Pardon Me While I Dip My Fingertips Into This Ancient Pool

 I've been considering consciousness.

I'm thinking of it in terms of Genesis, taking it back to the beginning of the knowledge of good and evil.  I hesitate to be one of those people who wants to make the ancient scriptures into folk tales.  For I believe they are actually a God-given framework to hang truth on, even if not scientific descriptions of events.

I read some definitions.  They all say pretty much the same thing.  Consciousness is the being aware of self and surroundings.  Hm.

I wonder if, when the time was right, the Creator took a pair of these human creatures and breathed his Spirit into them and made them aware.

(He only gave them one rule, and we know what happened.)

I always wonder about the state of animal's minds.  What are they thinking? I know that they sometimes respond in a way that would indicate thought.  But do they have a sense of their own existence?  Who can say?

Awareness seems to point to the world outside self. OK.  Its related to the word wary...or ware, which means to look out!  Keep your eyes open.  Archaic a bit.

So looking inward at self and outward at the world we wake up.  I suppose it happens at some point in childhood for most of us.  I almost remember that split.  I noticed that I was not a piece of my mother at some time.  

We are not woke, because that is a stupid past tense-mistake meaning you have a beef with reality.

Being awake and aware of our own existence, we think.  Thought is our means of perception and relating to life.  All of experience is thought.  If you were not thinking and conscious, it would be as if you did not exist!  

Thought is existence? 

This worries me because I see a lot of thoughtless automatic tribal behavior in the world.

I just really believe that a sound mind is an often unconsidered blessing!  Where would we be without a good instrument?  I guess the nub of my point is to thank God for the gift of mind.  Its how we resemble Him, as His kids.