The amazing feedback loop of Life & Consciousness — How a fully lived life and a refined awareness work seamlessly together in the evolution of our soul
In my life, one topic has been of overarching interest: How does life and consciousness work together.
When I was younger, I had a mantra that I liked to recite to myself:
“Life is the only God I know for sure.”
By “Life” I meant the totality of Life, everything that is existing in the Universe – the whole Cosmos – as well as the life force that animates all of it.
And my – our – individual human life as an integrated part of this Big Life. Albeit one that has the ability to self-reflect and create self-awareness and expand in consciousness.
Over the years I have gained a more differentiated perspective of this amazing inter-action of life and consciousness, the feedback loop that drives the soul’s evolution.
In this article I would like to contemplate on that and hope to be able to clearly share my view with you.
.
. . .
.
To begin, I want to share how i define some of those big words, so we are on the same page, so you know what I mean by the term life, awareness soul, consciousness.
Life (the Big One):
Life is the self-organizing movement of existence expressing itself through form. It is that restless creative force that grows, adapts, relates, evolves, transforms, and eventually dissolves again – only to reappear in new configurations.
Life is not a thing. It is an ongoing event, a process.
Life (of a Person):
The life of a person is the unique trajectory through which Life lives itself as a particular individual story.
It is the unfolding of experiences, karmic pre-configurations, choices, relationships, and inner states through which a human being becomes who they are capable of being.
My personal life is the living laboratory of my soul to gain experience, grow in quality and wisdom, and transcend limitations.
Soul (evolving , reincarnational):
The soul is the continuity of meaning and essence that moves through multiple lifetimes, learning, refining, and integrating experience.
It is not the personality, but the deeper carrier of identity that evolves and expands through incarnation.
Awareness:
Awareness is the immediate capacity to notice and perceive what is happening – sensations, thoughts, emotions, and the outer world – in the moment it unfolds.
Meta-awareness:
Meta-awareness is awareness becoming aware of itself. It is the ability to notice not just what you experience, but that you are experiencing – and how you are relating or reacting to it.
Individual consciousness:
Individual consciousness is the specific egoic field of experience and the cognitive lens that creates the sense of a distinct “me.”
It is the necessary, localized filter that allows a soul to navigate the world as a separate entity.
It is how reality appears from a single, localized point of view.
Collective consciousness:
Collective consciousness is the shared layer of patterns, meanings, assumptions, and perceptions that operate across groups, cultures, and humanity as a whole.
It is the invisible agreement field in which individual consciousness is embedded.
Consciousness (the Big One):
Consciousness is the absolute, non-dual Ground of Being.
It is the infinite field of possibility from which all forms – life, soul, and matter – arise, and the silent reality in which they ultimately dissolve.
Consciousness is the fundamental capacity of reality to know itself.
It is the open field within which all experience appears – prior to, and inclusive of, all individual and collective forms of knowing.
Sometimes I call it God, Brahman, Atman.
But mostly I rather don’t call it anything. It is closer than my breath, but it is really hard to define.
.
. . .
.
The amazing feedback loop of Life & Consciousness
There is an interesting and also peculiar thing that happens when you have been meditating long enough. I mean, for some years 😉.
You begin to notice that sitting on a meditation cushion with your eyes closed and being in the middle of an emotional argument with your lover is not anymore such a different experience as it once has been. (Years ago, i mean 😹)
It is actually the same experience.
The breath is always the same breath.
The arising and passing of sensations, reactive emotions, and randomly triggered thoughts still follow their ancient rhythm of coming and going.
And something in me – something quiet, steady, curious – observes and witnesses it all without quite belonging to any of it.
This is the first insight that I want to explore here:
That life, awareness, and consciousness are not separate things running on parallel tracks but one astonishing feedback loop, each side continuously enhancing and elevating the other.
Seen from this perspective, experience without awareness is just like weather – things happening to me, at me, through me, largely unreflected, mostly unconscious.
Life passes through me like wind through grass, and it may leave very little behind except patterns that I didn’t choose.
And on the other hand – awareness without experience is a beautiful, perfectly polished mirror that is standing in an empty room. Nothing to reflect on. No friction to reveal its nature. No darkness to reveal what light actually is.
The soul needs both in order to develop and grow in consciousness.
It needs the full cacophony of life as a person – love affairs and heartbreaks, triumphs and humiliations, illness and vitality, grief and joy.
And it needs the refined inner witness – what I call meta-awareness – which can hold all of those experiences without disappearing into them, without running from them or making a philosophy out of them.
If both are present – fully lived life and refined awareness – a feedback loop emerges where each side transforms and expands the other.
A genuinely lived and deeply felt life creates the raw material that introspection, reflection, and contemplation can transmute into understanding and insight.
That refinement process, in turn, makes me capable of living more fully, more present, and more courageously.
The territory of what I can welcome and what I let into my life keeps expanding. And as the territory expands, new experiences become possible that couldn’t have arrived before I was ready for them.
What I try to describe here with some clumsy words is in reality a natural spiral upward movement in consciousness that one needs to experience to know how effortless it works.
.
. . .
.
Spiral in the sand as metaphor
of the soul’s growth and expansion in consciousness
If I take time to look back on the events of my life it becomes clear that there are re-accruing themes that show up from time to time.
It seems that there is some intelligence at work that presented me with situations that tried to make me aware of the very same unconscious and nonconstructive pattern of behavior of mine.
In the beginning I recognized my flawed behavior only in retrospect, after the event that triggered it was over.
But with repeated turns of the spiral, I learned more and more about my reactive emotions and the triggers that triggered them.
And I learned to integrate them without judging myself, without shame or guilt.
With meta-awareness growing and alertness and presence becoming my general state of mind, it seems to me that a kind of alchemy happens that I don’t fully understand but is at work anyway.
Without needing to “eliminate” or “change by the force of will” my unhelpful behavior, those patterns soften more and more and literally evaporate at some point.
This description may sound a bit verbose, but it is actually nothing new.
In Dzogchen – the Tibetan tradition of direct awakening – there is a concept called “rang grol”, which translates somehow as auto-liberation or spontaneous self-release that explains in more precise terms what I am trying to say.
It points to a stage of inner development where the gap between experience and awareness has become so narrow, so intimate, that experience itself becomes the path.
Not something you have to process separately later. Not something you have to bring to a therapy session in order to finally understand.
It liberates on contact.
Obviously, this doesn’t happen by skipping over the earlier, harder work of deliberately cultivating awareness – it happens because of that work, extended across enough time and enough genuine life.
.
. . .
.
How to cultivate awareness and meta-awareness
Some practical ways for a dedicated practice.
Spiritual and mystical literature of all times and cultures is full of hints and exercises to develop and cultivate just that – a heightened and refined non-judgmental awareness of the present moment. Which is the basis and cornerstone of any genuine path of spiritual growth.
Here are a few such methods and exercises.
…
The Five-Second Gap
The next time life throws something nasty and annoying at you – a hurtful comment by a friend, you drop your expensive computer to the floor, or a high bill that you did not expect – try to find the “gap.”
Before you are overwhelmed by your favorite reactive emotion – anger, fear, lashing out, crying, shouting, etc. – give yourself five seconds to just watch the feeling.
Don’t try to fix it or push it away, just notice where it sits in your body.
In those five seconds, you have the chance to move from being the “pinball” of what’s happening to you to being the “player.”
It is the simplest way to kickstart that feedback loop and invite meta-awareness into the process.
I know from experience that it might take time and practice to master that method.
Taking a few deep breaths helps 😉
…
Irritation Audit, seeing yourself in the relationship mirror.
It is no secret that close relationships provide us with a lot of “trigger points” that we can use as opportunities to work on our unconscious behavior patterns.
Pick somebody who consistently gets on your nerves and, for twenty-four hours, stop looking at what’s “wrong” with this person.
Instead, look at the specific quality that bugs you and ask yourself:
“Where do I myself do that or a similar thing?”
or
“Where am I afraid to do that?”
If I do that earnestly, I am always amazed at how quickly a frustrating interaction turns into a masterclass in self-discovery. It’s like retrieving a piece of my shadow that’s been hiding in my basement / subconscious mind.
. . .
Mundane Alchemy
I consciously chose one totally boring, repetitive task for a week or so: washing the dishes is a good one for me because I consistently leave some dirt spots on my plates 😹.
And I treat it like the most important thing that I can do all day. Not a robotic activity while I listen to my audiobook.
Just 100% presence.
I notice the temperature of the water or the rhythm of my hands, the shape, the texture and feeling of the object I am cleaning. I really look at the thing in detail, I “notice” all the details of this important “part of my life”.
This is how I can ground consciousness back into Gaia. It reminds me that there are no “throwaway” moments. Everything is fuel for evolution.
. . .
Sending a Signal to the Whole
Every day, do one small, intentional act that serves no purpose for your own ego but helps the “bigger whole.”
It could be picking up a piece of trash, offering a genuine greeting to a stranger, or simply holding a space of peace when a friend is in emotional upheaval.
Do it with the conscious realization that you are a node in the planetary nervous system. You are not just doing a “good deed.”
You are literally vibrating a frequency of coherence through the Soul of Humanity.
. . .
Evening Review
Before I drift off to sleep, I usually take some conscious time to replay my day like a movie.
I simply watch. No judgement of analysis. I see where I was awake and where I have been on autopilot.
By observing my day from this slightly detached and soft-focus perspective, I am training my consciousness to stay “online” more consistently.
I am telling my soul, “I’m paying attention.”
.
. . .
.
You can find more in-depth methods to deepen awareness
in those articles:
Attention, Awareness, Mindfulness, Pure Consciousness – a clarification
… work in progress …