VLOG | E2 | Universal existing, consciousness, and the caring self

This episode is based on the Universal Law of Existing, which you can read in my blog post and watch in the previous episode, the first episode of this channel.

The goal here is to summarize ideas on consciousness and the self, as we human beings have debated this for centuries, probably thousands of years.

From Universal Existing, eventually we get living beings, which are actively existing, as I described in my previous episode.

From studying the research, especially the biologists who talk about how life may have began, something had to be present in living beings to continue existing, and that something would be an awareness of its in environment, especially of its food, or other sources of energy.

That is exactly where I believe awareness started, or had to start happening, and continues to be happening, in every living being.

A single cell living being has to be aware of its environment, especially of its food source; it has to distinguish between food and non-food, or the energy it needs to continue existing.

When I studied consciousness and the self in my first Master’s degree in the late 1990s, I really liked one of my professors’ book about consciousness, as he basically broke it down into two: primary consciousness and reflective consciousness.

Primary consciousness is an awareness of the world around you, which all living beings have, which I just explained. But reflective consciousness is something only a few living beings have, like perhaps dolphins, chimpanzees, and, most certainly, us human beings.

That means we are aware of ourselves like we are aware of our environment — we KNOW what we are, and that is consciousness, and the self — nothing more, nothing less.

This relates to the caring self because we living beings are actively existing, or caring, and that’s exactly what we are — our self is nothing more and nothing less than CARING.

We need to know what we are, literally because we CAN know what we are — due to reflective awareness, or reflective consciousness.

We are the caring self, similar to any living being, and that has enormous implications on how understand each other, relate to each other, and love each other.