Here is another series of thoughts from “I Want to Live from the Center of Things.”
I want to live from the center of things.
I want to be un-self-conscious and, even more, conscious of God in the deepest places of the soul that overflow into the lives of others and the wonders of God’s creation.
So much of our lives is spent in a debilitating sort of self-consciousness. It’s that feeling you get when you walk into a room of strangers and sense that all eyes are on you. It’s that feeling you had in childhood dreams where you walk into school and suddenly realize you have no clothes on. It’s that hesitation you feel when someone asks for a volunteer for something you know you are gifted at. Self-consciousness.
There is a helpful sort of self-consciousness that I would rather term self-awareness. Self-awareness is a healthy knowledge of one’s self: strengths, weaknesses, positives, negatives, personality, abilities, experiences. Self-awareness is extremely important in living well. I am not really addressing self-awareness here, but rather an overactive self-consciousness.
Self-consciousness becomes debilitating when you are hindered from being who God has made you to be or offering the good you have to offer in situations because of fear of others’ opinions. The fears of success or failure, of approval or disapproval, in the eyes of others seizes you like hardening cement. You are paralyzed by an overactive self-consciousness. It becomes debilitating.
I want to be un-self-conscious in this way. I want to be free of paralyzing fear and overactive self-consciousness.
I would like to replace it with a pervasive God-consciousness. I want to experience the never-ending presence of God in my days, my relationships, my endeavors.
I want to live from such a deep place that all my life becomes an opportunity to encounter God, whether in silence or noise, whether in solitude or with others, whether in stillness or activity.
What would it mean to shed paralyzing self-consciousness for freeing God-consciousness?
What would it look like to be so un-self-conscious that others’ opinions did not matter more than the opinion of our Creator?
What would days, years, and a lifetime be like when each moment is less of an entangling morass of self and more of a joyous excursion into the mysterious life of God?
I want to live from the center of things.
I want to be un-self-conscious and, even more, conscious of God in the deepest places of the soul that overflow into the lives of others and the wonders of God’s creation.
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Matthew Erickson 
I don’t hear this often “God-consciousness vs. self-consciousness but I believe it is the key to living as God designed us to live. When God called Adam in the garden and Adam hid himself he told God “I was naked and hit myself”, God replied who told you you were naked?” If you see Adam already stated in his address to God, He said “I” was naked and God knew what happened by the statement he made. The self was born and the self-consciousness began that day. The “I” became alive! Before that we were totally God-conscious and lived a life of peace, love and power. Jesus came so we could be born again and reprogram our minds back to this intended state of being. My desire is to live my life from the inside out and to have my mind regenerated and live in complete God-conscious where there is freedom and power, but the “I” is very strong and it’s a journey of dying to self everyday.
May God Bless you in your journey,
Debbie
I don’t hear this often “God-consciousness vs. self-consciousness but I believe it is the key to living as God designed us to live. When God called Adam in the garden and Adam hid himself he told God “I was naked and hit myself”, God replied who told you you were naked?” If you see Adam already stated in his address to God, He said “I” was naked and God knew what happened by the statement he made. The self was born and the self-consciousness began that day. The “I” became alive! Before that we were totally God-conscious and lived a life of peace, love and power. Jesus came so we could be born again and reprogram our minds back to this intended state of being. My desire is to live my life from the inside out and to have my mind regenerated and live in complete God-conscious where there is freedom and power, but the “I” is very strong and it’s a journey of dying to self everyday.
May God Bless you in your journey,
Debbie