The gift of consciousness

What is consciousness? Consciousness means caring – about others in our lives, others in the world and about the world itself. It’s the awareness that we are all connected, and it’s one of the greatest gifts of life. There are four types of consciousness:

• Egocentric: This is when you care about yourself. We live in a culture that promotes this type of consciousness. We think we are all our own islands, but we’re not. When we focus on only ourselves, we all suffer.
• Ethnocentric: This means caring about others within your tribe. It’s better than only caring about yourself, but it creates opposites, gives us something to fight. It isn’t true consciousness.
• World-centric: This is when we care about people outside of our tribe. We care about people we’ve never even met, just because they’re part of humanity. This is a higher form of consciousness.
• Spirit consciousness: At the highest level of consciousness, we care about everything: animals, things, all beings.

Expanding consciousness

Humans are the only animals with the ability to cultivate the gift of consciousness. The mind is a tool, but consciousness is an experience. The mind is what we’ve been taught, what’s been conditioned in us. It doesn’t necessarily hold the truth. Consciousness is what we are, at our core. And we can cultivate it.

The first way to cultivate consciousness is to take full responsibility for your experience of life. We’re the only animals that can do that. We have the power to choose the meaning we give to our lives, to choose our emotions, to choose to live mindfully.

Consciousness can also be cultivated through a path of directed inquiry. We can meditate, pray, visualize and use priming. We can seek out new, consciousness-expanding experiences through travel or through other people. As long as we are deepening our ability to care, our ability to connect on a deeper level with the universe and with others, we’re cultivating consciousness.

Nicolette Richer and Andy Ruben

We’ll all do more for others than we’ll do for ourselves. That’s part of the beauty of humanity. And the more you care about others, the more alive you will feel. In this podcast we’ll hear from two figures who chose a path of higher consciousness in their careers and lives.

Inspired by her grandmother from Malawi, Nicolette is on a mission to help people reconnect with the wisdom and awareness of their ancestors to heal disease. Andy, the founder of Yerdle, believes that a circular sharing economy allows us to experience life more fully, while protecting our environment – and that it’s even good for business.