The moment the prodigal son asked his father for his share of the inheritance, he was dazzled by the prospect of the pleasures that awaited him, and while those pleasures lasted, he was out of his mind. Often, pleasure makes people unrealistic and unconscious, while pain has the power to bring them back to reality, as happened with this young man.
From Unconsciousness to Consciousness
Before the "Big Bang”, which occurred about 15 billion years ago, all the matter of the cosmos existed in the form of an invisible subatomic particle that was extremely dense and hot, which eventually exploded, giving rise to the expanding universe. As temperatures started to cool down, the atoms that make up matter began to cluster into increasingly complex molecules, which came together to form membranes that gave rise to primitive cells.
All forms of life on Earth—viruses, microbes, bacteria, plants, animals, and humans—share common elements, since they all come from a common trunk. The cell is the simplest form of life; the first organisms formed on Earth were unicellular, like the amoeba, which still survives today in the contaminated waters of Africa. The transition from single-celled organisms to more complex life forms composed of multiple cells took about 3 billion years.
Since life comes from a common trunk, we can conclude that ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis, meaning that the process of development of an individual of the human species, from conception to adulthood, recapitulates or synthesizes the history of life on this planet. Our organism in its adult state is composed of about 37 trillion cells; but at the moment of our conception, when half a cell from our father joins half a cell from our mother, we too started off as single-celled organisms
What happens at the level an individual reflects what happens at a global level; life that began with a single cell has diversified into many species of living beings over billions of years of evolution. In similar way, from the moment of our conception until we are fully formed independent beings still inside our mothers, the evolution of species is recapitulated.
From birth to adulthood, we relive human evolution that, five million years ago, began to diverge from the primates, our closest ancestors. Just as a baby first learns to walk and then to talk, humanity has also evolved to the point of self-consciousness. In the context of evolution, for Karl Marx, Man is the moment when Nature becomes aware of itself.
Self-consciousness is the capacity for introspection; it is to turn inward, recognizing oneself as a different and separate individual from the environment and other individuals. Self-consciousness is the subdivision or duplication of the individual who becomes at the same time both the subject and the object of his own thoughts.
Cogito ergo sum, said Descartes, but it can also be said senso ergo sum: I feel joy or sadness, pleasure or pain, therefore I exist. Self-consciousness is the meaning I attribute to my day-to-day experiences in the overall context of what my life is for me.
Someone once said that we are awake when we sleep, and asleep when we are awake. We become aware of who we really are during sleep, in dreams. Dreams reveal our true identity, because no matter how many characters appear in them, they are merely parts of ourselves.
Freud and all of psychology thereafter placed great importance on dreams, as they hold one of the keys to our true identity. When we are awake, we wear masks that not only veil our identity from others but also from ourselves. In fact, the word person means just that: mask, characters we portray during the day.
Being Alive is Not the Same as Living
A life that is not self-reflective is not worth living. Socrates (469 BC)
At around the age of 7, children become aware of themselves, that they exist, that they are alive, but at the same time, they also become aware of their finitude, that they will not always exist, that one day they will cease to exist as they do now. It is death that gives meaning to life; or rather, it is the existence of death that drives us to seek meaning in life.
In this sense, being alive is not the same as living. Animals are alive, but since they do not know that they will cease to exist one day, they end up not knowing that they exist, that they are alive; since they do not know they are alive, they do not live. They do not live because they do not have much power and control over their own lives; they blindly obey their instincts, thus functioning as automatons.
Only human beings really live because they understand that, between the present of their lives and a sure death, they have the time and energy to shape what they desire from their existence.
To Be Conscious Is to Turn Off the Autopilot
Often, I lock my car with the remote control, and after walking away a short distance, I ask myself if I had really locked it; if I am not sure, I walk back to the car and check. Like this, we all do things automatically without thinking—things we do routinely without being conscious of them at the moment of doing them.
More often than we care to admit, we have the autopilot on: our behavior is reactive, much like that of animals; a given stimulus is followed by a given response, predicted and predictable. When we behave as if we are on autopilot, we lack awareness; we are not in ourselves but outside of ourselves.
What we say or do is not the result of a proactive decision after assessing the reality or situation, but of a more or less instinctive, pre-determined, repetitive, and routine reaction. Something akin to a reflex, like when I involuntarily pull my hand away from a hot surface to avoid getting burned.
- To be aware means to realize everything that is happening inside and outside of oneself.
- To be aware means to be installed in the present, in the here and now.
- To be aware means to have the soul where the body is.
- To be aware means to self-observe.
- To be aware is to be fully present in each of one’s thought, sensation, emotion, and action.
Prayer is an Exercise of Self-Awareness
When the prodigal son came to himself, he returned to the Father; while he was far from the Father, he was also far from himself; while he was outside of his Father’s home, he was also outside of himself; while he was dissociated, divorced, with his back to God, he was also dissociated, divorced, and with his back to himself.
Deus interior intimo meo, said St. Augustine, God is nearer to us than our innermost being, therefore prayer is not only an encounter with God but also an encounter with oneself; it is not only a dialogue with God but also a dialogue with oneself. Prayer is first and foremost an exercise of self-consciousness.
Those who pray know themselves better than those who do not pray. If God, as St. Augustine says, is beyond our innermost being, beyond ourselves, we cannot reach God without first passing through ourselves; we cannot know God without first knowing ourselves better.
Conclusion - In moving from an unconscious existence to a profound self- awareness, we realize that to live is not just to exist; it is to shape our destiny, becoming the conscious author of our own story.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
Understand and much Clearer.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much father Jorge 🙏❤️🙏