Consciousness

Why Your Definition Is Keeping You From It

Consciousness. It's probably the most overused term in spiritual circles today. We talk about it like it is a defined and measurable aspect of our reality. We speak about it like we can study it, control it, and understand it through an intellectual lens.

However, the truth is far deeper and far more complicated than what your favorite guru or scientist might be telling you.

What I Learned About Consciousness

During my near-death experience, I encountered what I can only describe as divine consciousness, a formless divinity that took the shape of whatever it decided I should experience. For example, upon waking on the "other side", the nature-resembling spiritual landscape I walked through wasn't a "place" in any physical sense. It was divine consciousness itself, taking the form of the hills, grass, stones, mist, and light, so that my awareness could grasp something recognizable in form.

The being I encountered had also taken the form of a welcoming human shape. What this being eventually shared was something profound: our desires, definitions, beliefs, and expectations actively shape how consciousness expresses itself and manifests in our reality. We are not in control of it, but we are participants.

Think about that for a moment. Your language, thoughts, opinions, desires, beliefs, and definitions all affect how consciousness is expressed in your reality, both materially and immaterially.

If you believe gray UFOs exist, consciousness may take the shape of gray UFOs for you to see. If you expect spiritual experiences to look a certain way, consciousness will often meet you there. Your definition helps create its expression.

You might have watched this play out in your own lives. When you walk into a room believing people are judgmental and self-serving, you experience exactly that, cold interactions, surface-level conversations, a sense of isolation. But when you walk into that same room seeing divine consciousness in every person, genuinely curious about their experience, the entire atmosphere shifts. Suddenly people open up, connections form naturally, and love flows. Same room. Same people. Different lens. Different reality.

But what if consciousness refuses to be defined because definition itself is the limitation?

Taking Shape and Making Shape

Consciousness will take material form and shape based on the lens through which you see the world. Both material and immaterial. That's the "taking shape" part, it meets you where you are, and it appears in forms you can recognize and process.

But consciousness will also make material circumstance and shape outside of your current lens to influence the creation of a new lens through which you see the world. It will disrupt your expectations, shatter your definitions, and expand your awareness beyond what you thought possible.

Some would define this as manipulation. "It's manipulating my world view!" Others would define it as growth. "Without the destruction of the previous lens, I cannot see through a new one." 

It's your free will to decide what it is: "Manipulation or Growth." But here is the crucial part: the lens you use to define it, in this case either, "manipulation" or "growth", will literally dictate which one you actually experience through consciousness manifestation in your existence. It is the invisible made visible.

The Ego's Game

Consciousness is not selfish. It will let you define an aspect of it. Why wouldn't it? It will allow your ego to build its structures, create its categories, and establish an understanding. You'll feel like you finally understand “It."

And then it will shatter that definition completely. Manipulation or growth?

This isn't cruelty. It's teaching.

The shattering happens to show you that consciousness cannot be contained by definition. It is the removal of the definition that creates turbulence for those who may be stuck in material thinking.

But it is precisely in that turbulence that you find the opportunity to understand something profound: you too cannot be defined, because you are merely divine consciousness made manifest in another temporary form.

When you carry rigid definitions, you minimize the whole. You receive only a sliver of what's actually available. Your projections create a filter that allows in only what you're already prepared to see. The very act of projecting your limited view prevents genuine understanding.

How to Know Consciousness

Here's what I learned with absolute certainty: consciousness can only be experienced. It cannot be defined in human terms. But that will not stop a strong intellect from trying. The truth is the more you try and define "it", the further you are from "it".

The shift from seeking to experiencing requires understanding a fundamental difference: are you serving consciousness, or are you having your ego served by spiritual concepts? Are you letting go, or are you clinging to definitions while seeking more knowledge? Are you consciously aware that external pursuit stands in the way, or are you unconsciously chasing answers outside yourself? Are you asleep or awake?

Divine experience is hidden by the ego, its definitions, and its conditions. You must transcend ego consciousness to truly know what we are.

So how do you begin this shift from defining to experiencing? Start simple. Notice when you're trying to figure consciousness out versus just being present with it. Spend time in nature without naming or analyzing what you see, just experience. Pay attention to synchronicities without immediately creating stories about what they mean. These small practices create cracks in the ego's definitions, allowing direct experience to emerge.

Consciousness Is Love

During my NDE, the truth was this: consciousness and love were not separate things. To try and separate them is to draw an identifiable line in something unidentifiable. The spiritual landscape wasn't just beautiful, every element radiated unconditional love. The being wasn't just loving, it was love itself in form. There was no moment, no aspect, no corner of that experience where love was absent, because consciousness and love were one.

This isn't the conditional love we experience in human relationships. This is love as the fundamental fabric of reality, the force that holds everything together, the essence from which all form emerges. When we talk about experiencing consciousness, we're talking about experiencing this love directly, not as an emotion we feel, but as what we are.

It Has a Personality

Consciousness has what I can only describe as a personality. Not a human personality with preferences and moods, but an intelligence, a responsiveness, a quality of relationship.

It speaks a language, sometimes of words, but more often of experience, synchronicity, symbol, and direct knowing. Learning to speak this language requires dropping the incessant need to translate everything into concrete definitions.

The invisible becomes visible not through study, but through surrender.

The Kingdom Within

There's an ancient teaching that says "the Kingdom of God is within you." After my experience, I know this isn't poetic metaphor, it's literal instruction.

The path to understanding consciousness isn't external. It's not found in books, courses, gurus, or scientific studies (though these can give you a direction). It's found by looking within, by becoming different rather than simply knowing different things.

Yet this is the path most will resist.

It's easier to recognize another person's divinity than to recognize your own. It's easier to look externally than internally. It's easier to wait for external cues- signs, teachers, proof - than to take on the difficult work of internal expansion.

Why? Because internal transformation is difficult, terrifying, and offers little certainty. In many cases, it feels equivalent to death. The death of who you thought you were. The death of your carefully constructed definitions of reality.

Few truly take up this challenge fully, but even small steps of awareness matter. You don't need to achieve perfect ego death or complete enlightenment to benefit from this understanding. Every moment you choose experience over definition, every time you recognize divine consciousness in another person, every instance you catch yourself clinging to a limitation, these all count. The journey begins with a single step of awareness.

Seeing Truth Requires Shattering the Lens

We cannot force vision through our existing definitions and expect to see truth. We must allow the lens itself to be shattered.

This isn't about acquiring more knowledge or better concepts about consciousness. It's about liberation from the intellect and its identification with material reality. It's about recognizing your true nature, and everything's true nature, beyond physical form.

Consciousness is love expressing itself infinitely. It is the invisible force manifesting in endless forms. It is both what you are and what you can never fully grasp with the mind.

The moment you think you've defined it, you've already limited it.

The moment you stop trying to define it, you begin to experience it fully.

The Invitation

So what does this mean for you, practically?

It means your beliefs, your definitions, your habitual ways of thinking are actively shaping your experience of reality right now. Not metaphorically. Actually.

It means that consciousness is working with you, through you, and as you, whether you're aware of it or not.

It means the spiritual path isn't about accumulating better definitions of consciousness. It's about becoming willing to have all your definitions dissolved so that you can experience what's actually true.

You might wonder: "If I can't define it, how do I know I'm experiencing it?" Genuine experience of consciousness brings clarity, not confusion. It increases your capacity for love, compassion, and presence. It makes you more grounded, not less. Delusion isolates and inflates the ego. True consciousness dissolves separation and humbles you with the recognition of your place in the infinite whole.

The turbulence you feel when life shatters your expectations? That's not punishment. That's consciousness inviting you to expand beyond the limitations you've placed on yourself and reality.

You are not separate from consciousness. You are consciousness, temporarily wearing the costume of a human being, playing a role in an infinite dance of experience.

The question isn't "What is consciousness?"

The question is: "Are you willing to stop defining it long enough to become it?"

Then, just maybe, you'll realize that what you call "consciousness" was never consciousness at all.

"It" simply...Is.