If we look more deeply into this model, applying psychological and neurobiological understanding, we can distinguish 3 unique aspects of mind. These are levels of consciousness or bands of awareness in the mind. We can call them:

• Animal consciousness (the reptilian and mammalian brain),
• Human ego consciousness (the neo-cortex), and
• God consciousness (the Heart).

While the body is our functional vehicle that makes living on Earth possible, the mind is our vehicle of consciousness that makes learning, knowing, and choosing possible. Mind is also the mediator of our spiritual development and evolution. Mind is the instrument, the tool, with which we direct and shape our life.

God consciousness, though so unseen and unknown (typically), plays a fascinating role. It guides our evolution, evokes our desire to grow, inspires virtue, and leads us to the higher road. God consciousness is the nucleus of our own evolutionary potential. It is an infinite dimension implanted in a finite mind. Knowing the infinite within us, sensing it, and incorporating it creatively in our fullness of self is purely optional. Evolution is voluntary and it is won with nothing less than interest and effort.

The development of our 3 aspects of mind and how we relate to them makes us who we are. It seems to me that, generally, humans tend to identify with the human ego aspect. The animal mind is widely disowned — especially by those who reject the fact of our animal ancestry. Even when that’s not the case, we disavow the animal mind for other reasons. Spiritual purists (I call them ascensionists) posit that we have ascended from our animal depths and are embracing our human nature on our way to God nature. In other words, we have left our animal mind behind, we’re over that now. A few go as far as to believe they’re already transcending the human and are more or less established in their divinity. Many cult leaders have convinced their flock of this.

I have seen this ascension myth perpetrated by scientists and other particularly smart people, who are so enamored with their intellect that they cannot accept the idea that an animal nature lurks within. When combined with an atheistic proclivity, they are helplessly fixated in the ego mind. Stuck in the confines of a narrow human viewpoint. Disconnected from the perspective and guidance of a super-consciousness they cannot prove.

Consciously speaking, we are that which we identify with. There are those who identify most strongly with the animal nature. This would include primitive tribes people, of course, and very young children, and unfortunately, more than a few adults – they live on instinct, failing to learn from mistakes, bumbling through life with a diminished sense of past and future.

Very few among us, for all our potential, ever achieve an identification with God consciousness, even a recognition of it in the first place. I think that the single greatest secret of human existence, the greatest secret kept from the people of Earth, is the reality of God consciousness. The second big secret is the presence of God consciousness within the human being.

Our religions and churches are not hoarding the first secret, but second secret – I think they do. From the time churches have existed they have played the role of middleman between the individual person and God. For millennia, the leaders of our churches have convinced their flock that God cannot be found on your own. Hey, that’s pretty convenient, keeps them in business, keeps attendance up and the tithes coming in. Every church that has ever sought power and wealth has a motive for keeping secret the fact that God lives in you as you.

The effect of this is that we are a people who go through life quite unaware of our divine nature. Autistic to the inner presence of God consciousness, which is in us every moment of every day of our life, waiting to be known.

Our spiritual service to ourselves is to acknowledge this consciousness, getting to know it, finding it, and beginning to identify with it. Our spiritual service to others is to acknowledge the God consciousness in them, treat them as such, mirror their divine nature to them with your attitude and respect, and if they ask, reveal the secret.

Image is courtesy of Aeires, an abstract digital artist whose work you can see at abstractdigitalartgallery.com

Image is courtesy of Aeires, a digital artist whose work you can see at abstractdigital