We’ve been trying to put into language things that are difficult to describe. As an analogy for Consciousness, you can think of light; in itself, it is never seen. Even when we seem to see a ray of light, it’s actually reflected off of little particles of dust, so we never see the light itself.
Although light is invisible, we know there is light because we see other things. When we see anything, what we see is light being reflected off of an object, that’s how vision works. It’s reflected light. We see light only when we see objects, and that’s the only way in which we ever see light.
Similarly, we are aware of Consciousness only indirectly, only in relation to objects. We are conscious of Consciousness, in a reflective way, through being aware of objects. As with the analogy of light, we never actually see Consciousness in itself. We become aware of it, we recognize it, but we don’t experience it in and of itself.
Another analogy is that Consciousness is like a crystal Ball things appear in it, but the ball doesn’t change, it maintains its clarity while things arise in it.
A third traditional analogy is of Consciousness as a mirror. The reflections constantly change, but the mirror itself never changes.
The mirror is profoundly intimate with its reflections, yet is entirely unaffected by any of them. Sometimes people speak of the unaffectedness of Consciousness Itself as if it’s standing apart, detached, but that doesn’t convey the way in which Consciousness is in everything, and everything is in Consciousness; there is no distance.
(From The Tapestry of Being, Chapter 3: You Are a Multidimensional Field of Radiant Energy)