Author: Nick Hilton

“Self-consciousness” is an emotional state that implies separateness, and some amount of discomfort. I am self-conscious when I am standing out from my fellows, or my surroundings, like a man in a top hat among miners. We love the person who can wear the top hat in the mine and neither feel nor exhibit any sense of separateness: the truly charismatic are not self-conscious in this way.

But Self-consciousness, in another sense, is the blessed state of awareness or consciousness that the spiritual student seeks. When one is conscious of the Self that is the Universal One-ness; when one feels part of this Self, united with God, with nature and with all others, all apartness, all alienation, and all worldly “self-consciousness” disappears.

I can't for the life of me understand why --
given the depth of the infinite darkness
I see above me from this garret window as I
look out from my lamplit room at nighttime sky

Or downward from this mountainside hotel room
at the blackcold lake, the ancient city spread below 
- small circles in a glow of mercury vapor - on an
ordinary evening of an ordinary day of ordinary gloom

-- Why you choose to wander the dark streets below,
choose to believe this is the be-all and end-all and
choose to choose this trattoria, that tavola calda - 
and give no thought to the chiesa where you might go

To see a world in its festooned disguises, to see
what is beyond mercury and mountains and cities and me

Traditionally we are taught to seek God as being outside of ourselves, as something we must learn to contact by an act of will, from within outward; but if God is all and everywhere, we should seek inwardly for the feeling of being with God, for recognition of our own Godliness, for God’s power and grace in our lives. This is constantly with us, so it is more a matter of clearing away that which is not God from our consciousness. This is what prayer accomplishes.

Desire to believe in God arises from a basic personal need. A person either feels such a need or does not. It is not possible to convince someone who claims not to feel such a need that it is in fact there. But it may be argued that this neediness is a universal human condition, and those who do not feel it are actually desensitized to it, either by the “things” and distractions of life, or by the cares with which his or her life is pulled down. Fanaticism is another response to neediness, substituting aggression for confidence. Loving affirmation from one’s parents, family and friends may make experiencing this neediness less painful, but the desire to be grounded in some eternal spiritual experience is universal in human history, the wellspring of culture and religion, and, with them, of civilization.

“I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand.”        -St. Anselm 1033-1109

Faith is not an intellectual enterprise. We pray from the heart and eventually the nature of God is revealed to us in our very hearts, and by frequently referring to this wordless revelation our outlook, behavior, even our surroundings, become blessed. We understand God in a way that is not communicated the way ideas are communicated.

We limit God by referring to God as “He.” We limit and diminish the Allness, the Ever-presence, the completeness of God by assigning attributes of maleness or femaleness or of any human characteristic. These linguistic definitions create, ipso-facto, a less awesome God; they create a God  as false as Baal or Diana. “She” or “It” are equally limited, equally misleading. God is a concept beyond all other concepts, the ground from which reality has arisen, in which we “live and breathe and have our being.” Surely the ancients understood this when they referred to YHWH, the origin of everything, whose name cannot be spoken.

All that is required of us in order to be given this new life is to ask. That is the essential miracle. We ask in God’s name, continually and with an optimistic attitude, for His guidance and His love, and it is given to us. Our task is only to remember to ask.

Conscious awareness of the miracle of existence, my life and yours, and of the phenomenon of this universe that we exist within; this is love. I was born by infinitesimal chance, and the gift of having been born is awareness. I am here, and I know that I am here; this is love. Inherent in this awareness there is motivation to enhance and reinforce it, to celebrate it, to share it with others. This is love. Simply put, I am motivated to care for and to protect my children by a force that I was born with, a force that has no selfish aims, a force that is universally understood. My purpose on Earth is to foster, nurture and protect Life.

If I am learning from my struggles, if I come through periods of difficulty with greater strength and wisdom, so that I am able to deal with the next round of adversity more productively and with greater equanimity, and if my coping with distress serves as an example to others, then I am worthy of my suffering.

There is a certain knack to separating my self from the thoughts that run through my mind. If I am conscious of the quality and content of my thoughts, if my more enlightened consciousness can be trained to evaluate and so direct the moment-to-moment idea-train of less enlightened mental activity, I can learn to edit and conduct my thinking in a more beneficial way. Developing this skill requires a regimen of frequent meditation, during which I attempt to maintain “pure” consciousness – an awareness of only breathing, or prayer, or my environment – and thus become able to recognize when thoughts intrude. I begin to qualify humdrum mental activity, to see its truth or falsehood, positive or negative character, and welcome or dismiss it. The more enlightened mind thus learns to affect the everyday thinking for the better.