Q: What we think of as consciousness, is this different from the idea of a soul?
The word “soul” is often used in a religious context to mean an individual, eternal entity that goes to an afterlife. Consciousness is the fundamental, universal field of awareness in which all things, living and non-living, appear. It is the very fabric of the All-That-Is, permeating every part.
The difficulty with both words is in the definition of the word and how they are used by many to mean many different things.
Q: What do you think is the most useful definition?
Everything that exists is permeated with consciousness. It is the weft and warp of the totality of the All-That-Is. In a spiritual context, it is awareness. From the All-That-Is context—all-that-is is one, is connected to All-That-Is. The parts are imbued with the whole. They are not separate.
Q: There is also the idea of the “I.” And the “I thinking.” How does that get into this discussion of consciousness?
It is how reality gets sliced and diced and talked about. The sense of “I” is the way reality gets organized and labeled. Thought divides experience into subject and object. Then language reinforces those divisions. Over time, through repetition and social reinforcement, they harden into what we call identity.
Thoughts arise. Then attachment forms. Emotional layers are added based on memory and past experience. What began as a simple perception becomes personal.
As clarity deepens, one begins to see that thoughts and emotions are events occurring within awareness. They are not who or what you are. Recogniting this loosens the tendency to build a fixed identity around them.
Because identity—and a consistent identity—is seen as “This is who I am. This is my reality.” All cultures value consistency in so-called identity and reinforce that in a way that builds up or destroys ego. Because that’s what creates consistency, which allows people to be controlled and manipulated so society can function more smoothly.
Identity is inherently inaccurate because it is always filtered through memory, ego, and other people’s reinforcement. But it is what allows people to feel safe. “This is who I am.” But there is nothing about any of that that’s helpful to someone on a spiritual path.
Q: Are you saying identity is not necessary?
Identity is not intrinsically necessary, but we have been conditioned to make it feel necessary. It’s more like a deeply ingrained habit. Identity influences behavior and perception, which are learned and filed away as memory. The measurable outcome is a conditioned response. Think of it like a coat you put on, but the coat is not you.
Q: Can one hold identity lightly and still operate effectively in this life? Even if identity isn’t intrinsically necessary, we do exist within conditioned systems, like economies, legal structures, etc. that functionally require it. Most would say it enables cooperation, trust, relational stability, and moral accountability.
The claim isn’t that people can’t or shouldn’t use identity as a tool. But when we mistake it for what we are, it creates suffering and obscures direct experience of being. It’s the difference between Unconscious Identification: “I am this role/identity” vs. Conscious Application: “I use this role/identity as needed.”
Q: When I think about this, I have a hard time imagining what would motivate us to do anything. If we didn’t have our own identity, if we weren’t governed by how we think, if we didn’t have memory, if we were just being, what would we be like? How would we spend our time and our days? Would we just know what to do?
People are taught “to do.” And their doing also becomes part of their identity. When one lives from the experience of being—“I am” rather than “I do”—one drops into full presence and awareness of that moment. In that moment, expression arises from being. For instance, when you see someone struggling with groceries, there’s no thought process of ‘should I help based on my identity as a good person?’ The helping happens as the natural expression of what’s present. But the more one pursues a spiritual path, usually the less desire there is for doing and more for being.
A person who lives in beingness responds to the moment. A person who lives in doingness responds to thought and other people’s expectations. One is a pure state. The other is multi-layered and often confusing and muddied by internal and external expectations.
Q: Many highly realized teachers are intensely active.
I would say that most of those spiritual teachers who are intensely active do it from a state of being, not from an intellectual drive to do. There is a misbelief that if one is not doing, they are not fully living. The truth is, if one is not being, one is not fully living.
Q: So, what is the aware person’s relationship to identity?
It looks more like this: They can observe performing social roles while remaining aware of the deeper awareness doing the observing. Because they’re not contradicting their “true self” they know these are contextual performances. And if someone challenges their ego, there’s no existential crisis because their sense of being isn’t invested in it.
Q: What does a life look like where someone is simply being?
They respond to what is in each moment. That is the difference. They respond, not react, because they are not bringing identity and ego. They can see what is. And always, when one sees what is, it also contains within the “what is” how one should respond, what is needed in that moment. A kind word, a helping hand, a task, an awareness. And so on.