Have you ever taken the time to think about what conscious awareness is and what it means to be aware? For many people, most of the time, awareness is something that is trapped. Right now take a few moments and become aware of being here right now, reading these words. Stay in this simple, open state and be open to what happens. Pay attention carefully until you realize you have "lost" it.
Now try another short experiment. Concentrate very closely on the full stop dot and the end of this paragraph. When it appears very clear to you, gently close your eyes and be aware of what is happening in your mind.
Immediately after your eyelids came together there was a brief instant of totally quiet awareness. You were free from thought, images, and sensations. It was immediate, open, and real. Then some mental activity kicked in. It might have been a visual image that came to you first, a recognition of the darkness in your vision, or perhaps you noticed the quietness or some other sensation that presented itself. Then some thoughts likely came along.
Maybe you started thinking something like, "Here I am, now what?" or "What should happen next?" or "Am I doing it the way he said to?" There would have been some kind of judging or labelling of the experience in your mind. And at some point in all of this, your awareness began to be trapped. In other words, you "lost" it. If you can, try to remember when and how that happened. Try the entire exercise again a few times if you wish, and watch, carefully. Don't attempt to cling to your awareness. Simply watch to see when and where it "goes".
The Importance of Conscious Awareness
How much of the time is our awareness "gone" just like that? For many of us, probably quite a lot. And one can sense it would be kind of nice to have that awareness "back". How nice it would be right now, to be wide awake realising one is alive and living, appreciating the process of being. Even more, to become one with living and with existence, fully immersed in life with both eyes wide open.
What Happens When We Lose Our Awareness?
Why is it that we aren't wide awake more of the time? Why isn't this our default setting? What happens to pull us "out" of life, to make us feel distanced and separate? For one thing, human beings don't enjoy pain very much. And life can be painful on occasion. The tendency is to block out an awareness of life to avoid the pain it might hold. It is similar to taking a narcotic. As if it were better to unaware than to be aware of something undesirable or unpleasant. This pattern causes people to want to cheat a bit in life. It is almost as if they want to negotiate with the Universe by bargaining to take all the pleasure but leave out the pain. Naturally, that is impossible. Pleasure doesn't even mean anything except in its relationship to pain. It is impossible to have one without the other, no matter how hard you might try.
Why Do We Kill Awareness?
As such, we tend to kill the whole business of awareness. "I'm going to sleep now. Wake me up when this crap is over and the fun comes back." It is like the experience most of us have had with young love. At the end of one's first love, the pain is so great that one often resolves with themselves to never let themselves fall in love again. "I will go without the pleasure because the pain is too much. I don't want to be hurt anymore." So one now tries to live a life without love. The same thing happens with awareness.
Another reason I feel important as to why we tend to kill awareness is that people are born managers and organisers. People feel they must somehow manage every single that enters their awareness. In some way, everything must be dealt with. Every emotion, every sensation, every thought, everything must have something made of it. It must be dissected, used, integrated, modified, analysed, manipulated, interpreted, evaluated, arranged, and controlled. At the very least, it must be labelled. Got to get our hands on it and do something with it.
It has become so ingrained in many of us to be in total control of ourselves (whatever we define our "selves" to be) that every experience becomes an object we need to take charge of. Naturally, this requires an incredible amount of energy. And of course, it is very crazy indeed. If anyone were consciously in charge of everything in life, they would be paralysed. You would not even be able to lift a single finger. The complex sequence of intent, nerve conduction, muscle contraction, sensory feedback, and everything else need to lift that one finger would be simply too much to handle. For any person, ever. But hey, that doesn't stop us from trying!
A great example of this is our breathing. All along, you are breathing. As long as you are alive, you are breathing 24/7. But are you doing the breathing? When you are not aware of it are you breathing any more than you are the beating of your own heart? When you are not paying attention to your breathing – or the beating of your heart – it functions just fine.
But right now, try paying attention to your breathing. Just still nice and still for a few minutes and watch your breathing. See if you can do that without messing with your breath. See if you can allow your breathing to be natural and free. Most people can't do this – not without some practice. For most people, awareness is so glued to the idea of control that one just seems to accompany the other wherever they go.
Sit down somewhere outside in the open air and breeze. There is incredible beauty in sensing the breeze upon your face and never once calling it a "breeze". This is something that each of us has experienced, long ago, when we were very young. Sadly, it is a beauty long forgotten.
With the assumption that anything coming into our senses and our consciousness must somehow be dealt with, it seems like being awake takes an awful lot of work. So to ease off on the work a little bit, we tend to keep ourselves asleep a good deal of the time. And, when some special task comes along and needs to be accomplished, we tend to stifle our awareness of everything else.
We call this "paying attention," and we are rarely aware of how much additional effort we have to put into blocking out everything except the object of our attention. We arbitrarily define what is important to be aware of and what is not. We select one thing to focus on and label all the rest as being "distractions" and undesirable. Then we work extremely hard to shut out the "distractions" and concentrate on the task at hand. And afterwards, when often find ourselves tired and worn out. But it wasn't just the task that created the fatigue. It was all the effort that went into shutting everything else out.
No wonder we can come home from work in the afternoon, or after dropping the kids off at school in the morning, grab a drink or snack and collapse in a chair in front of the TV. No wonder "taking it easy" usually means blocking everything out. So nothing is needing to be managed and we can just catch a break. But have you ever stopped to notice how taking it easy like this often makes you feel more tired than before?
Lastly, there is another explanation for why people enjoy spending so much time unaware. This is the most important reason for them all, and in one way or another, it underlines and determines all of the rest. It is the fear we have of death.
The Benefits of Embracing Conscious Awareness
When our awareness is free, and when one is deeply, and openly immersed in the process of living, one is not in the business of defining themselves. If a person is living in a state of unity with life, the world, and the Universe, they cannot ask, "Who am I?" As long as awareness is truly free and one is "just" being, one cannot be concerned or distracted by notions of self-degradation or self-importance. Identity is meaningless. And when we can cease trying to define ourselves, we become frightened and fearful. It is something like death. We associate it with a state of non-existence.
Ironically, it is in those moments when one is fully freely living that one tends to pull back, suddenly realising that the self has been forgotten, afraid of continuing to be. For it is not in being, but in trying to be, that one defines one's self. It is in the doing, the achievement, the relationships, the mastery, the control, and the manipulation that one carves out their own identity. It is in making marks upon the world, upon oneself, and upon others that one creates and shapes an image of "who I am." How precious and sacred this identity appears to us, that we would sacrifice our very awareness of being to cling to it.
This is certainly not a new problem, and it has been faced in one way or another by every person who has ever lived. As soon as people created thoughts and words, they started to label the "things" around them, and they started to place labels on themselves. And ever since then, the great "I Am" has captured the awareness of all humankind.
Major religions and theologies – both ancient and modern – have offered ways out of this trap. They all begin with a core statement along the lines of, "I am all that I am." How exactly can that be managed? How is anyone going to meddle with that? And they all carry the message that one doesn't have to meddle with it because it is divine. Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, all proclaim in their various ways a deep reassurance that it is in losing one's self that one can find one's self.
That is, in death one finds life. All promise that if you could just give and your struggle for self-definition and self-identity, your true being would spring forth in fullness and truth.
But that kind of promise is a hard one. It seems the sacrifice is simply too great. People remain entangled in their daily struggles to master living. And, as a consequence, awareness remains trapped.
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The information contained above is provided for entertainment purposes only. The contents of this article are not intended to amount to advice on your personal situation and you should not rely on any of the contents of this article. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this article. The Writer and Shoshin Therapies disclaim all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this article.
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