Every human being is self aware to one degree or another. It’s the nature of the species. The degree to which they are consciously self aware varies depending on many different factors including level of integrated personal experiences, personal gift, habit, degree of distraction, misunderstanding/opinion about the experience itself, choice of mode of thought and of course happenstance/luck. There is much confusion and misunderstanding  about, and even bias against the experience as well. Self awareness is most essentially your awareness of consciousness itself. It is not ego or any other compiled, constructed, attained, maintained or synthetic product of one’s mental world. There is a stripped bareness quality to consciousness described by the zen expression of a mirror where not even the breath is condensed upon it. The experience of Grace is often described as “the incredibly powerful and humbling experience of God’s Grace falling upon one. I am not here to validate or invalidate anyone’s experience or beliefs. I would however like to point out that we are all made in the image of God and so the spark of the divine is necessarily within each of us as human beings, and thus the experience itself is logically valid. I am simply saying that it is a very, very  self empowering and beneficial experience….and that it is an experience anyone can and should be aware of for those reasons alone.

I also write this entry is to illustrate the sameness of self awareness/consciousness and the experience of Grace, and to point out that it is not necessarily to be equated to the intelligent, the accomplished, the reverent, the orthodox or anything else. It simply is, and anyone can experience it, and when they do it is generally a life changing experience. There are also degrees of intensity of the experience of Grace, Self awareness, Consciousness as well as levels of integration of the aspects of the experience within oneself.

Furthermore, as three of the major aspects of both the definition and experience of Grace and the classical and correct goals of economics are balance, equilibrium and flow, a higher consciousness of this fact is supremely logically important. After all A = A denotes logical alignment so the applicability of Grace is logically relevant to the study of economics.  Now this does not mean that we are to think that modern economies naturally tend toward equilibrium…they in fact do not;  what it does mean is we need to look for and discover the deepest, most fundamental reason(s) why the economy is not in equilibrium….and then craft policies that will result in the greater stability and freedom that economic balance, equilibrium and flow would insure.

Likewise the hallmark of increased consciousness is mental clarity, focus and integrated understanding of whatever personal and/or temporal issue is at hand. That in fact is an excellent description and definition of Wisdom at its pinnacle expression and ability. Again, as logic is expressed in the syllogism A = A, so the experience of Grace, Self Awareness, Consciousness and the pinnacle of Wisdom are all essentially the same thing. 

Often, the truth is that the degree to which one is unaware of the characteristics of Grace, Self Awareness and Consciousness and the benefits of same, the less self aware/conscious one actually is, and so one could be extremely erudite, accomplished, etc. and still be missing this essential experience. The sad truth is that the combination of modern distraction and all too often a modern bias against what is seen as a religious pursuit works against the mental focus and discipline often required for these experiences, as well as against a general interest in them at all. The biblical quote appears to apply to our modern world: “Thinking themselves wise, they become fools.”