2. Conscious thriving – first principles
Conscious thriving is analogous to bodily thriving. Health professionals have long understood the biological laws of human nature. Our systems thrive on nutritious foods, while toxicity is remedied through a self-correcting immune system. None of our organs interfere with others. All work cooperatively for a common objective as though individuals. Effectively, our bodies are a convivial society of fifty trillion individuals cooperatively working for the common cause of ‘life.’ Most importantly, societal governance is encrypted in our biological nature.
Humanity has now reached a crossroads concerning its future or its extinction. Conscious thriving is our proper choice in the future.
Genesis
We humans differ from animals considerably. We do not adapt to nature as they do. Instead, we adapt nature to ourselves. We build dams, railroads, houses, and computers. Our mental operating system is fundamentally different. Animals respond according to their nature. We react according to our free will choices.
The book of Genesis tells us that God created plant life, then animal life. Thereafter, “God created man in his own image; in the image of Creator God — male and female He created them.”
To better understand our unique nature — let’s assume that Creator also said…
’Let men and women have free will to uphold their life in the manner of their choosing. Let them have a conscious mind that communicates with a subconscious mind, so they may choose their values, and receive reports through feelings and emotions, from which abstract advisements they can alter their behaviour, or change their values, thereby advancing intellectually, emotionally, morally, and spiritually.’
That is the shortest description of ’Conscious thriving’ ever written, and that statement is the key to conscious thriving.
Fundamental consciousness
Does it not follow that the governing laws of our biological systems and fifty trillion cells would also govern our mental and emotional systems? If information (data and values) are food for our subconscious mind, we thrive on mental nutrition. If people are denied their knowing, how will they combat propaganda, political correctness, or statutes that we ignorantly refer to as law?
We’ve no intellectual weapons in our arsenal, no means of knowing the real evil we face and no means to confront or overcome it. Worse yet, we do not know that the gifted natural laws encrypted in our conscious nature are the Creator’s model for free societies.
The lessons from life
Consciousness is a mental processing capability within our being, just as our lungs, heart, liver, and kidneys are processing faculties. Conscious thriving is a process that depends on our thoughts and values, just as our digestive system depends on what we choose to eat, drink or inhale.
Let’s begin with the basics vital to understanding our complete conscious process.
- Plant life is conditional. Plants remain in one place, wholly dependent on localised nutrients.
- Animal life is perceptual. They can move and adapt to nature. (Change colour, grow defensive attributes, hibernate, etc.)
- Human life is volitional and spiritual. We adapt nature to ourselves. (We build dams, railroads, houses, and computers.)
Infants show us how
We’ve all witnessed the boundless enthusiasm for life in young children in all lands and cultures, their unstoppable energy, passionate exuberance, and unquenchable vitality, yet those wondrous abilities and joys are stifled in just a few years. No one knows how or why children and adults are robbed of their precious skills or how conscious thriving is held in check. The study of our conscious process explains it all.
Infants have no innate ideas, no science, no math, and no language, but they begin (independent) learning from the instant they are born. An image develops in the subconscious mind by them simply staring at a place they want to explore. That image activates specific muscles, monitors their progress and makes adjustments. Successful actions bring joy, while failure brings feelings of disappointment or distress. In this manner, the (infant’s) subconscious mind learns crawling actions and memorises them to be repeated on call. Later, we learn to walk, dance, or climb mountains.
Full consciousness is not the raising of it, the increasing of it, or some new vibration. It is one’s full intellectual diligence, fortitude and integrity all in one parcel. And that's the clue to conscious thriving.
Full consciousness - definition
Beyond mere ‘awareness,’ consciousness is a two-way, spiritual value exchange process between our conscious and subconscious minds.
Consciousness is the systemic life-value transfer process between the conscious and subconscious minds, interfacing physicality and spirituality, authored by free will.
That we know nothing of consciousness and less about overcoming that deficiency or how to prevent its reoccurrence leaves us victim to mind control that forces our submission into a totalitarian dictatorship.
‘You can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.’ —Ayn Rand.
Comprehending ‘Spiritual consciousness’ and its vital importance is truly the ‘great awakening. Full consciousness is a process, not a thing or some flux that wafts between us like a fog.
It is essential, therefore, to wipe our minds clean of preconceived ideas and beliefs concerning consciousness. Try visualising consciousness as nature’s wonderful invitation to live a bountifully joyous life filled with happiness, excitement, peace and joy. Picture it as the operating system of your life, running on autopilot and free will in command. See joy and happiness as the natural outcome without stress, anxiety or fear. Picture pure bliss beyond anything you’ve dreamt possible!
Intellect is our dynamic power.
Our solution to private and societal problems lies in our ability to think, reason, and logically accept what profits our lives while rejecting what is unworkable or biased. Most people will take that view, but the champions of individualism find additional frontiers. They understand their intellectual power comes from three sources.
Ability to apply logic to events and information, meaning to reason from A to B to C, to analyse, deduce, evaluate and act on that wisdom as full consciousness invokes. Using imagination to conceive of pictures that would not otherwise exist. Exercising the gift of visualisation and imagination to upload their values and choices to the image vocabulary of their subconscious mind.
These rugged individualists also know that exercising their creative power has the effect of spilling over and positively affecting others in a way that will remind them of their power and lift them. That is a vastly different societal model than exists today.
Consider the fundamentals of conscious thriving.
Discernment is the mental process of discriminatory investigation to reach an understanding. It separates beliefs from truths, illusions from reality, pretences from facts, foolishness from wisdom, and ignorance from knowledge.
Rationality is deliberately choosing to understand existent things, even including theories. Rational thought is the learned process of logic and reason to advance in knowledge and wisdom. This art of non-contradictory identification does not rule out our consideration of feelings, but it does reject them as tools of cognition. Indeed, introspective consideration of feelings may enhance thought and dialogue.
“Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists; that the mind is one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide of action; that reason is an absolute that permits no compromise; that a concession to the irrational invalidates one’s consciousness and turns it from the task of perceiving to the task of faking reality; that the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind; that the acceptance of a mystical invention is a wish for the annihilation of existence and, properly, annihilates one’s consciousness.” —Ayn Rand
Reason allows us to change attitudes, traditions, and institutions and to convert beliefs into knowledge, all within the realm of free will and self-determination. Reason is the testing point of all values, whose bottom line is ‘life.’ To live as intentioned, we must accept ‘life’, courageously attest values, and have the fortitude to enact them.
Logic is a stabilising power that allows us to analyse and validate information free from deceptions. New knowledge or understanding must integrate without contradiction into the total sum of one’s knowledge to be valid; without, is to confess an error in one’s thinking. Refusal to resolve a contradiction is the wilful choice to abdicate one’s mind to evict oneself from reality.
Integrity is required to advance and grow in knowledge and wisdom rationally. It is a delicate, often complex process, but with a resolute goal, logic as our method, and judgment of our mind as our guiding absolute, success is achievable and rewarding. Freedom to think means not surrendering the sovereignty of one’s mind to anyone, any belief, or anything. When neighbours set the terms of one’s mind, nothing serves one's thought or knowledge.
Knowledge is acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles; their understanding from study or investigation. The intellect’s capacity to retain knowledge is called intellectual memory.
Full consciousness means consciously and consistently using the integrated sum of knowledge acquired from exercising our deliberate choice. ‘Fullness’ does not imply a finite measure. It means the wilful application of one’s present knowledge, irrespective of one’s level of expertise. A young child and a wise old sage can both use the fullness of whatever knowledge each possesses. Accordingly, full consciousness means not cheating yourself, not being apathetic, or dodging the task. It is one’s full intellectual diligence, fortitude and integrity all in one parcel.
The Conscious Process
Just as bodily nutrients sustain our biological life, so thought ‘values’ are nutrients for our mental, emotional and spiritual life. These life-sustaining values of consciousness are communicated between the conscious and subconscious mind, just as nutritional elements are transported to our bodily organs and systems. Thus, biology concerns material food and its processing for life’s maintenance, while consciousness concerns mental and spiritual food processing for life’s growth.
Perception is the subconscious faculty integrating multiple sensory data, such as lines, colours, planes and textures. It forms an image of a thing, such as a surfboard, an event, such as a birthday party, or a circumstance, such as two smashed cars in an auto accident.
‘Cognitive awareness’ is that perception process's (end product). Awareness does not trigger an automatic response, as happens for animals. Instead, it prompts us to discover, learn how, where, when and why, and make choices leading to an action of some kind. Thus (cognitive) ’awareness,’ commonly believed to be ‘consciousness,’ is only a minuscule part of the process, little more than a trigger to learn more.
‘Sentient awareness,’ primarily understood as feelings, is of the same ilk. Whereas perception alerts us to material matters, sentient feelings advise success or distress concerning the (spiritual) value we place on our actions. Said differently, perception reports our material progress, while feelings and emotions report our (value-based) spiritual progress, or lack thereof.
Nervous motor control systems of the body are actioned by our choice to act in some manner, e.g., to walk, climb, dance, or run. Once engaged, all cells and body systems must be constantly monitored and adjusted to ensure success, e.g., to control our heart or breathing rate, release adrenaline, etc. Such adjustments must fit our material goals and our desire for emotional or spiritual satisfaction.
Primary observations concerning the conscious process
This study shows free will is sequentially sandwiched between two different functionalities of the subconscious mind. That means our quantitative brain processes and qualitative experiences are irrevocably united. Also, our subconscious mind is entirely objective of life despite being obliged to process subjective content on demand. No dichotomy exists once the mental process is firmly distinguished from mental content — just as digestion works regardless of ingested food or toxins.
Choice exists biologically and psychologically.
- Existence exists independent of consciousness, but consciousness cannot function without existence, its own included.
- Life prescribes the conscious process and free will preservation. Its prime modus operandi is life preservation.
- Full consciousness primarily communicates spiritual values between the conscious and subconscious mind. It is a creative life force, an operating system that spiritually upholds our
- Conscious thriving results from our value choices. Physical matter is merely a toolbox for our spiritual growth.
- Chosen values are transmitted between our minds as blood is oxygenated and circulated by our cardiovascular system.
- Our cognitive mind uses (word) ‘concepts and principles’ to integrate vast sums of information.
- Our subconscious mind uses its (integrative) ‘perceptive’ ability to package and transmit vast sums of information.`
- Our two minds jointly exchange value data and material information; henc,e spirituality interfaces with physicality.
The tree of life
Creation, as the Bible tells us, was without form and void. After that, God created the heavens, sea, and the earth. Sand and soil represent (foundational) ’rigidity and solidity.’ Next came plants and trees representing ‘dependability,’ since all depend on local soil nutrients, sun, air, and rain. Then, follow animals, such as fish and birds, who exhibit ‘mobility and adaptability.’ They eat, sleep, mate and move from place to place by exercising an automated response and adapting to their environment. They shed skins, grow fangs, change colour, hibernate, etcetera.
Next in this tree of life is man, whose essence represents ‘accountability,’ at least initially. Our notable difference from animals is that our response is not automated. Free will decides instead. Moreover, we adapt nature to our purpose (we build houses, transport, and communications), being the opposite of what animals do. Consequently, we are ‘accountable’ to nature—by our human nature. That implies we respect it, not necessarily conform to it, which Indigenous people generally comprehend.
As just described, our material environment is rich in solid, dependable and adaptable resources, each offering one or more values to sustain our lives in some form. Using these valuable resources requires we exercise non-material or spiritual values like respect, diligence, fortitude, truth, courage, and patience.
But what happens if we fail to choose such (life-sustaining) values—only about fifteen in sum? We suffer, which confirms we are spiritually accountable to our nature.
People should use these vital distinctions today. Treating awareness, perception, and understanding as though all mean the same thing results in us being inadvertently (or deliberately) given animal status. Our mental lifeblood is thereby refused, akin to food starvation. So we are rendered docile, herded like cattle and ruled over by enslavers. We are tragically bound to a state of mere ‘conscious awareness’ akin to a state of animality, which can have disastrous consequences.
When the Law of Identity is skipped over, “knowledge” may be claimed without validating it. Self-deception then arises, and the problem magnifies. People often consider belief knowledge. Likewise, feelings are considered the understanding of an event or circumstance, the real cause never learned. So we have led a merry dance to cognitive dissonance and emotional distress, never suspecting that apathy sabotaged the process of full consciousness.
Conscious thriving is a complete turnaround, and that's the new era foir humanity.
© Kenneth. E Bartle. 2025
