Consciousness gives us just a glimmer of what lies in the mind. Learning the proper use of consciousness helps us to use the mind according to its Laws.

Understanding Consciousness
Rev. Cheril Goodrich ©

In spiritual society there is much ado about consciousness, but very little is ever addressed as to what it means. When I first began to focus on a spiritual life I never really questioned what consciousness was. There is the Christ Consciousness, individual consciousness, mass consciousness, war consciousness, peace consciousness and the list goes on. To get a proper understanding of what consciousness is, the mind must be examined because consciousness is a mind function. Contrary to popular belief consciousness does not belong to the brain because thinking is a mind function; therefore consciousness refers to our thinking process, but where does consciousness fit into the thinking process? In order for the idea of consciousness to be understood, we must first all agree with what it is. The reason that it must be established what consciousness is for is because purpose is a Law of Mind, and if the mind finds no purpose for one of its functions, it will surrender it or release it. At this point it would have to be agreed that consciousness has purpose.
The simplest way to understand consciousness is to understand our own. We can understand how consciousness works when we recognize certain patterns that are prevalent in everyone. The first thing we recognize about consciousness is that it has the ability to pay attention. Paying attention is an internal trait, so consciousness is inside the mind. It does not move outside of the realm of itself to physically change what it is working on because it does not know how. Instead it is learning from outside of itself and giving instruction to another part of the mind. It must use its reasoning ability within itself to understand a new skill or process and it must be fully involved in what it is learning if it is a new skill, for instance driving a car. Until the skill of driving is set in the mind as a skill understood, our constant consciousness is on what we are doing. Consciousness is sending information into the mind/body awareness (sometimes referred to as the unconscious mind) and it is being stored for future use. Once the skill has been learned, another part of the mind takes over that has nothing to do with consciousness. This part of the mind is awareness. So consciousness is sending awareness instruction on how to drive. From this it is learned that consciousness is directing the inner awareness of the mind on how to use a new skill. It could also be said that consciousness directs the body to perform certain skills, and in this case driving would be the skill it is directing the body to perform. It does not hold the skills; they are just made readily available to consciousness by awareness, where all functions of the body are held. So consciousness is the director of the mind. It stands between the body and awareness and tells the mind how to make these two co-operate so they work together. In truth, it can’t “do” anything except direct, and once the driving ability is fixed in awareness, consciousness steps aside and allows awareness to take over, unless there is an emergency and the body is needed to co-operate with awareness. Awareness immediately then gives the situation to consciousness and consciousness can control the body to protect it from harm by directing the body in what it perceives is the right action, perhaps swerving the car to avoid hitting another one.
Consciousness is time motivated, whereas awareness is not. When it is time to do something, consciousness begins to get a little frantic when it doesn’t know what to do. This arouses awareness into believing there is something wrong and something must be done, but it doesn’t know how and a conflict ensues between the conscious mind and the awareness that is held in the body. We call this stress. What is happening is consciousness cannot make a decision as to what to do, and awareness understands that this is not its function so it gets a little frazzled. The body is the one that suffers because the anxiety is stored within it. Clearly what needs to be done is to give the awareness a direction, which is the job of consciousness. But when there is no clear cut choice to make because there is no information for the mind to turn to so it can make a decision, the mind must have an alternate way of making a choice. This is where the Christ Consciousness comes in.
At any time, in any place and in any situation we can consciously choose to be placed under the Christ Consciousness. We can ask that the awareness in our mind be placed under His direction so that He can make a decision for us. This does not necessarily mean that all anxiety will be gone; it just means that we are willing to allow this to happen. Our awareness can then be directed towards perfect Love, or God, and that is the Atonement. The most difficult part of this process is staying out of it, because if we have learned incorrectly that a situation will end in disaster, the awareness that is held in the mind understands this and constantly wants to direct consciousness to what it understands, and in this case it is disaster. Because awareness is creative, and consciousness is directive, when the aware part of the mind believes in disaster, it is trying to show consciousness that this is what it holds as a belief. This is where correction comes in, and this is what the Holy Spirit is for, to direct our awareness away from creating destructively to creating constructively by showing us what has been accepted into awareness that is incorrect.
The mind is the most creative force in the universe, and we still do not understand it. We try to give the brain the ability of the mind because we are human and have a body and believe that only what is seen with the physical eye is real, but thinking is invisible as is the mind. Understanding the mind is self understanding, but in order to understand it we must reach to a Higher level of awareness that goes beyond what we have learned in a physical experience. It is only here that we can learn the truth of our Being.