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<CENTER><H1>The Emergence of Consciousness</H1>
<H4></H4>Copyright 1996 Jerry Larsen</CENTER>


DASEIN <LI>
<H4>I have argued that our brains are physically designed to
make us cognitive and spiritual changelings headed toward wider
and deeper awareness of our selves, others and our worlds of
meaning.  We are expansive.  We model the world with data
constantly being arranged in our brains.  As the models develop,
they come to include a model of ourselves.  One of the incredible
results of the expansion of the universe within us is the gradual
emergence of an awareness of that self model.  It is this
emerging awareness of self that makes possible (among other
things) reflective thought, projected futures, story telling and
conscious deciding.</H4>
<H4>According to Eric Erikson, this self awareness blossoms and
passes through a critical period during adolescence.1
Apparently, our models of life (all ten levels of modeling
referred to in chapter 2) have to reach a high degree of
complexity and integration before identity and consciousness of
self can take center stage.  Typically, writes Erikson, it takes
about twelve years to reach that complexity.  Identity
development remains center stage for as long as twelve more years
before being upstaged by the need to develop strong patterns of
intimacy.  Those patterns are built on one's identity.</H4>
<H4>I began the previous chapter with a frame from my own
biography.  That moment matters in this discussion because it
marks a point in my pilgrimage when I was just beginning this
"identity crisis."   I  became aware of my self as an integrity
in process.  I suspect all of us can recall similar occasions of
awakening, especially during adolescence, when one beholds one's
self.  Perhaps this accounts for the overwhelming numbers of
teens who report religious experiences and conversions that
marks a re-arrangement of and fidelity to life-long values,
manifesto and symbols.</H4>
<H4>I do not want to imply that people have no identity before
they are teenagers, rather I mean to say that it does not become
a central agenda until those transitional years between about
ages twelve and twenty-four.  Indeed, the formation of one's self
gets underway immediately at birth and the person you are
throughout your adulthood is to a large degree set in the first
10 years. </H4>
<H4>I also do not want to suggest that we are never self aware
before adolescence.  At a very young age children are able to
draw themselves, tell stories about themselves, imagine what
others think of them and converse with selves.  Clearly, we get
to work on creating a model of ourselves early in the life cycle.
Nevertheless, during adolescence, the development of a
person's self-model becomes central.  What it seems to be
"doing" on that stage is learning to behold itself.  Remember how
Descartes concluded that "I think, therefore I am!"  In that
vein, the teenager concludes "I think of myself thinking,
therefore I am!"  </H4>
<H4>When I had my epiphany on a Sunday afternoon at thirteen, I
felt as though I had woken up, shook the sleep from my eyes and
stood before myself.  "I" was there.  I was, as Karl Jaspers
named the experience, "dasein."  The German word means "being
there." The existentialists used the word to stand for "human
being."2  The term fits my experience.  The self aware person
knows that he/she is aware of being there.</H4>

BUT  WHAT  IS  CONSCIOUSNESS?<LI>
<H4>The fact that we can know of our being-here has prompted
articles, books and research in cognitive science over the last
two decades.  One of the harder aspects of the research has been
to define consciousness and self awareness.  For my purposes,
consciousness refers to the experience of being aware of one's
thoughts so as to be able give a report of them to someone else.
Self awareness is that state of mental focus wherein you think of
yourself, your thoughts, your experiences. You behold yourself.
We can focus our awareness on anything thinkable but
focusing on ourselves thinking is not quit like thinking of
anything else.  It is a unique and powerful strategy for making
meaning.  It sets atop a ladder of liveliness and exists because
of the levels beneath it.  Each rung represents a new threshold
in aliveness. <a href="fig4.jpg">[see figure 12.1].</a></H4>
<H4>At the bottom of this ladder is biological life.  All living
organisms participate in this level.  It has one basic
requirement shared by all the levels above it:  the ability to
interact with the environment.  </H4>
<H4>Above that basic level is the level of alertness.  Being
alert implies that an organism can also be at rest.  The rhythm
between states of readiness and rest can be see in most animal
organisms.  Alertness is the state of being ready for something
to impinge.  The environment around a single celled animal or a
wolf can trigger automatic strategies that make it ready for
special response.</H4>
<H4>Just above that is the state of wakefulness.  Being awake
implies a time of sleep or relative unresponsiveness to an
environment.  It took millions of years of evolution for sleep
and wakefulness cycles to emerge and only animals with a
relatively complex central nervous system seem to do it.
Related to wakefulness, but more intense, is the ability to
give attention.  It is a prerequisite to the next level and
requires sharp and discerning senses; especially hearing, seeing
and smelling, the long range or "tele senses."</H4>
<H4>Next, then, is the focus of attention to problem solving.
In lower animals, almost no problem solving goes on because the
animal's nervous system includes behaviors that are initiated
automatically as the animal encounters certain stimuli.  But in
higher vertebrates with enough cortex to allow it to gather
information and put it to use, problem solving or "thinking" can
happen.  The problem solver may not be self aware, but
nonetheless its cortex is able to gather and evaluate information
and initiate appropriate behavior.</H4>
<H4>Along with problem solving, this level of aliveness includes
the ability to have more complex emotions beyond states of alert
and calm.  Fear, excitement, anger, depression and pleasure can
be identified in but a few species of animals and almost all of
them are mammals.  The larger the cortex in relation to the rest
of the animal's brain, the more subtle and varied are its
emotional states.  The development in evolutionary history of the
ability to have emotions and sensations (like physical pain and
pleasure) laid the ground work for the experience of an inner
life.  This seems to be the exclusive property of primates.
The next rungs are (apparently) the exclusive property of
Homo Sapiens and properly belong to the category,
"consciousness."  They include:</H4>
<H4>- Our awareness of our thoughts and inner state (we know what
we are thinking and feeling) along with a sense of
choice about actions made related to the objects of our
conscious thoughts,<LI>
- Our awareness of ourselves,
- Our awareness of ourselves as the possessor of and main
actor within a stream of conscious thoughts and a life-
 longstory,<LI>
- Our awareness of ourselves within a physical, social and
spiritual ecology, and<LI>
- Our awareness of our manifesto among others and against the
backdrop of the universe.<LI></H4>

<H4>Cognition done at lower "rungs" of aliveness are processes
we do not choose, rather they result from the pandemonium of
mental activity that accumulate to produce routine, unconscious
behavior.  The last rungs, however, represent the levels of
aliveness that allows the self to choose behavior.  The
possibility of cognitive freedom rests at these last levels of
aliveness.  To act with freedom and to make moral choices are
reserved for these last levels.  Henry David Thoreau put it more
to the point:  "Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep."3
Social Philosopher Alfred Schutz called this highest of
human consciousness "Wide-Awakeness."  He went on to write...
</H4>
<H4><CITE>By the term "wide-awakeness we want to denote a plane of
consciousness of highest tension originating in an attitude of
full attention to life and its requirements.  Only the performing
and especially the working self is fully interested in life, and
hence, wide awake.  It lives within its acts and its attention is
exclusively directed to carrying its project into effect, to
execute the plan.  This attention is an active, not a passive
one.  Passive attention is the opposite of full awareness.4  </CITE></H4>

<H4>Because so much of what we call "religious" life happens or
is developed in our self consciousness, to be able to nurture,
strengthen, widen and broaden consciousness in students is
central to our work as educators.  As we understand the
phenomenon more fully, we will get clues about the nurturing,
strengthening, broadening and widening of consciousness in
general.</H4>

<H4>HOW IS SELF AWARENESS AND CONSCIOUSNESS EVEN POSSIBLE? </H4>
<H4>A pattern is emerging from among researchers about the
origins of self awareness and consciousness.  Here are some of
the conclusions:</H4>
<H4>1.Self awareness and consciousness are "points" along a
continuum of consciousness (see above). 5<LI>
2.Consciousness, self awareness and spirit cannot come
into being without the brain.  They may outlast it, but the
brain is their birthplace.6  <LI>
3.However, self awareness and consciousness is not
generated by a specific area of the brain, rather it is made
possible by several brain areas and cognitive programs
interacting.  It happens after a certain level of cognitive
complexity is achieved.  It is like the harmonies, overtones and
chords that are created when individual musical notes are played
at once.7 <LI>
4.The self is that which seems to experience
consciousness,  uses consciousness and is the "central meaner,"
that which claims what we are conscious of.8  I am being
metaphorically here.  The self isn't a thing that has physical
properties.  It is the meanings that we are that claims or
"owns" the thoughts we are aware of.<LI>
5.The self is the "gatherer" of biographic memory.  I'm
being metaphorical again.  I mean that the events that the
"Jerry" organism remembers are all connected by this self model
that I am.  The self is the appreciator and valuer of that
biography.9<LI>
6.The content of our consciousness seems like a portion
of a stream of experiences which include: real time experiences
of the physical world, inner thoughts, recollections, imaginings,
and feelings. <LI>
7.Phenomenologically, the self is the observer of our
conscious awareness.  It  has a "point of view," an observation
position in our imagination. <LI>
8.The product of consciousness is thoughts we have about
what and how we are thinking and experiencing, not thoughts of
the objective, physical world.  We think about our perceptions,
not about what is really "out there." <LI>
9.These thoughts about ourselves, our worlds and
experiences are specific to each of us. <LI></H4>
<H4>All of them together, as they come and go through a day and over the years, is who we are. </H4>
<H4>In a  sense, we are fiction, unreal, immaterial, a virtual
reality being "constructed" of the meanings and story of a
life.10  The self remains the same self over time even as it
grows and is transformed.  However, it is not always "there."  It
exists as it is needed.  It is conjured by the brain processing
information and making decisions that require mediation,
resolution or judgement.  Whenever I think, "What will I do
next," my self is summoned (<a href="fig5.jpg">see Figure 12.2</a>).</H4>
<H4>In summary, most of our actions, thoughts and perceptions
get processed  without our being conscious of them, they get
processed in a sort of "pandemonium (to Use Dennet's metaphor)
of simultaneous cognition.11   Consciousness happens when we turn
our attention and concentration to some aspect of this fast-paced
multiplicity of our brains.  It can happen in at least four
basic ways: 1) when the pandemonium  fails to resolve a problem
and we are stumped, 2) when we are aroused or alerted by strong
feelings, 3) when we are "summoned" by an outside source (someone
calls our name, we recognize a face or situation), and 4) when a
strong  memory is snagged by some experience.  Regardless of how
it is invoked, these things begin to happen: 1) attention is
focused,  2) cognition slows down, 3)thoughts are thought about,
4)one's SELF seems to take control, 5)memories are gathered, 6)
parts of the brain used to do the concentrated thinking begin to
produce synchronous electrical pulses of 40 cycles per second, 7)
we rehearse possibilities, imagine alternatives, and 8) our vital
signs rise.  What results from our self awareness might be a
decision, an action, a conclusion, an experience of meaning and
feeling, a creation, a destruction, or a pleasure.  Whether
something "punches" through to our awareness from the pandemonium
or we are called by another person, our consciousness and the
self that seems to direct it is created fresh each time.
</H4>
<H4>HOW DID CONSCIOUSNESS COME INTO BEING? </H4>
<H4>The need to survive and reproduce is at the base of all
behaviors of living things.  It is the basis of the evolution of
consciousness.  Here is a summary of the theory of its evolution.
Every organism seeks to last and endure into the future.  To
my knowledge, humans are the only ones who are aware of this
reality even though it is at work in all of life.  For mobile
creatures to survive requires a "knowledge" of the animal's field
of living.  To be able to recognize our world requires a point
of view, and point of view means that we can identify "inside"
and "outside," me and not me.  This is important not only to keep
safe from harm or attack, but to relate us to our own kind upon
whom we depend for so much.  Every creature has to be able to
recognize "me" and "not me," "mine" and "not mine."</H4>
<H4>For all animals throughout evolution recognition of "me" and
"not me" has been necessary in order to move about in its
environment, identify food, mate and avoid danger.  Vertebrates
have evolved an elaborate array of senses to search and discover
and the mobility to constantly move, forage, and hide.  In a
primitive way animals are always "asking," "Where am I?" "What is
that?" and  "What do I do now?"  The "answer" to the last
question for all mobile organisms is either:  "Scram," or "Go for
It."  </H4>
<H4>The more complicated the organism, the larger its repertoire
for "scramming" or "going for it."  After some new thing, shape,
smell, sound, etc, encroaches into an organism's field and prior
to its decision to run or approach, the whole organism's neural
network revs up to update the situation, laying down information
that will tip it to action.  This is the animal precursor to
consciousness.  This is not yet self awareness, but it is close.
In evolution, regular heightened states of vigilance led
some mammals to explore and acquire information for it's own
sake, hence the development of curiosity.  Our ancestors
developed very mobile eyes, and heads that helped them satisfy
their curious nature.  We and our ancestors might be called the
"Informavores."12</H4>
<H4>This "curiosity feature" led to important physical
developments in the brain.   The fast "dorsal brain" (visual
cortex) took over immediate visio-spatial computations and
real-time safety and piloting duties.  The slower ventral (front
and top cortex) areas were the informavor brain's storing and
organizing areas.13  In primates, the functions spread further
into the left and right cortex with its emerging
specializations.  </H4>
<H4>Up to this point the evolutionary changes happened
genetically so that the better adapted genes (genotype) produced
a better adapted animal (phenotype).  The changes were pre-natal.
Once born, you had all you were going to have in the way of
equipment and strategies for survival.  With the higher
primates, post-natal "evolution" became possible because the
animals could learn new and unique strategies for survival and
curiosity. </H4>
<H4>In other words, the brain evolved to a state of plasticity
and adaptability allowing it to "evolve"  during  its lifetime.
A particularly good learning, skill or development would be
recognized by others of the population and be copied.  The more
useful learnings actually speeded up the evolution or advancement
of the group.  </H4>
<H4>After that time, the hominids and pre-chimps branched in
evolutionary history.  Our large brained ancestors were poised
for the biggest leaps in cognitive development up to that time.
<H4>Their brains were virtually identical to ours.  </H4>
<H4>Accelerated by learned behaviors, the split nature of the
cortex and by the fast calculations of the left brain, our
ancestors learned to talk. They didn't just signal, they named
things, invented vocabulary, used grammar, and told stories.
From that time, language has dominated human history.  Although
the infant brain of today is physically identical to that of the
ice-age baby, the child of today is given a whole new set of
"software applications" that take advantage of the brain.  The
most important being its native language.  With that software, we
are able to more effectively model our worlds and track the
chronological features of it - and of us in it.14</H4>
<H4>Language was used as a means of summoning help and getting
information necessary for survival decisions.  Our ancestors
spoke to each other to get help finding food, water and shelter.
Often, however, there would be no one around to hear a person's
request.  The person would be talking to him or her self.  This
self-request had the same effect as if someone else had voiced a
need allowing the helpee to help him/herself.15</H4>
<H4>According to Julian Jaynes, as language developed and as
tribes and families began to encounter other clans, early humans
learned caution.  They had to be careful about what they revealed
about their needs to a strangers since a needy stranger could be
a threat to a clan just barely making it.16  The result, says
Jaynes, was that some of the wiser ones learned a sort of sub-
vocal inner or self speech to rehearse what they would reveal to
others first.  They learned to imagine talking through a possible
future to themselves.  They would talk to themselves about the
consequences of interaction with strangers and even make up a lie
in order to survive.  In the process, they had to invent a model
of themselves they could move around in their mental landscape
to "do" the rehearsing,  In addition they  "watched" the
rehearsal evaluating the possibilities.  You can't do that
without a self, a "me" or an "I" in your imagination.</H4>
<H4>In both cases, (talking to your self and rehearsing
encounters) "inner speech" or reflective thought was the result.
Jaynes claims that reflective thought and thinking about one's
self was not possible until the development of language, inter
cultural travel and commerce.  </H4>

<H4>Developing an "I" </H4>
<H4>So, today when we think, calculate, and problem solve, the
thinking is done within the context of a history of memories and
ideas attached to a accumulated sense of self.  The "I" that is
me has gradually taken shape as a concept and sort of metaphor of
that which has been Jerry for 50+ years.  When I consciously
survey my world, become aware of my thinking, and even behold
this self I have accumulated, I become, I am self conscious.
Consciousness, however, is not the thinking, but the
awareness of thoughts and thinking.  The awareness occurs when
something we think of causes heightened emotions, attentiveness
and/or confusion.  It is rather like awakenings and glimpses of
our selves in action that over time is recalled as a stream of
consciousness.17  This stream gets organized into a personal
narrative we can tell to others.  It could not happen without
language and relationships.  Helen Keller's blindness and
deafness made language and relationships all but impossible
until Annie Sullivan became her teacher.  With Annie's help
teenaged Helen discovered herself and the people who loved her.
The key was Annie's genius at giving Helen language.  Keller
later wrote...</H4>

<CITE><H4>Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am.  I
lived in a world that was a no world.  I cannot hope to describe
adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness...
Since I had no power of thought, I did not compare one mental
state with another.18  </H4></CITE>

<H4>Self thinking is a kind of miraculous loop of thought
wherein we think about us thinking or acting, or being.19  When
we are able to make a loop in our thinking so that we examine our
selves in our stream of consciousness, we are self aware.  It
happens as a result of the interplay of human relationships,
language, metaphorical thought and after accumulating enough
experiences to make the loop.</H4>
<H4>Consciousness and self awareness requires some specific
skills and experiences.</H4>
<H4>*To be self aware requires concentration on a task or
decision so that we can bring into play logical processes that
override automatic strategies of the subconscious.  In other
words, as we are able to concentrate attention, resources and
options in memory, we enable consciousness.  To be self aware
requires concentration on the tasks we are doing, the memories
that are relevant, and on the sensations that keep us in touch
with the world.  Lose your concentration, and you lose self
awareness.</H4>
<H4>*To be self aware requires the ability to access memory and
meanings on purpose.  It requires self knowledge, a considered
life, and an active mind that can decide to be self aware.</H4>
<H4>*To be self aware sometimes requires the ability to
rehearse one's actions and decisions before making or taking
them.  It means being able to imagine a condition, situation or
outcome.  It might require us to imagine a plan before it is
implemented, a consequence prior to its causes, or a possibility
before it could come about.  The more we know of the world, the
better will be our rehearsals.  The bigger the picture of
creation we can include in our conscious considerations, the more
reliable will be our rehearsals.</H4>
<H4>*To be self aware requires "inner speech."  Inner speech is
the dialogue we carry on between "me" and the model of "me."  I
imagine myself and talk things over with myself.  It can have
the same range of depth, respect and clarity that we show in
interpersonal speech.  For those who do it best, it is honest,
skeptical, probing and affirming.  We are affected by what we
tell ourselves as much as we are affected by what others tell us.</H4>
<H4>*To be self aware requires strategies for recall and inner
speech that address all our seven intelligences including
doodling, singing, playing, sculpting, pacing, visual search
strategies, working, writing and reading.  All these expressions
can deepen and broaden self awareness. </H4>

<H4>WHAT ARE THE FEATURES OF SELF AWARENESS AND CONSCIOUSNESS?   </H4>
<H4>Stay with me a bit longer.  I promise to get back to earth
and the point for religious education soon.  I hold stubbornly to
the conviction that if we nurture and tend to souls, then we
ought to know all we can about the science of soul raising.  When
science can show us a way into that understanding, we better pay
attention.</H4>
<H4>I mentioned Julian Jaynes earlier in this chapter.  In a
landmark book called The Origins of Consciousness in the
Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Jaynes describes the connection
between the growth of human civilization and the development of
self awareness.20  He brought together anthropology, history,
literature, cognitive science, and philosophy to make the case
that self awareness is as young as five or six thousand years,
having developed just after the rise of towns, cities and
commerce.  When people began to make contact with strangers and
travellers, they soon found it was wise to be cautious.  For
their own well being, Jaynes theorizes, early humans had to
imagine themselves in situations of unfamiliar and risky social
encounters prior to making contact.  They would mentally rehearse
the interaction, imagining themselves in that future encounter.
One could not imagine that contact without having a model of
oneself to practice on.  Thus began the development of self
awareness.21</H4>
<H4>There are six features of self awareness, according to
Jaynes, that we have come to nurture in each other with our
language, stories, and culture.22  We still depend on those
features.  </H4>
<H4>First, Jaynes says that our conscious awareness is organized
Spatiality  rather than sequentially.  What we attend to (whether
it is a memory, a book, speech, sounds, sights or different
combinations) gets "placed" in our thoughts in the same spatial
way they seem to exist in the world that we sense.  If we have to
attend to a lot of things, they get strewn around our virtual
world.  We consciously go from thought to thought like turning
from scene to scene in a play, or page to page in a book.
Russian psychologist Alexander Luria reported a case of a patient
that points to the "landscape" nature of our conscious thoughts.
The patient was plagued by what is popularly called a
photographic memory.  Everything he committed to memory remained
in his consciousness and crowded his thinking when he tried to
interact with others.  He was overloaded with things he felt
compelled to attend to.  Quite by accident the patient reported
to have discovered a way to forget.  He simply hid the unwanted
information in his imagination.  He put meaningless and unwanted
memories of addresses and names behind imaginary trees, hung a
conjured cloth over them, or he would put a person who kept
popping into his thinking in a shadow or some how camouflaged the
person.  By using the spatial nature of consciousness he hid
memories like easter eggs.23</H4>
<H4>Related to the spatial nature of the landscape of
consciousness is the second feature Jaynes called  excerption.
Excerption refers to the fact that what we are aware of is
partial, as if it were seen from one angle at a time.  One cannot
think of a person's face and the back of the person's head at the
same time.  Our mental picture may shift quickly from one
perspective to the other, but we do not normally hold them in our
mind simultaneously.  "Ah," you say, "but I can imagine the two
views side by side."  Yes you can and so can I.  We can do it by
imagining two people.  But each of the imagined people will
still be "seen" from a single perspective.  As our senses receive
only part of an experience, so our consciousness of what we sense
or remember sensing is partial.  </H4>
<H4>Third, says Jaynes, in that virtual reality called
imagination, an  analog "I"  that can move about, interact,
explore, and experiment.  It is through the "senses" of the
analog "I" that we "experience" the virtual world.  It is an
analog of the integrity of our thoughts and history.  It is the
model of what Dennett calls the "central meaner," "the center of
narrative gravity," the self.  It is an analog of one's self</H4>.
<H4>Fourth, there is a  metaphor "Me"  that we can "watch" do
things in our virtual world.  The Analog "I" "watches" the
metaphor "Me."  In a dream state, these two fictions come and go.
We dream our dreams and then remember them as a story unfolding
before us and then we ourselves seem to step into the picture and
act.</H4>
<H4>Fifth, conscious moments (especially self aware moments)
are remembered as and are part of a personal narratization of
our lives, an unfolding biography.  Conscious experience is
stored and recalled as a part of a narrative stream.  Each
episode, or moment of consciousness is perceived as a picture or
a scene, even a collage of scenes, but we recall them as or in a
sequence.</H4>
<H4>Finally, Jaynes says that consciousness conciliates what we
are aware of to eliminate as much ambiguity, dissonance, and
lack of integrity as possible.</H4>
<H4>Religious thinking and being is at least wide-awake,
conscious living.  It is the mental state wherein a person is
conscious of God, of one's relation to God and one's being in
creation.  Consciousness is a precondition of being religious.
These six characteristics of consciousness can point to ways
to nurture, strengthen broaden and widen consciousness in others.
They are teaching-learning strategies that can be included in a
learning event in any of the points along the Spiral of Learning
described in an earlier chapter.  I believe that the points on
the learning spiral themselves nurture consciousness, but there
are some strategies that can be applied that will prove useful
in nurturing self and consciousness.  I present them in the
categories suggested by Jaynes.</H4>

<H4>Spatiality </H4>
<H4>The spatial nature of our conscious thoughts is natural.
Yet it is a characteristic we can strengthen, making conscious
thinking clearer.  Diagramming with paper and pen is a way of
spreading out ideas and experiences for conscious consideration.
In chapter two I used the diagram of "circus" to talk about the
experience of circus-ness.  Encourage students to  doodle or
diagram their ideas and feelings.  Try it yourself.  Diagram
fear.  Use words, pictures lines and figures to spread out before
you fear's experience, causes, results, thoughts and memories.
Any idea or feeling can be spread out like a diagram.
Or perhaps it can be  drawn as a scene, or series of frames.
It can be danced, acted, built and sculpted as well.  Any spatial
method of "spreading out" ideas, experiences and feelings  will
clarify them and give us another opportunity to be self aware.
</H4>
<H4>Excerption </H4>
<H4>Our conscious moments are always excerpted from a larger
context.  They seem to belong to a bigger picture.  I recall a
workshop I attended on parenting that might illustrate.   We
were asked to imagine our children in their favorite place at
home and what they were doing.  I imagined seeing the place from
the point of view of an adult standing at the back door of our
house looking over at my sons building a skate board ramp.  I was
annoyed as I imagined the scene because of the mess and noise
their play caused.  The leader of the workshop then asked us to
imagine it again but from the perspective of the child, their
height, their angle and from their experience.  I was surprised
at the difference in meaning a new perspective could provide.
What they were doing was fun and important.  By encouraging and
leading us to report, reflect on or recreate moments of meaning
from several perspectives and angles, the leaders helped us to
deepen and broaden our consciousness and discover meaning by
sampling several excerpts from an event. </H4>
<H4>All our experiences are excerpts from a larger context.  A
story or experience gathers its meaning from its context but we
consciously experience only a piece at a time.  We experience
moments that are excerpted from something larger.  In fact, we
gather our self image from the excerpts of living that we
accumulate over the years.  By telling our excerpted stories, we
bring again to consciousness our selves even as we present our
selves to others.  By listening to each other's excerpts, our
consciousness is deepened and widened by being invited into
another's stream of awareness.  There is no more valuable gift
one person can give another outside of living the moments of our
stories in companionship.  </H4>
<H4>This is the theme of a beautiful book by psychiatrist-
educator-author Robert Coles Called The Call Of Stories.  In it,
Coles weaves a fabric of meaning and value by telling and
reflecting on the stories he has come to know as a reader,
listener, psychiatrist and educator.  He writes,</H4>

<CITE><H4>...Stories are renderings of life; they can not only keep us
company, but admonish us, point us in new directions, or
give us the courage to stay a given course.  They can offer
us kinsmen, kinswomen, comrades, advisors - offer us other
eyes through which we might see, other ears with which we
might make soundings. 24
</H4></CITE>
<H4>When we take part in the rendering of another's story, our self
models are permitted to jump into another's biographical or
imagined story stream.  To some degree we "live" the other's
story in a way similar to living and remembering our own
biographies.  We need to encourage the telling of stories.
As students tell their stories (or draw them or write them),
encourage them to tell them from unique perspectives. Suggest
they tell their life histories from the perspective of a sibling,
parent, or pet.  Suggest they video tape their own biography,
make a mural of the events of a year, or display photographs of a
period of transition.  </H4>
<H4>When you tell stories, use different perspectives of the
characters, location or pieces of it by using pictures,
artifacts, or role playing.   Encourage students to imagine
walking around as the people in a religious story or experience.
Fresh angles make a difference in the way people build their
versions of stories and experiences.  By doing so, they may pick
up a new perspective for knowing and developing their selves.
Just think how we have changed the way we have thought of the
earth now that we have photographs and movies from space.  Since
we excerpt, encourage new points of view, seeing with the eyes of
people different from them, and walking in the shoes of other
pilgrims.  It will raise the consciousness of students.</H4>

<H4>Analog I </H4>
<H4>We "look" at our conscious thoughts from our own "eyes."
"Look" and "eyes" are in quotes because our eyeballs have almost
nothing to do with the experience.  The "one" who sees our
thoughts is the self, a complex idea of us that represents the
physical being now reading this book.  That self, in fact, is
really who we are.  We can lure students into wider and deeper
consciousness by encouraging self reflection and inner speech.
Encourage students to refer to themselves.  Pay attention to
the number of times people refer to themselves.  You may be
surprised at the absence of first-person singular referents.
Encourage the use of diaries and poetry as personal disciplines
of inner speech.  Spend time talking about honest inner speech.
That is, encourage students to have inner dialogues with
themselves but ones that  are totally honest.  Encourage private
prayer.  Prayer is similar to inner speech, but the dialogue is
between oneself and God.  The similarity is that God does not
stand before us like a friend, and so we need a metaphorical God
in our minds to turn to.  I am not implying that we just make up
God, rather, that we somehow imaging God in our conscious
landscape and aim our honest inner speech in that metaphorical
direction.</H4>

<H4>Metaphor Me </H4>
<H4>Sometimes we think of and imagine ourselves.  That sketchy
image is the metaphor of who I am.  We need that metaphor to
plan, rehearse, practice and even to remember.  It takes on the
form and style of our selves but can also be braver, meaner,
kinder, stronger, and weaker than we actually are.  It is
hypothetical.  It is a very useful creation.  Encourage the image
of that metaphor by suggesting that students draw it, write
metaphors for it, display photos of each other, and fantasize
about it. </H4>

<H4>Narratization</H4>
<H4>Narratization and excerption are similar things.
Narratization is always an excerpt.  There is no other way to
strengthen the ability to string one's life together in a story
than to tell it.  Our story is a sequence of events we can
unreel.  Like a film, our stories follow a main character (a
"me") through encounters that reveal themes and motif. Let
students tell their stories all kinds of ways.  Invite them to
act them, dance them, paint them, mold them, write them, cook
them even!  And in the process don't forget to tell yours.  We
must model story telling. </H4>
<H4>Not only ought we to tell our own stories, we enhance
consciousness by telling all manner of stories.  Donald Miller in
his book Story and Context reminds us of six components of story
telling.  If any of them are missing from the tale, the story is
drained of its power.</H4>
<H4>He writes that the story teller shouldself consciously stand within the story, getting a feel for the tensions and potentials of it.</H4>
<H4>Then, as the story gets told, he or she should stand to one side of it so as not to overpower the story with his or her own self.
Third, the teller should narrate the story in a way that keeps detail, feeling and meaning connected.  </H4>
<H4>Fourth, he or she should keep the tension of the story's drama at the center of the telling.  </H4>
<H4>Fifth, the story needs to be presented with a point of view about living in general.</H4>
<H4>Finally, The teller should seek to make the telling a
"word-event."25  </H4>
<H4>These components help engage the imagination of listeners and lures them into identifying with another.</H4>
<H4>Identification with someone else is an exercise in self awareness
except that the analogue "I" assumes another identity for a time.
There are dangers in identifying with another too closely but
those dangers are slight compared to having no chance to "walk in
another's shoes."  By skillfully telling our stories to each
other, we flex our self awareness in expansive ways.</H4>
<H4>Encourage students to put their stories in the context of
larger narratives: their family story, their cultural context
and within the great myths and rituals of their people that gives
their story meaning.  Encourage them to be story collectors.
Encourage them to discover story themes among various ethnic
groups, novels, movies and television stories.  As people claim
their story in the context of the great themes of their people's
story, they begin to see those themes in the events of each day.
To nurture that skill is to make self aware theologians.</H4>

<H4>Conciliation</H4>
<H4>Finally, explains Jaynes, being conscious means having an
awareness of the contradictions, ambiguities and strangeness in
one's life, and having the urge to conciliate or unify one's
thoughts and meanings.  Everyone's life story has elements and
episodes that on the surface seem contradictory.  Jaynes writes
that being conscious will bring us face-to-face with ambiguity
and contradictions  For some this is not a pleasant experience.
It can discourage self reflection and deepening consciousness.
Look for ways to encourage students to confront and deal with
the contradictions, ambiguities and strangeness they encounter in
what they are aware of. </H4>
<H4>Encourage students to uncover the unity that underlies
diversity and discontinuity. Invite a trusting group to tackle a
problem of ethics, religion and meaning together.  Each self
wants what they are conscious of to fit in some way in their
world of meaning.  We know that not every thing will.  There are
solutions to many problems, but to others, there is only mystery.
Encourage students to make a place for mystery, wonder,
indecision and incompleteness even while urging them to discover
continuity.</H4>

<H4>Nurturing awareness will nurture the student's self,
strengthen its character and durability, broaden it's grasp of
God's creation and deepen commitment to other selves.  It is an
essential task for religious pilgrims.</H4>

<H4>SELF AND RELIGION </H4>
<h4><EM>Black Elk Speaks</EM>26, by John Neihardt, was turned into a powerful play about the history of the Lakota Indians not long
ago.  In it, Black Elk and his community tell the story of their
people as they struggled for survival and meaning over the four
hundred years of European dominance.  Woven all through the
story of the people was the mythic background of the Planes
Indians and their disciplines of spiritual consciousness.  Their
myths and rituals helped them to know themselves and maintain a
link with the spiritual reality that they saw behind events.
Their stories were like maps for their souls. Their spiritual
disciplines were cognitive routines for creating states of
consciousness and self awareness that placed them in contact
with the great themes and meanings of the Lakota.  These routines
put them in a place of spiritual awareness and freedom. Even
under the oppression of the Europeans, they could be free.  Even
in the face of death and terror, they had hold of a cosmic thread
of meaning that helped them join in the creative "hoops" of
meaning that structured their community life and personal
biographies.</h4>
<h4>Black Elk's story reminded me that spiritual disciplines of
prayer, meditation, worship, dance, singing, fasting, and work
invokes consciousness.  In consciousness we can choose among
actions, character, principles, even emotional states.  Our
religious life (at its best) can serve as a ladder by which we
ascend to levels of awareness and understanding that puts our
lives in durable and redemptive context. </h4>
<h4>Like Black Elk climbing a ladder to a meditation spot on a
mesa, our religious life gives us access to meanings that
harmonize our stories and lift them through the struggle for
meaning into the light of conviction and belief.  Like Black
Elk's songs to the Great Spirit, our religious life can put us in
touch with the creator and our brothers and sisters soul-to-soul.
Any conscious moment is an ascent to the place where selves can
meet and grow. </h4>
<h4>Learning can go on without consciousness, but it is the
learning of a robot.  It is learning without the possibility of
soul transformation.  Conscious learning opens the way to the
transformation and the growth of one's self.  Conscious learners
and teachers need to employ the routines that invoke awareness.
Maxine Greene calls this level of living "Wide-Awakeness."27  Any
other way of learning, she insists, is superficial.  Story and
ritual, religion and community are at the center of those
routines. The glory and blessing of human nature is this gift:
the ability to search for meaning and discover it, to manifest
hopes and futures in action, to know one's self and be grateful,
and to know something of what lies behind, beneath and above the
sensed world.</h4>
<h4>To know that all this is possible because of protein, genes,
nerve tissue, neuro-transmitters and a whole lot of carbon is the
astonishing fact cognitive science leaves us.  It is this fact,
that matter cradles spirit, which makes it possible for us to
join Black Elk in his prayer to that which is at the heart of
things:</h4>

<CITE><H4>Great Spirit, lean close to the earth that you may hear the
voice I send.  You towards where the sun goes down, behold me;
Thunder beings, behold me; you where the summer lives, behold me!
You in the depths of the heavens, an eagle of power,
behold!...Great Spirit, my Grandfather, all over the earth the
faces of living things are all alike.  With tenderness have these
come up out of the ground.  Look upon these faces of children
without number, and with children in their arms, that they may
face the winds and walk the good road to the day of quiet.
This is my prayer; hear me!  The voice I have sent is weak, yet
with earnestness I have sent it.  Hear me! 28</H4></CITE>
<CENTER><H4>-------------</H4></CENTER>


<CENTER><H4>Notes for Chapter Twelve</H4></CENTER>

<H4>1 E. Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1963): 261</H4>
<H4>2 R. Winn, A Concise Dictionary of Existentialism, (New York:
Book sales, Inc., 1960): 22</H4>
<H4>3 H. Thoreau, Walden, (New York: Washington Square Press, 1963):
66</H4>
<H4>4 A. Schutz, Collected Papers I (Netherlands, The Hague::
Martinus Nijhoff, 1964) 213</H4>
<H4>5 D. Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1991): 21-25</H4>
<H4>6 R. Ornstein, The Evolution of Consciousness (New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1991): 34-39</H4>
<H4>7 G. Taylor, The Natural History of the Mind (New York: Dutton, 1979): 187</H4>
<H4>8 Dennett, 364-366</H4>
<H4>9 Ornstein, 208-214</H4>
<H4>10 Dennett, 368</H4>
<H4>11 Ibid., 240-241</H4>
<H4>12 Ibid., 181</H4>
<H4>13 Ibid., 181</H4>
<H4>14 Ibid., 190</H4>
<H4>15 Ibid., 194-199</H4>
<H4>16 J. Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1976):
204-215</H4>
<H4>17 Ibid., 214</H4>
<H4>18 H. Keller, The World I Live In (New York: Century Co., 1908)</H4>
<H4>19 E. Hearth, The Creative Loop (Reading Mass: Addison-Wesley
Co., 1995): 134-148</H4>
<H4>20 Jaynes, 1-18 </H4>
<H4>21 Ibid, 219</H4>
<H4>22 Ibid., 59-66</H4>
<H4>23 Taylor, 248</H4>
<H4>24 R. Coles, The Call of Stories (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1989): 7</H4>
<H4>25 D. Miller, Story and Context (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1987): 117-118</H4>
<H4>26 J. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks (London: University of Nebraska Press, 1961)</H4>
<H4>27 M. Greene, Landscapes of Learning (New York: Teachers College Press, 1978): 42-51</H4>
<H4>28 Neihardt, 5-6</H4>