Caring about Consciousness

Some people are interested in attaining higher levels of consciousness, while some want nothing more than to enjoy this life and to be concerned about that which is material, tangible, and understandable. I can accept that we all care about different things. What I don’t get is how some people dismiss things that they don’t understand as insignificant or irrelevant. Take, for example, the commonly accepted myth that humans only use 10 percent of their brain. I did some online research and here is what I found:

“What's not understood is how clusters of neurons from the diverse regions of the brain collaborate to form consciousness. So far, there's no evidence that there is one site for consciousness, which leads experts to believe that it is truly a collective neural effort. Another mystery hidden within our crinkled cortices is that out of all the brain's cells, only 10 percent are neurons; the other 90 percent are glial cells, which encapsulate and support neurons, but whose function remains largely unknown. Ultimately, it's not that we use 10 percent of our brains, merely that we only understand about 10 percent of how it functions.”

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=people-only-use-10-percent-of-brain

Now, some of you will find this article fascinating, while others will have zoned out by the middle of the first sentence. Maybe you don’t care about neuroscience, but I doubt that you would say that human brain function is unimportant. We might only understand about 10 percent of the science behind our brains, but to assume that the parts that are beyond our comprehension are superfluous…well, that’s just plain stupid!

This attitude of—I don’t care about it and I don’t understand it, thus it must not be important—is prevalent in our culture. We have voters who don’t understand global economics or foreign policy and go on to assume that it is irrelevant. There are individuals who don’t care about environmental damage and pretend it doesn’t exist.

Thus, it’s no wonder that many people dismiss spirituality. Faith is difficult to prove, to understand, to explain, or to quantify. Thousands of people, including me, have tried to make sense of it. Yet, God will always remain beyond human comprehension. However, just because we can’t understand God completely, doesn’t mean He does not exist, or that connecting with Him is irrelevant. Whether we care about it or not, consciousness—the instinctual, intrinsic awareness of the bond between us and our Maker—is supremely important.