Our consciousness is being completely screwed over right now (sorry for the language, but it is the only way to make the point)

Some of this is brought upon us by ourselves.

Others may disagree with this statement, but to be completely obsessed with all the information in this discussion forum will also screw up your mind sufficiently.

Not because the information is bad, it is because a person constantly grabbing at the next new idea or next new understanding of consciousness does not trust the wisdom of their own inner guidance mechanism.

Each of you has your own unique need and method for the awakening or expansion of yourself.
The only way to find the nature of expansion, that is most suited for the unique individual that you are, is to trust yourself and nobody else (but keep this truth to yourself)

When you trust yourself, you don't have to ask a million questions.

Now above is the real answer I would like to give to the question asked, for it deals with the starting point.

This, however, is not the point at which the problem is noticed.

The problem is noticed when We expose ourselves to the chemical dangers in our environment, such as chemical deodorants, off gassing from carpets, cheap deodorants & personal care products, chemical additives in our foods, genetically modified foods, additives in vaccines and I'm sure much, much more.

Then you have information overload from education, books, newspapers, magazines, music, noise pollution, Television, Television and more Television.

TV should have its own category of effects, because they get you at so many levels. They get you with radiated frequency pollution They get you with Psychological and subliminal programming They get you with the de-stabilization of your own consciousness by the constant switching of ideas so that you only have a few seconds exposure to each idea. Then the preferred programmed idea is inserted into you through repeating brief flashes followed by instructing you on how to assimilate it within yourself, never allowing you time to critically examine how the idea resonates with your inner point of reference.

Here's an example of how that works.

First they will show you a story of a local event; it could be a chemical spill, a bomb scare, a rape, a murder, etc. As the story unfolds they will constantly intercut with local reporter interviewing the people in the neighborhood.

The reporter WILL NOT ask "what did you see?” Instead, they will ask "Are you afraid for your life because of this?" or "were you scared for the safety of your family?", or "Will you move from this neighborhood now that this has happened?" The idea is always spoon fed, with the person being asked the question (who symbolically represents you) is never allowed to formulate an opinion of their own free will. They may interview about 10-15 people to come up with the necessary 3 answers that agree with the negative slant that is consistent with the reporter's angle.

And finally the reporter wraps up the conclusion with the statement, "the people of this neighborhood are afraid for their lives and are angry at the authorities for not fixing the problem fast enough", immediately followed by some soothing music or imagery that substitutes for the stimulation of the pleasure center, just like the programming of Pavlov’s dog. (By the way this pleasure could also be provided by a flash of a young sexy woman or a handsome man in some un-related story or commercial as a quick Segway to the next idea)

And if you don't watch yourself, this opinion now becomes your own new opinion of what you just saw, and you will find yourself repeating this opinion to others as if you formulated it by your own free will. Except you didn't, it was inserted into you and you never caught it happening.

Other than the effects of chemical food, and medication pollution much of the obsessive behavior can be induced with the constant diet of the right type of information paranoia.

Watching a show on obsessive compulsive behavior in-itself is an excellent source of such paranoia.

There is another hidden area that seems to affect the Hollywood stars such as Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, to name a few. This is a whole different Pandora’s box that starts with the likes of Marilyn Monroe at one extreme of celebrity and ends in such tragedies as the murder of John Benet Ramsey at the other extreme of privacy (and the truth is still hiding in privacy). In this situation, I believe, the Obsessive Compulsive disorder manifests when the individual begins to wake up to what has been done to them.

So I have to go back to my first portion of the answer. Trust your own ability to form your opinions and use all the other things mentioned here as tools that are under your control. If these tools become your educator, then you come under its control, and you will lose your inner reference of guidance and trust.

You will look for guidance within these tools instead of within yourself, and in that state of imbalance and constant grabbing for balance from outside of yourself; you will find yourself with millions of questions and an obsession for order within a self in constant disorder.

And you will develop a compulsive desire to fix this never-ending disorder within you.

You are looking outside for a solution to a problem that originated on the inside.

You have to overcome the fear to face yourself and take that journey to examine yourself. All your obsessive behavior will unravel during this self-examination.

To record and properly chart your own make-up is not what is important. It doesn't matter what you find, what matters is that you look.

It may take a few days, a few weeks, months or a lifetime. It doesn't matter how long.

What matters is that you look.

Stingray made an excellent point on the validity of questioning everything as opposed to a position of blind trust where I asserted “you don’t have to ask a million questions”

My response to his point became an entire answer in-itself that I decided to add it as an addendum to this response, because it is very relevant to the clarity of the overall answer, and I’m glad this point was brought up.

So it might be a good idea to read Stingray’s comment at this point.

I have moved my response to Stingray, in its original form, from the comment’s section to here.

Hi Stingray, I do agree with your observation & comment on the benefit of asking questions instead of blind acceptance.

But here is what I'm discovering. Our consciousness seems to sit on the fence of logic and intuition with equal ease when given the chance. I like to call it the point of balance.

At this position you can observe yourself as you try to make sense of the information that immerges in response to the question asked.

When you are internally referencing you either completely get it, partially get it, or you don't get it at all, and you are ok with all results.

Also when you are internally referencing, depending on the degree of "getting it", you align yourself with the understanding of it. But the important thing is that you are OK with not completely getting it if that is the case.

When you are externally referencing, and the answer is attracted towards you, your consciousness behaves differently.

When you completely get it, you have questions.
When you partially get it you have questions.
When you don't get it at all you are frustrated and, on top of that, you have more questions.

It seems that when you shift to an external reference, the mind begins to distrust the validity of its own analysis, perhaps because the mind has shifted to a point of reference that is a reflection of itself (external data), instead of its source of inspiration (internal data).

It is like you writing a book about yourself and then you read this book that you wrote to discover yourself.

For a logical person that example doesn't have a problem.

But the internal person knows that the "you" that wrote the book can discover more by asking the source instead of analyzing the result (the book).

*Added a little bit later, last bit (I promise) *

One can learn from studying the external data. Or one can learn from studying the internal data that is triggered by the activity of studying the external data.

This is what is actually going on anyway, but your logical “ego” doesn’t allow you to stumble upon that realization.

So you are imprisoned within a framework of egotistical logic that pretends to have all the answers but actually sneaks through the backdoor to get help from intuition without allowing you to notice this.

Even when you try to bypass logic by reaching intuition directly, logic is right there next to you going “BUT HOW DO YOU KNOW IF IT IS TRUE?” forcing you to constantly second guess your own intuition , which is only allowed access when it gets the seal of approval from logic.

This is what happened to you when you went to school

You were taught “How to Think”

As if you didn’t know how to do that when you were born!