You can judge how developed your consciousness is by observing yourself throughout the day. In this post I will explain how you do this.
Your degree of happiness can easily tell you how far you are on your quest to increase the quality of your consciousness. Residing with your awareness in the present moment throughout every action you do will not allow unhappiness to develop. Being fully present lets you see reality more clearly with little room for unhappiness. The direct experience of the present moment is so rich that after some time you will find out that nothing is missing. And that way, if you are unhappy you know that the quality of your consciousness can still be developed further.
It is easy to go through your day almost unconscious. Always thinking a few second or minutes ahead, planning the day, the week or your life. Interacting with people but at the same time having your own projector running and overshadow what is actually going on. We do this automatically and it is mostly unconscious. We only feel it as unhappiness when our projections and ideas about how the world should be do not match up with reality.
To solve this issue and accelerate your progress, extend your meditation practice to every moment of you life. Find an anchor in the present moment that you can easily concentrate on. It will remind you to stay present. Automatically you will also observe your other thoughts and feelings. This anchor can be a body sensation for example. Or even resting your awareness in your body as a whole, trying to observe everything that is going on.
Over time you should observe that this practice grounds you so powerfully in the present moment that you will not be truly depressed or unhappy anymore. Try it out and it might become a life long habit for you. One that changes your whole outlook on life for the better.