AWARENESS: TURN ON THE LIGHTS

The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.

—Pema Chödrön

All of our problems—all of them—can be lessened, changed, or transformed by becoming more self-aware.

Do you know this? Do you use it to hurt yourself? Do you use it to grow and make a difference? We are all growing and learning—this never ends. We are all unfolding and becoming in each moment. Sometimes we might be afraid of, or resent, this process. We might even try to shut it down. While that might work for a while, it does not work for long. Sometimes, we set out to make a difference, to learn, and to grow, but we get overwhelmed, burnt out, or lost. In fact, this inevitably happens. You are not on the path unless you fall off the path at some point. It is important that we know that these are not failures. Our off-roading experiences are gifts.

When I was twenty-one, six months before I got pregnant, I had some bodywork done. There were two minutes where the practitioner held my head. She held it with such compassion. That was when I instantaneously decided that I needed to learn to do it. I went and studied bodywork, but that was just the beginning of my work with compassion. In fact, to this day, it is a central force in my work. However, I had days, weeks, months, and even years where compassion was hard to find. I could not find it for myself or for others. I resented the people I worked with, because I was giving away energy I did not have; it was energy that I could not receive in turn. That was one of the times in my life when I needed to engage in awareness work in order to be the person I aspired to be and live the life I was meant to live.

My life has certainly had its share of mistakes, its share of moments where I failed to grow and, instead, tried to hide as a victim or justify my actions. What I have learned along the way is that the more willing I was to honestly and gently look at myself, the more riches I received, the more deeply meaningful my life became. Now, when I feel fear, when I face an obstacle, when I feel limited, I know there is potential right around the corner. These moments of awareness have created better relationships, more joyful work, and more peace inside my own skin.

Unfortunately, when we choose not to move forward, when we do not try to see our role in the problems of our lives, life feels overwhelming. All of the challenges we face that are a continual part of life, such as loss, suffering, and even death, overwhelm us. We fight more and more to feel safe in a way that it is seemingly impossible. And then, we try even harder.

Wherever you are, keep in mind that being hard on yourself about what you do not know is never helpful. Cultivating awareness is a process. Use the tools in this book to help you move forward, rather than remind you of what you are not, or what you have not been able to do.

It is when we begin to work on our own awareness that we move from being pawns in a world of chaos to being active in the making and changing of our own lives. Awareness, and the concepts and practices around it, are relatively new to us. We can see its more popular beginning in the practices and theories of psychoanalysis. The concept of self-awareness hit popular culture in the 1960s and 1970s and has remained a part of our cultural awareness since that time. However, awareness has always been part of all religions—so it has been with us a really long time.

The reason awareness is such an important factor in fulfillment is that realizing what we think and feel and how we act, makes a big difference in what we experience. In this book, you will learn about and implement the basics of awareness. You can think of this as a foundation course in an incredibly expansive field. However, for those who have done some of this work, these tools never cease being important and effective. Each of them can be practiced wherever you are to gain insights and make positive change.

WHAT IS AWARENESS?

As I sit down to try and answer this question, I notice how easy it is to feel like I do not know what it is. I think, from a broad view, awareness is something we do not completely understand. People have thought about it for as long as there have been human beings to think. Awareness, in my opinion, is having the ability to observe our own experience and make adjustments so as to benefit our lives. In other words, if I am able to watch myself thinking, feeling, and acting—and, through this witnessing, I am able to make adjustments to my behavior that ultimately lead to my fulfillment—then that is being self-aware.

To boil it down, awareness is about becoming the observer of our own life so we then have the power to create the life as we choose. Perhaps, ironically, the by-product of this is being more present. The less fabricated the notions we have of ourselves—the less we are controlled from our own unconsciousness—the more we are we able to be with what truly is: ourselves, others, and the world.

WHAT STOPS US FROM BEING MORE SELF-AWARE?

Have you ever wondered this? There is no definitive answer. Some believe our level of awareness reflects where we are in our development—that it is a process, that we are all in different places in our evolution, and that it has something to do with how self-aware we are. Some believe we are all self-aware at the time of birth, and we are socially conditioned to shut down some of our faculties. Still another view, similar to that, is that the traumas of our life, large and small, contribute to our being less self-aware. Due to my own substantial changes in awareness, because my work with others implies it, and since I cannot answer the questions of the universe any more than anyone else, I believe that awareness is a skill that we need to develop, although why we choose to develop it might remain, at times, elusive. However, once we choose to develop it, we can become more skillful with our awareness and therefore more fulfilled in our lives.

In the following pages, I will offer basic tools for working on your awareness. Practicing these basics can get you very far.

STEPS TO DEVELOPING AWARENESS

In this chapter, we will explore a plan for developing our awareness. First, we will look at ways to become better observers of the mask and the lower self to bring ourselves into stronger connection with our higher self. Once we have developed our ability to observe or confront our notions of what is true, we can begin to use techniques that help us transform our limited selves or lower selves. Finally, we will use tools, which I call "practices," to continue to develop our awareness through living it in our everyday life. Practices are organized around nine value-based words: love, respect, compassion, joy, wisdom, truth, courage, humility, and generosity. Each of these practices works with the mind,...