1- H4H News: What is Consciousness?

Synopsis: Hope for Humanity News is a series of three to five-minute weekly podcasts designed to educate, inspire, and comfort listeners during these challenging, but hopeful times. 

Hi everyone! Welcome to Hope for Humanity News! I’m Reverend Joan Kistler.

“What is consciousness?” Well, for us to ask this question is kind of like fish asking, “What is water?” Yeah, right! It’s swimming in it! Without water, fish couldn’t experience anything because there would be nothing holding its world together.

We are swimming in consciousness. Without consciousness, we couldn’t experience anything. Consciousness holds our world together and gives us the ability to say, “I AM.”

Consciousness can be compared to a canvas. Without the canvas, there would be no space for the artist’s artwork to appear. And even though shapes appear as separate forms on the canvas, they are not separate from the canvas or any different in nature from the canvas: they are just painted.

When I came into this world, this basic human shape was given a name. From there, colors were added:
I am female; I am Caucasian; and so forth. With each color, I began to experience myself as a unique creation. It’s fun, but it’s also limiting because I have to fit this “self” within the definitions of the lines and colors.

But when I simply say “I AM,” I free myself from all the lines and colors and return my identity to the canvas itself: Consciousness, the formless, timeless, limitless essence of Being.

We suffer because we became obsessed with this “self” – or ego. Our attention was drawn further and further away from the formless, colorless tapestry until we lost our awareness of the “I AM” and became trapped in ego consciousness.

What is ego consciousness? Tune in next week!