Watching Dr. Shefali Tsabary talk about consciousness was a breakthrough moment. It made me realise that true deep consciousness is the centre of everything. She describes how love without consciousness becomes need, dependency and control. This made me ponder about love and how privileged we are to experience something as satisfying as love. But then the realisation came to me that the complex human experience without consciousness can be torturous and fear-instilling. Dr. Shefali also spoke about how a child whose life affirming self being minimised to external, superficial, ego-based factor such as prettiness, grades, etc. puts them on pillars that, if they crumble, can pull the child down into despair despite being much more complex and life loving than that. It then made me understand that I am a victim of this. It has caused me damage and I have experienced first hand the despair it causes. My life has been hinged by my parents and wider society upon economic success, and therefore at my stage of life on academic success as a predetermining factor. As someone who has at times struggled to meet the expectations that were placed upon me, at times I have pulled myself down and minimised myself to being no more than a failure but I'm so much more than that! My life without consciousness would be in utter despair - and this is something that I continue to pull myself back into when I compare myself to other people. It seems like I must now be the one to deconstruct these pillars of success and rebuild stronger ones. Consciousness is particularly important for myself as an LGBT person as well. Coming into a world that does not fully accept who I am leads me to internalise these messages and I inevitably put myself down and face internal conflict. Without consciousness I cannot accept the circumstance I am in and understand that what other people say has nothing to do with my self worth. This greatly involves battling my shadow self, my ego, to which the key is consciousness. But consciousness is not easy to achieve. It involves self-balancing and constant awareness of my emotions. I cannot foresee this being something other than a journey that will take place over many years, but there is beauty in this - I can be vulnerable and connect with people on this to form deep emotional bonds. As a final thought, I want to briefly reflect on another one of Dr. Shefali’s brilliant notes. That life is not about happiness how most pursue it. As she says, life is to be experienced in every nuance as it presents itself in the as is. If we seek life only in the happy moments then we set ourselves up to run away from inevitable key moments that we will all face, and we will not grow or overcome them. Engaging with these nuances and finding the beauty in them is what true life happiness and fulfilment is.
