On the True Nature of Consciousness

Psychology and Philosophy in Magic
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What is consciousness?
“ the state of being awake and aware of one’s surroundings.”

What does it mean to be conscious of reality?
From the above definition it means to be aware of your environment.

What’s awareness then?
“knowledge or perception of a situation or fact.“

Is consciousness a good/bad thing?
Hyper vigilance is anxiety and therefore bad for you

Too little is stupor/sleep/death obviously also not the best for you.

What should we be aware of?

How do we make value judgements?

What do we do with consciousness?

raise (one’s) consciousness

To increase one’s awareness or understanding of one’s own needs or the needs of others.

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Consciousness is a fascinating topic, to the point is not really understood by science. A good chunk of living things are indeed conscious and that begs the simple question of why, if it only mostly wastes energy

I’ve believed most of my life that it is just a freak accident that, as everything else, evolved to try to be a perk, a feature instead of a bug, so to speak, but the older I get (and the more I practice) I wonder if it is not an active mechanism in the universe. According to Hermeticism, it would be right. According to me, I have questions, not answers.

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I don’t have anything smart to say about consciousness. I need to understand reality because that’s an integral part of my being.

Consciousness is just the elephant in the room.

From my other thread that touched on mental illness, here’s another stab at it:Conscious v. Subconscious (medicinally v. Legally)

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An altered state of consciousness is a change in one’s normal mental state as a result of trauma or accident or induced through meditation, drugs, some foods, etc. [1] The person is not unconscious.

What do I hope to achieve by this?

Why can consciousness be altered?

Why should consciousness be altered?

Can consciousness understand itself?

Can AI have consciousness?

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Can consciousness be transferred?

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consider this, you can actively remove your consciousness from your body and still persist. What does that knowledge now do to all of your previous questions?

to me consciousness is a collective bank of stored experiences and knowledge. but it is far more than that, you can access memories from previous or future lives. once you learn to interact with it you can utilize its functions to exit the corporeal body. Here’s a quick little activity you can try to get a better understanding of how the consciousness/awareness moves. Lay down flat in bed and close your eyes. think about one of your feet. Any feelings or sensations, maybe some blood pumping. After a little bit your entire awareness will be down in your foot. You will feel like you are in your foot instead of your head. Once you have this and you are familiar with this sensation. Try sending this awareness through your whole body.

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I’m able to meditate and move my awareness to my hand for example. I also become much happier like that. For me this state is fleeting and unstable, I’m no Buddha and neither do I want to be.

The problem to me in meditation like I said that it alters your state of awareness away from alpha.

I’d like to change the alpha state from its root.
I’m interested in being more aware in regular consciousness.

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How do you change the nature of your regular consciousness in the modern world without becoming a monk?

How do you use the nature of your mind to your advantage?

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Why do I keep asking questions I’m not answering?

My goal is pure thought when the sound, that’s the disturbance in the waters of consciousness and them are one.

To do that questions are required. Each one builds on the previous one, answers are just land beneath the waters…

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Are we just robots actors in a big play?

Who are we really?

What’s really our brain?

What’s the difference between brain and mind?

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I’m going to use statements now.: consciousness gives you a lot of power but it also leads you to experience pain in a way a rock cannot.

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This statement assumes that rocks aren’t sentient and don’t have feelings.

Take plants for instance. Studies have been done and shown. Results that lead to the opposite outcome. Plants can get the exact same light, amounts of water and nutrients. Only difference being the way someone talked to the plants. So the plants that were praised grew exponentially. While the plants that were screamed at and belittled had stunted growth.

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Yes. But you start with rocks and move to plants, stones are dead in my view, while plants live and can feel.

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How do you know they are “dead”?

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@Kish I only feel residual energy when I’m around them.

Do you feel any different?

The word stoned in English according to Google means under the influence of drugs, especially marijuana.

From this I understand unaware of your physical surroundings and anything completely lacking that awareness like regular stones the kind you find on the road or thrown around on the street because even plants have awareness of what’s physically around them is the definition of death.

My intuition tells me that crystals/gems/precious metals have some awareness of their surroundings because people worship them and give them energy.

I’m not saying don’t experiment but everything has risks and rewards and experimenting with heavy doses can be very dangerous.

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I read an article in one of the Israeli newspapers about men and women: how men view the world as a hierarchy and women as a social network.

Kinda makes sense: if the first deities were female as history suggests then the world was very different thousands of years ago.

Here’s to you @Veil and your law of assumption.

Everything is numerical now and makes you count therefore the extreme of the male hierarchical mind.

I myself like some flexibility and would much rather have more female social aspects now.

This is a gross generalization, but a useful model nonetheless.

Is it really a difference of consciousness?

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So read in another thread here that the first deities were in fact female saturnine. So elohim is also female because I read in one of the Qabbalah books that they are binah in this world.

Binah is understanding in English and in the gemmorah it says the ability to deduce one thing from another thing v. Chockmah wisdom that’s defined as the scholarly superficial grasp on the surface of a thing v. Daat that’s translated as knowledge that’s explained as the connection between the previous two and seeing both the trees and the forest.

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Why does philosophy seem to be outside of the mainstream life and study of consciousness?

What’s even the definition of mainstream?
“the ideas, attitudes, or activities that are regarded as normal or conventional; the dominant trend in opinion, fashion, or the arts.”

Many People want easy quick answers. While philosophy gives convoluted hard answers that aren’t immediately applicable to everyday life.

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Is philosophy really divorced from everyday life consciousness study?
It doesn’t have to be it can be a part of it. It can elevate it: for example- understanding the executive function can help one act more efficiently and quicker.

Does philosophy have an intrinsic value? Philosophy that studies itself can help hone the tools necessary to study other more practical fields, like AI neurology that have to do with directly studying consciousness in the real world.

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Consciousness is… pretty much all I do in regard to magical activities… :smirk: So… to give a really tight idea of what consciousness is from my perspective, it is the product of creation. For one is created by matter and shall become matter. Consciousness is a construct to access matter, to deligate the interaction of the mind. If you where to… have to manage all your body cells, it would be quite a mind boggling task, right?

So, the idea of what consciousness is, from the Spiritual side of things, varies depending on who you ask. A priest and a Practitioner of Esoteric Arts will most likely both give a different response on the topic, but the one bit they likely would argree on, is deligation of effort being a key stone in what consciousness is. And it is for this very reason, that ones effort (spells, techniques, environmental use, abilities, etc.) work on consciousness. It is also something crucial that do make the Dark Arts functionable on the those dwelling in the flesh. (note: I use this phrase usually for all Occult arts and I do not concieve “white” or “dark” when writing in the context of Dark Arts)

In regard to “being aware”, I am writing an entire treatise on this very topic… not only what it is, but how it can be used too… this is one of the oldest topics known in magical lore, and no matter if one speaks about Spirits, Souls, Beings, or Emotions, warfare or strategy, it can always be rooted back into this very fundamental aspect of All Magic. If one where to contemplate on the lifeless, dead, undead, and so forth… it still would be used by one not one of those, to do relate to what its effect are.

Most people have mixed feelings about this topic, and for certain styles it is not that important, but if trying to do more technical and calculative stuff, what I usually do, it is quite hard to escape this topic of comprehending and permutating the fundamental corner stones of consciousness. Because it is so very basic in many ways, it has really a wide field of use, and I am pretty sure many people use their own thoughts surrounding this topic in various ways… yet often whirl back to the same concepts over and over again… something that settled my horizon into dealing with this field of the Occult throughout the years.

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