Consciousness Is the Act of Perceiving

We have a different form of consciousness than animals. Some would say that animals are not conscious, or lack consciousness. I would disagree. They are different, but certainly not unaware. Anyone who owns a pet should know that. Compare an animal to some humans and you would have to say the animal is more conscious.

Animals perceive differently. Animals depend on instinct to advise them. We depend on intuition. Thus, when your conscience (note the similarity between the word conscious and the word conscience) tells you one action is bad and another good, you know wrong from right. You don't have to ask yourself a lot of questions: Often, you just know. You know when you do something wrong. You know when you do something right. This is intuition at work. If you intuitively knew something was wrong, but you blocked out that knowledge and listened to your instinct, you might think what was wrong was right. You would then be behaving as if you were an animal. Since you are not an animal, such behavior would be wrong and could lead to de-evolution of your consciousness.

What is the fundamental difference between instinct and intuition? We process sensation and thereby organize reality. Animals don't organize reality that way. They don't process their sensations. Not to the extent we do, anyway. Like it or not, animals must follow instinct. Their sensations tell them what to do. They don't process. They don't figure things out. Consequently they don't have the sort of freedoms we enjoy.

Intuition is a whisper rather than a shout. Sometimes it is a loud whisper. I don't recall which kid it was, but one of those kids that took a gun into a high school and killed a lot of people said, in an interview, that he heard this voice inside him, just before, saying, "You know, you don't have to do this." That was his conscience. He disobeyed it. You don't have to listen to your conscience. It is a whisper, not a shout. Sensations give shouts. The rage roiling inside this kid shouted "Kill Them!" The kid obeyed.

Rage is, among other things, a sensation. To perceive, you must process that sensation, incorporate other information, and structure your reality in concord with the conclusions you make. As you do this, you receive knowledge. It seems to come out of thin air. Actually, it comes out of the process of perceiving and creating a state of awareness within you. We create consciousness. You become conscious because you create it. Creativity and perception are simultaneous, synchronous, and, to a large degree, analogous. You certainly can't have one without the other. And creativity and perception are not opposites. Rather, they are complements. They complement each other.

Ask any fiction writer if perception and creativity are the same. If they are honest - and this might be difficult to surmise; they are, after all, writers of fiction - they will admit that, "Yeah, well, sure. Creativity and perception are the same. At least for me."

Reverting back to animalism is not the only way one might refute the wonderful gift of consciousness, its intuition and processing of sensation. One might borrow the perceptions of others. We do this all the time. Kids have to do this to learn. You listen to your parents, watch their behavior, mimic them, and decide to believe what they believe. And when you're a kid, this activity makes sense and can be a form of perception because you are taking it in and processing the information as best as you can. But later, when you are older and you still believe the same junk - the junky stuff - you have ceased to perceive. You aren't processing. You are borrowing the ideas of others and you aren't processing information. You are on autopilot. Animals can get away with that because they function differently. Adult humans can't expect to do that and be conscious.

Thus, to continue to be conscious is to become more conscious. You have to grow and change. That's part of the plan. If you don't process your sensations, the incoming information, you will fall back on old patterns, old behaviors, old ways... You will become less and less conscious. Part of being human is evolving and transforming. One might as well say that part of being human is being alive. It's just that life for us has a lot to do with consciousness and perception. Perhaps it is also that way for animals, just...different. Perhaps free will is the line of demarcation here. We must choose to transform and grow our consciousness. Animals don't choose. They grow because they have to. We grow, or do not grow, because we choose to live - or we decide to stop choosing and allow our consciousness to die.

Beau Smith is an artist, writer, and webmaster. You can listen to him talk about art and spirituality in his podcast, The Science of Originality, at [http://www.beausmithart.podbean.com]