Awareness

Awareness is our true nature. It is that part of us that in my view is more important we wake up to, connect with and nurture more than anything else we do in this life. When we live without self awareness, understanding and experience of it, we are living an unconscious life, also known as a conditioned experience. We continually say the same things, have the same responses to various situations and have no control over what we create. How can we be powerful creators when we have no idea of the power and strength of who we really are? We cannot. And this is not free living.

As Eckhart Tolle says in the amazing book ‘The Power Of Now’ you are that which animates your body, you are the witness, the one that is aware that you are reading these words, breathing, hearing thoughts, feeling and experiencing this life. I remember the first time I experienced my awareness of this life. I was in yoga teacher training in 1999 and part of our training was to attend an hour meditation twice per week. As I went to take my seat and the teacher said “we will sit for 30 minutes, don’t move” and I totally freaked out inside. Suddenly I had all this anxiety and my whole body was rushing with energy and felt hot. I felt like was going to pass out and my breath was not steady. Right when I felt like I had to move and get out of the room I heard the gong, 30 minutes had passed. Wow. I looked at the teacher immediately who could see I was struggling and he came over and I helped me to stand slowly because I could not feel my legs and I felt so anxious. He walked me outside and suggested I sit out there for the next 30 minute sit. He left and as I took my seat and began to close my eyes, I saw my faint reflection in the glass across from me. Something shifted in me in that moment, I became aware of myself sitting and suddenly felt very still inside, beyond the fact that I was sitting still. I gradually let my eyes relax until I could only see a small portion of the ground around me through the slits in my eyes and it was then that I heard the words from The Power of Now “who is it that is behind your eyes, who is the one observing while you sit in stillness? That is your awareness, that is who you are.

Since my training I have done a lot more meditation, I became so drawn to sitting still because I felt so much more peaceful all the time and as life would get busy and challenging and bring traumas and struggles, I found that my time in stillness became cumulative and I was better equipped to handle life with all of its surprises. What also happened is that I became aware of what I was saying and how I often repeated myself, in other words my old conditioned way of begin and I gradually began to see that I could choose what I wanted to say and how and this shifted my experience again and continues too every day.

A yoga practice or some kind of body movement practice is really good to help move energy from the body to begin to clear and set up the mind to handle sitting still for a while. Even 5-10 minutes each day focusing on the breath can deepen our level of awareness. Once we awaken and become more aware, we can begin to listen to the subtle voice of our awareness that is always guiding us to live authentically, we can now make more conscious choices and live freely.