we experience are initiated by the soul, even though it can appear that the challenges come from other people, the world around us, society, circumstances and situations. What is the nature of these challenges? What is their purpose? How can we master them?

(Andrew’s e-book ‘Water into Wine’ identifies the basic 9 challenges of life, shows us their purpose, and gives us the understanding we need to master them.)

As we master our challenges, we gain in wisdom and develop the power, love and intelligence that is characteristic of soul consciousness. When we incorporate the mastery into our identity, we transform and experience greater liberation.




To find out more about the Soul Journey and other consciousness related materials of Andrew Schneider, please visit http://www.thesouljourney.com