A Model for Consciousness

Meditation, mindfulness and other forms of consciousness exploration have become increasingly popular in the last few decades. When I learnt to meditate over 30 years ago, meditation was still a peculiar, fringe activity. People rarely knew what to think of me when I told them I would spend time meditating.

Now, meditation has gone mainstream. Over the years, I've studied, practiced and analyzed dozens of techniques to explore consciousness. To progress meaningfully in your learning, a more nuanced understanding of consciousness is useful.

What Is Consciousness?

In simple terms, consciousness is everything we can perceive that makes up our world. Our senses are our window into our world, as they enable awareness of both the external world and our internal experiences. Our senses serve as cameras, microphones and sensors of consciousness, providing multiple ways of gathering information about both the physical external world that we share with others, and our unique inner world that is ours alone.

The Three-Layer Model of Consciousness

This article introduces the three-layer model of consciousness: external consciousness, internal consciousness, and abstract consciousness. Each layer in the model contains five senses, totaling fifteen senses. When we start to understand which of these fifteen senses we are using during deliberate consciousness practice, it can increase the effectiveness of our perception tremendously.

The Five Physical Senses

Everyone knows the five physical senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. These sensory organs enable the brain to receive information about the external world directly experienced by our bodies. Even basic attention training in your physical senses can increase calm and aliveness.

The Five Internal Senses

The second layer comprises five internal senses familiar to everyone: thinking, emotion, memory, imagination and interoception. These internal senses often get lumped into a general "mind" category.

Interoception may be a term that is less unfamiliar. It means perception of internal bodily sensations, including awareness of body size and shape, muscles, bones, tissues, organs like heartbeat, temperature, and bodily needs. Proprioception, an component of interoception, addresses balance and body location perception in space.

Training the ability to switch between internal consciousness senses makes us calmer, more focused, more purposeful, and more observant and attentive to the world and the people around us.

The Five Abstract Senses

The third layer comprises abstract senses, which are deeper, more subtle consciousness senses: abstraction, intuition, instinct, remote sensing, and creation. These are less well known, so lets go into them in a bit more detail.

Abstraction is the deliberate mental ability to direct your attention away from your normal viewpoint of something, and instead sense that thing from the viewpoint of another person, spatial perspective, belief, identity, emotion or thought process. Understanding abstraction is one of the most powerful skills if you want to learn more advanced consciousness skills found in the NeuroYou Protocols.

Intuition represents a quiet, deep and subtle sense that provides distinct and clear information or knowing. It constitutes heightened, subtle awareness of ourselves, another human being, or outside situations and events.

Instinct involves responding and reacting in real time to something in our environment. It manifests when sensing being watched or perceiving danger without visible threats.

Remote Sensing is the ability to perceive information that doesn't appear directly related to your immediate environment or mental state. This may include perceptions or sensations that you do not regard as your own.

Creation represents experiencing something completely new has formed in our consciousness — those "aha" or "eureka" moments. Advanced consciousness training can make those moments a reliable and repeatable skills, making you much more creative and productive.

Practicing CONSCIOUS SENSING

Part of training our consciousness is the ability to shift our awareness away from the quantity of things — appointments, activities, responsibilities, achievements — to the qualities of the sensory experience we are actually having. Understanding the three-layer consciousness model makes identifying which consciousness sense you are using at any time much easier.