Awareness: Seeing What Is

In the article, Dynamics of Emotional Health, I suggested that one criterion of emotional health is the ability to access a wide range of feelings, and to be able to express or disengage from them consciously when necessary.
That presupposes that we can recognise that firstly, we are feeling an emotion and, secondly, that we can recognise which emotion is. Many of us are chronically unaware of a good deal of our inner world. If we want to have any sense of mastery of our emotions that needs to change.

Awareness is the capacity to observe, dispassionately and without any judgements. The object of one’s awareness might be something external – for example a person, or a situation – or something inside, such as a physical sensation, a thought, or a feeling.

Right now, for a few moments bring awareness to your body: to the way your body is positioned in front of your computer; the sensation of your feet on the floor, your breath moving in and out and the rise and fall of chest or belly as that happens, and so on….

…If you tried that small experiment, perhaps you can appreciate that “If I can observe my body that means I am not it. My body is an aspect of me, but I must be something other than it; otherwise how could I observe it?” Similarly you can observe your mind-heart. Because thoughts and feelings are less tangible, observing them might be more of a challenge.

Pause in your reading right now and tune in to what you’re thinking and feeling. (This might be easier if you close your eyes.) Tired? Curious? Bored? Confused? Inspired? No need to judge what you find; just notice, for the new few moments, what thoughts or feelings are there….

…Having done that, now you might be able to appreciate that, “If I can observe my thoughts and feelings, I can’t be my mind or my heart. Though they might reflect something about me, as with my body, they are just an aspect of me. And they come and go: this observer part of me stays put. It has to stay put in order to notice that which passes.”

Generally, we become deeply ‘identified’ with various aspects of ourselves – our physical appearance, our thoughts or our feelings – and invest much of our self worth in them. For example, I may become identified with my youthful body and build up an image of who I am according to the kudos that invites. Or, I might not be academically clever: I identify with that, label myself stupid, and build up an image around that perception.

In both instances I’m identifying with passing facets of myself. I’m not cognisant of the constant me: that aspect that will still be around when my body has lost its youthfulness, and when academic achievements or lack of have dissolved into irrelevancy.

When you understand that you are not any of the observable, transient aspects of yourself, you are less likely to identify with them. It generally takes constant inner work to maintain this awareness because the habit of identification is so ingrained. Yet this one fact – of our being other than our physical, mental, or emotional aspects, of our being an observer of those facets – is pivotal to emotional mastery.

Filter or Mirror
There are two essentials for awareness. The first is to disengage from what we’re observing.
The second is to drop judgements about it, because as soon as we judge what we’re observing we are identified with it, negatively or positively.

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The mind functions as a filter between reality and us. That filter only takes in whatever fits with our beliefs, assumptions and prejudices about reality, about what is ‘normal’ and ‘natural.’ (These, in turn, are a product of the cultural paradigms in which we’ve been immersed from childhood.) Thus, we have an automatic screening process in place, a readymade interpretation of what it is we perceive.  Awareness, on the other hand, is free of any mental clutter: it simply reflects reality as it is, free of interpretation. We see ‘face to face’. That’s why those who are self-realized or totally conscious are called ’seers.’

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It is true that the mind can make a determination to change some aspect of our personality. That’s the premise on which all psychotherapy is based. Yet all this self-work will be very limited – because the issue we are working on is being studied through our filter and, more significantly, is created by the filter. While we try to fix problems with only the mind we are not addressing the basic fact that we cannot see ourselves or any aspect of reality as it is.

Awareness does not try to change anything. It simply illuminates reality as it is; it clarifies. It allows us to view the bigger picture. In our expanded, unfiltered seeing of an issue, the solution becomes evident. Conversely, we discover that the so-called problem was only a ‘trick of the dark’.

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The ability to be conscious of ourselves is what makes us human. As Charles Darwin vividly illustrates in The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals, animals have emotions, a fact any animal-lover will readily endorse. While animals have feelings, then, and some degree of consciousness, it seems that they are not aware of their feelings or of themselves. That is, they are not conscious of the experiencer within themselves – that consciousness that registers delight or dejection. Because we do have this faculty, we Homo sapiens have the ability to take responsibility for ourselves.

We are born with the capacity to be aware, so it is a natural ability. However, if we want to live with awareness we need to practice constantly. The more often we function from awareness, the more conscious we become, and the more ‘light’ inside us. (Hence, seers are ‘enlightened’.) Ultimately, being aware is part and parcel of who we are.

Although being aware is ours for the claiming, not all of us want to take the step to making it ours. Why? Because awareness reveals facets of ourselves we might prefer not to acknowledge. Yet the alternative is that we live mechanically… as if we are on autopilot.

Our Golden Childhood
When we start out in life, everything is new to us – beginning with the exciting discovery of our big toe. That is part of the reason for the wonderful vibrancy (and universal beauty) of children. But over time the mind becomes so used to the tasks of our everyday life that we do them automatically.

Once the mind has mastered a routine, we are no longer present to it. By and by most of our day becomes a series of endless, repetitive exercises, which, understandably, give us no joy or fulfilment because we are not present to experience them. Small wonder then, if life no longer holds the thrill it used to, and if we look back at our childhood, nostalgic for those days when we felt so vitally alive.

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Witness Protection
How can we reclaim our lives? How to be more present to what we think and feel and do?
There are hundreds of meditative strategies with which you can experiment. Once you start regularly using one or more of them, awareness is no longer just a state confined to the time you meditate. It’s a quality that affects everything that happens in you and through you.
Some awareness techniques are featured in Meditation du Jour. Here are two other methods that can give you a taste of self-awareness.

Anybody Home?

As soon as you wake up in the morning, even before your eyes open, ask yourself, “Anybody home? Are you there?” (Adding you own name makes the question even more potent.)
Then you wait for the inner response: “Yes, I’m here!”
Repeat this as often as you remember throughout your day. Getting steamed up in a traffic jam? Bored out of your brain in a staff meeting? See if you – that constant inner presence called consciousness – are still there, or are you ‘missing in action'?

This second method deliberately upsets the applecart of your customary, unconscious habits.

Rout the Routine

If you wear your watch on your right wrist, instead, one morning put it on your left wrist. Always clean your teeth with your right hand? Switch to the left!
Do you usually hold your fork in the left hand and your knife in the right? Reverse the pattern. (And I know what you’re thinking: No, don’t change sides if you always drive on the right side of the road!)
Find as many of your fixed ways of doing things that you can, and ‘unfix’ them (without injury to yourself or to others).

When you do you will see for yourself how automatic much of your activities are. For example, even though you have deliberately placed your watch on the opposite wrist from the usual one, notice how many times during the next few hours you forget, automatically checking your now-naked wrist.

Eating with your knife and fork with the opposite hands will probably mean that you eat more slowly. That can be helpful in bringing more awareness to what, how, and how much you’re eating.

Don’t under-estimate the power of simple techniques such as this one. Each time you consciously disrupt your routine, you’re creating an inner alarm. That, in turn, throws you into a new space, so you are more connected to the present. You will immediately feel the difference.

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