As a species we are still psychologically and emotionally illiterate. We are still woefully uninformed in the inner workings of our consciousness. More importantly than that, the vast majority of us have no idea that this is even a problem, let alone that we can do something about it. On the contrary, the general consensus is simply that the world is broken and that we need to fix it, as opposed to the deeper truth, which is that we are broken, and that our world is simply a reflection of that.
The time is ripe for us to collectively establish a standard model of consciousness that we can offer our children in school and at home. A simple, yet comprehensive training able to lay the foundation for a lifetime of greater internal peace, external clarity, and civic responsibility that is as important as reading, writing and arithmetic.
The Anatomy of Consciousness
We all grow up with a certain degree of disempowering psychological and emotional programming that usually begins to play out in adolescence, and if left unexamined, continues all the way into adulthood. This includes the ways we have been taught to engage in conflict, the way that we relate to power and figures of authority, the way that we love, manage the dynamics of give and take, as well as our ability to hold healthy boundaries.
All of these ingrained, inherited and in many cases conditioned programs deeply effect the trajectory of our lives, the quality of our relationships, the potential for our success, and our health and well being. Their importance can not be overstated, and yet nowhere in conventional education are we told anything about them. Nowhere are we taught how to identify these programs within us, let alone address them.
In addition to this, human consciousness possesses a number of different internal systems that are all solely designed to provide us with information about the world around us on a moment by moment basis. These systems include the thoughts inside your head, the sensations in your body, the spectrum of your emotions, the impulses of your heart, as well as your self preservation instinct, to name but the main five.
Each of these systems possesses very real expertise in a particular domain of life and expresses that expertise to you in a very specific language. Identifying these systems, differentiating them from one another, as well as understanding the ways that each of them communicates is an essential and invaluable training. However, like your mother and father tongue, the languages of these internal systems are not spontaneously understood, they do not come naturally and automatically to a developing child, and perhaps even less so to an already crystallized adult. To become fluent in them, they must be learned.
Finally (but not lastly) one of the most important elements that a standard model of consciousness would include is an education on the purpose and function of the unconscious. The fact that the actions and influence of this silent titan behind the curtain of our psyche is never spoken about, let alone taught to young people is an outrage, and tantamount to releasing them into the very complex game of life without ever clearly telling them that their dice are loaded, their shoe laces are tied, and that whether they like it or not they are going to fall and often not just once, but repeatedly, over and over again until they turn and face it. That is the effect of an unexamined unconscious upon our lives, and no one, without exception, is immune to it.
All of these systems within us are not only completely ignored by modern education, in many cases they are actively suppressed so that the vast majority of us are not even aware they exist. A model of consciousness would address all of them in a way that would help individuals establish a greater internal foundation within them that would allow them to more easily navigate the complexity of modern life.
The Essentials of Healthy Consciousness
It is for these reasons that I created the Essentials of Healthy Consciousness Series, so that we could collectively begin the process of establishing a standard guide to our world inside, a manual of human consciousness able to simply and effectively navigate us through the most important avenues of the psyche, avoid its pitfalls and benefit from the full array of its wisdom, that has always been at our disposal.