How Would You Define Consciousness In Your Own Words?

[Breakingthewall]

Consciousness is an emergence that occurs when reality operates in a dual and self-registered way

[Leo Gura]

27 minutes ago, Peo said:

For me it happend when I was between 7-9 years old. 

4-5 for me.

[Xonas Pitfall]

Quote

Consciousness = harmonized complexity
or unioned distinctions
or ordered chaos

C=I×H

where

I = the total amount of information, variation, and detail one can perceive

H = the ability to harmonize, unify, and extract meaning from that information

As consciousness increases, a person is able to take in more input, including noise, ambiguity, and raw information, without becoming overwhelmed. Their perceptual horizon expands, both figuratively and literally. Someone is more aware of a thing if they can perceive more of its details, variations, and subtleties. This forms the first dimension of consciousness: the sheer quantity and diversity of information one can observe or intake at any given moment.

The second dimension of consciousness is the capacity to organize that information. This includes understanding, filtering signal from noise, recognizing patterns, and unifying apparent distinctions. Two people may take in the same amount of information, but the one who can see deeper connections, common threads, and underlying essence has a greater grasp of reality.

In this sense, consciousness is the ability to perceive reality as fully, truthfully, and unfiltered as possible. It involves seeing through egoic distortion and conceptual fragmentation. At its highest expression, this manifests as the realization that all distinctions ultimately resolve into the same underlying reality: God, Self, Infinity, Love, or Truth. These are not separate things.

As consciousness expands, one approaches the harmonization of all experience into oneness. Conversely, dogmatism and closed-mindedness reduce consciousness, because they limit both information intake and integration. They oppose the core property of consciousness itself, which is openness, synthesis, and unity.

An unconscious mind divides and separates. It is closed and retracted. A conscious mind is open, free, and connective.

[LambdaDelta]

32 minutes ago, theleelajoker said:

That's literally impossible.

Your own words are your own words.  Others words are not your words. 

That's indeed how it goes by law of noncontradiction. But it's not universal, you get to choose where to apply it strictly or be flexible. Most likely you wouldn't tell your mother "your problems are not my problems", despite logic suggesting that to be correct. 

What defines which words are your own? Depending on the standard employed, those which you haven't created from scratch may not count as your own. For that matter, do you know for sure that Davino and Leo are not the same person? Maybe it's just an alt account. Reality is so nebulous and profound that it's backwards — it's only literally impossible for something to be impossible.

1 hour ago, theleelajoker said:

I got that he was making that point. 

He probably wasn't, I just made it up for him on the spot. Then again, who knows. 

1 hour ago, theleelajoker said:

My Meta point is that one can be so dependent from others perspective and words that they avoid expressing themselves even if explicitly asked to do so. 

True enough, that's a widespread issue. However, it's possible to use an alternative interpretation: one can decide that the person asking the question will be better served by deferring to the more extensive source material than their paraphrasing, even though that's not what was explicitly asked. Just like a good professional will do a job not by mechanically following instructions, but fulfilling the client's actual needs. It even makes sense in the given context; this is Leo's forum, so naturally most members will use the terminology in a very similar way to him, therefore the way the community as a whole defines those things provides more clarity than individual opinions. Not to say that's really what happened here, it could well be that he was simply being lazy. We have a user that literally only links YT videos as a response to any given topic. 

[Entrepreneur]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Entrepreneur Do you remember the first time in your life when you realized you are alive, that you exist? You lived for years before you became conscious that you exist.

That was a moment of higher consciousness.

Notice that most of the day you are not conscious that you exist. You just do stuff unconsciously on auto-pilot. Occassionally you stop and notice you exist.

Awakening is like that, but 100x more potent.

Notice you are less conscious when you are tired, sleepy, or feeling strong negative emotions like anger.

Higher consciousness is hyper sobriety and awareness of your own existence. Normies are like drunk by comparison to an Awake person.

If you just sit silently and train your attention on the fact that you exist, your consciousness increases gradually.

What you are describing here is, in my paradigm, nothing more than a human accessing their prefrontal cortex (short-term working memory) instead of relying on their long-term implicit memory.   Here is what I mean.

Humans are fundamentally decision-making machines.   Everything you do in life, every action you take, is either a decision you are making right now because you are thinking about it and choosing to do that, or it is a decision you have previously made that you are repeating.   

For example, you get out of bed.  You have a routine that you do pretty much on autopilot without giving it any meaningful thought.   Every step you take in your morning routine is you repeating a decision that you made earlier in life.   Those decisions are embedded in what people refer to as the subconscious or what scientists might refer to as long-term implicit memory.   Things that exist in long-term memory do not require much brain energy at all to access.  The reason you can drive a car to work everyday without thinking about "how" to get there is because the trip and even alternate routes for the trip are deeply engrained in your long-term memory.  So your brain can easily recall them with very little stimulus at all.   This allows you to focus your attention on something else "to actively think about something else" even while you are driving from point A to B.

The act of "thinking" of "focusing your attention on something" is nothing more than you activating your brain's prefrontal cortex (working memory) to analyze complex data in order to make a new decision about something, anything.    Once a decision has been made with conviction, that decision gets moved through a chain of steps, eventually residing in your long-term memory.  Now, it can be accessed using very little brain power (energy) to recall it for use at any point in life from then forward.

Humans are not designed to make every decision moment to moment using their prefrontal cortex.   They are designed to use their prefrontal cortex to do heavy lifting for short bursts in order to make decisions.  Then those decisions (just the ones in which we have convictions) get moved into long term memory (what you would call subconscious) where the brain no longer needs high energy demands to access them.

Humans are fundamentally designed to go through their day mostly on mental autopilot just as a way to conserve precious energy.   Throughout most of humanity's existence, energy (calories) was scarce.   Calories aren't scarce anymore.  But throughout humanity's existence until agriculture was systematized, calories were scarce.

 

So based on what you said I would interpret it as meaning - A person who is being more "conscious" than another is simply one person using their prefrontal cortex (actively and intentionally thinking about whatever they are doing at that moment) rather than a person who is currently allowing their long-term memory autopilot to keep repeating old decisions.   Is this accurate?

[mmKay]

I was about 4 years old if not less. I remember that I was crying and arguing with my dad because I wanted to stay at our pool and not go to the neighbours pool, and he didn't listen to me.

I had a sudden experience of "observing this being" from a third person perpective, being angry and upset because of this situation, when deep down inside I knew that I don't actually mind, I was just role playing being angry and upset.

Then most of my early life is a big blur until I started meditating at age 16. I randomly looked up " how to meditate" in youtube, because I saw " meditation" as an ability one of my pokemon had on my gameboy color. And that's how I found Actualized.org

[Davino]

12 hours ago, LambdaDelta said:

Joke's on you, he's making a meta-point that Leo's words are his own words.

Lmao, that's exactly what I thought before posting. Crazy 5D chess being played here

The other argument is that I don't have the time and Leo has already done an splendid job. It's mindboggling how accurate he is. I've verified everything in those videos and in what we differ he clarified and refined in later videos. Our differences are mostly in style rather than in Truth and Awakening. Although Leo is decades of work ahead of me, I'm just starting.

As a funny anecdote, I thought Leo never talked publicly about Perfection Awakening (One facet I've gone very deep in) just to rewatch his video '65 core principles' to find it was one of them. 

Edited yesterday at 02:05 PM by Davino

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Entrepreneur said:

What you are describing here is, in my paradigm, nothing more than a human accessing their prefrontal cortex (short-term working memory) instead of relying on their long-term implicit memory.

Absolutely not.

You completely missed what I was pointing to.

Stop imagining that Consciousness has a brain. This is fucking you up.

I am not talking about thinking or memory. I am talking about Consciousness. Although thinking and Consciousness are not mutually exclusive. You can do both at the same time. Or not.

Edited yesterday at 02:08 PM by Leo Gura

[UnbornTao]

You guys are funny.

[Entrepreneur]

13 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Absolutely not.

You completely missed what I was pointing to.

Stop imagining that Consciousness has a brain. This is fucking you up.

I am not talking about thinking or memory. I am talking about Consciousness. Although thinking and Consciousness are not mutually exclusive. You can do both at the same time. Or not.

Just trying to understand.

It seems that even though everybody on this forum is talking about "being conscious" there isn't an agreed upon general meaning of the phrase.   This is very annoying to someone who thirsts for clear communication.   Because when I see someone mention it, I think to myself - WTF is this person even talking about.   Then when I ask them, all I get are parables or beat around the bush ideas or half answers.   Not one person here can define it?

I just want to understand what a person is actually saying when they are speaking.

I think humans have brains.   If you are telling me that "being conscious" or "consciousness itself" (two different things I presume) have nothing to do with humans or the existence of the human body, that's cool.  Then what are they?   Just a spiritual sensation?   Some imaginary thing that people can sense but can't even define, but they are convinced it exists anyway?

[Jehovah increases]

 You just did.

[Salvijus]

4 hours ago, Entrepreneur said:

Not one person here can define it?

Here's a third definition:

When you have become conscious of something that you were not before, then you've become more conscious. 

But in this context it's about the quality of perception not the quantity of it. How deep is your perception into the nature of reality? See. 

Edited 20 hours ago by Salvijus

[Leo Gura]

6 hours ago, Entrepreneur said:

Not one person here can define it?

I gave you a very clear pointer but it seems like you are not really trying to get it. You just skip over it and insist on your confusion.

Consciousness cannot be conceptually defined because it is Infinite.

When you are sleepy you are literally lowering consciousness down to zero. So higher consciousness is the opposite of that. You already have experience of lower and higher consciousness. You don't need to believe anyone about it or ask for definitions. You have already experienced lower and higher degrees of consciousness throughout your life. Just reflect on it if you want a serious answer.

Edited 19 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Ramasta9]

Consciousness is Existence Aware of Itself. 

[Nemo28]

Let’s be honest: no definition of consciousness will ever fully satisfy. We can talk endlessly, but the moment the grasping mind is present, it will always move on to the next framing, the next explanation. At best, the mind is satisfied for a while - until it demands more input.

The Buddhist image of hungry ghosts comes to mind: vast bellies, tiny mouths. An enormous appetite, but no real capacity for nourishment. In this case, it’s like a telescope pointed inward. The magnification increases, yet the closer it looks, the less there is to grasp - only blur and distortion. With every adjustment, the hunger grows.

So perhaps the real question is not how to define consciousness, but this:
can you grasp the silence?

[Rilles]

The -isness is the bizness - me

[Carl-Richard]

On 7.1.2026 at 6:20 PM, Entrepreneur said:

 When you say one person is more conscious than another, what do you mean by that?

Lesser activation of the Default Mode Network.

[Carl-Richard]

On 8.1.2026 at 1:33 PM, Entrepreneur said:

So based on what you said I would interpret it as meaning - A person who is being more "conscious" than another is simply one person using their prefrontal cortex (actively and intentionally thinking about whatever they are doing at that moment) rather than a person who is currently allowing their long-term memory autopilot to keep repeating old decisions.   Is this accurate?

Sort of. The Default Mode Network instinctively throws out long-term memories about oneself (self-referential processing). When you're more conscious, thinking about yourself drops.

[Rilles]

Higher consciousness is just more meta-reflection ability, its not a dick-measuring contest. To be more conscious is to be present and aware of unconscious thoughts and actions. Sit down for 2 hours and reflect on where youre being an a-hole, 2 hours youll be more conscious of being an a-hole, tada!

[Carl-Richard]

5 minutes ago, Rilles said:

To be more conscious is to be present and aware of unconscious thoughts and actions.

I read like a few post in this thread and two of them had circular definitions. Something to be conscious of.