Awareness- The Foundation of Life

Take a close look at your present experience in this very moment. Observe what is happening around you in your environment as well as what is happening within. Notice the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures around you and the thoughts, feelings, emotions and sensations occurring within.

Now I want to perhaps give you a new and expanded perspective on the nature of your experience. Most people think that what they observe happening is somehow external or independent in relationship to them. We observe phenomena that occurs within our awareness and think that it is happening somewhere “out there”. Even our thoughts, feelings and emotions are seen as somewhat external to us and are usually at the mercy of what is happening in our environment.

But consider this. Everything that you experience, everything that occurs within your environment, is really just an interpretation of your nervous system. You brain must translate all stimulus into a picture that you can interpret and understand. So it would be more accurate to say that what you are actually observing and experiencing is not something happening “out there” but rather what you are experiencing and observing is the state of your nervous system.

With this in mind, you realize that you can never truly touch reality. There is always a filter. The same way two objects can never really touch in the truest sense because their electrons repel each other, you can never truly touch the external world with your awareness. Your subjective filter coats everything with it’s own paint, it taints the truth of reality through its own self-deception. Cultivating awareness is the art of removing the filter to the best of your ability and thus seeing reality for the truth of what it really is.

If you want to take this concept even deeper, the truth is that you are always observing your own subjective state of consciousness. All that is happening around you is simply a reflection of this state of consciousness. The environment certainly affects you and imparts itself onto your own subjective state, but this doesn’t occur until it goes through your filter. This is why two people can experience the exact same event, such as a sporting event, and have a completely different emotional response to the experience. So in actuality, all of reality is more of a subjective experience than an objective truth. Can you now understand why there is so much conflict in the world, both within and without?

So how do we get to the Truth. Simple, remove the filter. And how do we remove the filter? Through the cultivation of awareness. The only way that this can occur is through acute self-observation. Practices such as meditation work to improve your capacity for self-observation and thus enable you to cultivate greater awareness. Through cultivating awareness you develop greater responsibility, that is, the ability to respond to your experiences in whatever way you choose, as opposed to going into unconscious auto-pilot like most people. So this is truly the foundation of all of life, of all human experience. It is the catalyst for all true growth, improvement, and success. The cultivation of self-awareness.

Let Go of the Past

For too long I would lose myself in that sorrow and self-pity that only the lonely have the misfortune of indulging in, regretting missed opportunities and dwelling on the possibilities of what could have been.

Thinking if only, if only I did things differently, if only I took advantage of the opportunities I had right in front of me.

But my gnawing fear and self-consciousness blinded me. It blinded me to the fact that if I just allowed my true self, my true thoughts, and my true feelings to come through they would enable me to seize these opportunities and capture the moments that I longed for in life.

This feeling of listliss remorse gave me a sort of depressing, self-deprecating comfort as I pondered the possibilities of what could have been and imagined them in my mind's eye. I saw myself with the girl I had always dreamed of being with but never had the courage to talk to.

I saw the wonderful friendships I could have experienced if I had the audacity to break out of the shell that choked all the joy, happiness, and life out of me and replaced it with silent tension, constant worry and anxiety, and ceaseless discomfort.

And then I realized the very act of allowing myself to enter this pitiful, self-destructive state was what prevented my growth. It prevented me from learning from my mistakes and moving forward with this new-found wisdom.

I couldn't see it then, that the lies I told myself were what held me back, that the stories I made up in my head kept me caught in this paralyzing web of awkwardness, fear, and self-loathing. I now understand that these lies that I chose to believe were what disabled me and caused me to miss out on life. And I see that dwelling on these past mistakes in the present is much worse than the mistakes themselves, because it causes me to miss out on what truly matters, this moment. 

The past is not reality, it is nothing more than a distant memory that is warped and changed every time it is recalled in order to correlate with a person's current beliefs and state of mind. I cannot change the past, but I can learn a valuable lesson from it and use this lesson to prevent myself from repeating these past mistakes in the present and future. I am no longer blinded by my own fear and self doubt, for I can see the truth, and that the truth alone will set you free.