A clergy friend recently asked me to write something about consciousness for a class he was leading. Later that day, I was in a recovery meeting where the focus was on Step 2 – “Came to believe that a Power Greater that ourselves could restore us to sanity.” It occurred to me as I listened to my companions, that my own recovery journey has taught me something about consciousness. I think many of us begin mired in self-consciousness – focused on ourselves, our needs, our fears, our wounds, and our attempts to manage or control the world around us. I know that place well. Recovery, and my journey of faith, have gradually opened me to something larger: a “God”-consciousness. Through that opening, I have come to trust more deeply in a Presence greater than myself, a Love that holds me, and a Grace I don’t have to manufacture. And the beauty of it all, I believe, is that the more conscious we become of God, the less consumed we are with ourselves and the more able we are to truly see the essence of God’s Spirit in the people around us. An “Other”-consciousness begins to emerge, not out of obligation, but out of connection, compassion, and love. Perhaps this is the true core of the lessons both recovery and faith offer to us: that the spiritual journey is really in how the Spirit moves us from self-consciousness, into God-consciousness, and then outward into a deeper consciousness of one another. Perhaps, in the end, these are not three separate kinds of consciousness at all, but one expanding awareness that God is present in me, in you, and in the life we share.