Directing our consciousness

WE have to give due attention—and care—to our sense of

consciousness. We should not just allow it to flow in any way. We need

to direct it, we need to shape it, we need to fill it with something

that should be appropriate to us as persons and as children of God.

  

          We cannot allow our consciousness to be empty and passive,

simply waiting for things to happen. We cannot allow our consciousness

to be simply at the mercy of our bodily and worldly conditions. It has

to transcend this dimension of our life, using of course our spiritual

faculties of intelligence and will, and always asking for the grace of

God.

  

          In fact, the ideal is that our consciousness should always

be engaged and excited, animated and stimulated by something that

sparks it into the dynamic of love.

  

          We should not allow our consciousness to be bored or

languishing in a state of ennui. As much as possible, it has to be

active all the time. Resting, as when we go to sleep, or when we fall

unconscious due to sickness, is not actually knocking off our

consciousness.

  

          It is bringing it to another state where the mind disengages

itself for a while from the bodily mechanisms and the physical world,

but still maintains its contact with its life source—our spiritual

soul, which properly speaking should be animated by the spirit of God

and not just any spirit.

  

          As articulated by St. Augustine, our usual problem is that

while God is always with us, we are not always with him, in the sense

that we tend to ignore him. We can never be without God. Our life is

not simply a product of all the biological, physical, social elements.

It is first of all maintained and supported by God, its creator, and

that is for always.

   

          Let us remember that in our most ideal and ultimate state of

life where we are supposed to be face to face with God, the only thing

that will function in us will be our consciousness. Everything else

will be kind of sublimated into it. Our bodily functions, while

remaining physical and material, will be spiritualized.

  

          This, of course, is difficult to imagine. That is why we

have been warned that “eyes have not seen, nor ears heard, what God

has prepared for those who love him,” referring precisely to how

things will be in our ultimate state of life.

  

          But we can get some idea of this spiritualized body when we

consider the resurrected Christ, our way, truth and life, the pattern

of our humanity and the savior of our damaged humanity. The

resurrected Christ had a body as attested to by the testimony of St.

Thomas the doubter. But in one of the appearances of Christ before his

apostles, his body managed to enter the room even without opening the

door.

  

          We need to realize that the proper state of our

consciousness is when it has God as its primary object of awareness.

Otherwise, it will be looking for something else, or failing in that,

it will just be languishing and putting itself at the mercy of

whatever would excite it, and these will just be worldly things.

  

          Obviously, to be always aware of God in our consciousness

would require the grace of faith that is actually given to us in

abundance. We just have to correspond to that grace by making many

acts of faith, hope and charity. These little ejaculatory prayers are

like little pieces of fuel that will keep our presence of God from

dying. They in fact help in making for a big bonfire of presence of

God all throughout the day.

  

          It’s about time that we examine more deeply how our sense of

consciousness is and do something about it to conform it to its proper

state.