CHAPTER 1
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, emotions/ body, and spirit.
A BASIC SCHEMA FOR PERSONAL GROWTH
There are many tools that help us peer inside and understand what is happening. The explanation I am going to use comes from the long line of psychoanalysis and the offshoot I studied—Core Energetics. There are certainly other methods to help us understand our own experience; however, in this method, the person is broken down into three parts. One is the part we present to the world. This is called the mask, persona, or ego. One is the part that we try to conceal from the world. This is the lower self. The third part is the core self—also called the higher or true self.
The reason I am starting with this schema is because it offers a simple, yet consistent, structure with which we can view ourselves and our behavior. It can be a bit tricky at first, but, since it is simple, it soon becomes an easy way to analyze our behavior.
When we are in the mask part of the self, it is almost like living one track ofa multiple-track recording. Inthe mask, wethink weneed tobe a certain way in order to be loved, accepted, and safe. We can get somewhat caught up in this way and even start to think that this is all there is of us. It is normal to be caught up in this in adolescence and early adulthood, but we often get stuck in this part of ourselves for longer. When we linger in this outer, more superficial, level, we lose our ability to observe. We lose our perspective. We become consumed with that mask self. We might start behaving as if we want to convince ourselves as badly as we want to convince others that what we are presenting is the truth of who we are. Sometimes, because of situations or social structures, we forget there is something more than this mask self. This can lead to feelings of emptiness, discontent, or falseness. This is why developing the ability to observe the self is so important and benefits us so greatly. When we realize that the mask is just a part of us—not all of us—our view of the world and ourselves changes profoundly.
Seeing the mask does not get rid of the mask. In fact, we never completely get rid of the mask. But, learning to see it is an excellent first step in developing our awareness. Sometimes, just by seeing it, we want to put it away. It can make us uncomfortable. We feel a lack of integrity when we spot it. Sometimes, when people do not see the mask but are living from it,theyfeeloutofintegritywiththemselves.Theyknowthattheiroutsides and their insides do no not match. This leads to a lot of discontent.
One of the most important things to do when working with the mask is to confront it—question its self-definition as our truth. Some of the things we can ask ourselves about our mask in order to help confront it are:
• What am I trying to protect?
• What is it I feel I need to convince people of?
• What is it I most want people to see and believe about me?
The reason we develop our masks is to cover our lower self. It is not that the lower self is a bad part of us—it is really the part of ourselves that is motivated by the classic "fight or flight" reflex. It is our survival mechanism. There is nothing bad about having a survival mechanism. We need it. However, the more we evolve, the more we see the limitations to this survival mechanism. It limits our ability to fully be ourselves, to grow, to get some of the best parts out of life. So, we acknowledge it and thank it for its role, but we do not let it rule the show.
The story goes like this: When we were young we likely encountered a number of situations where our natural reaction was to use our fight or flight instinct (the lower self). This was not accepted or might have even been forbidden by the people around us, so we learned to act in a more socially acceptable way (the mask). So, in order to be closer to the truth about us, we need to reverse this process.
When we are trying to understand lower self we can ask these questions to better be able to observe what is going on:
• What am I afraid to have others know about me?
• What am I afraid to know about myself, about my motivations?
• Am I afraid of the darker side of my motivations?
When working with the lower self, it is most important that we work to transform the fight-or-flight emotions. You can think of this like sludge at the bottom of a jar. One of the ways to get it out is to shake the jar so the sludge gets mixed up in the water. This way it is easier to dump out the contents and have a clean jar.
After a while of observing this mask and lower self, we get more in contact with our core self—our higher self, the truest part of whom we are. I often equate this with words such as "love" and "truth." This is the more expanded part of our selves. When we live from this place, we have the deepest sense of fulfillment. Through observing the mask and the lower self, we might learn that the more we are able to be the observer, the more the observer is the higher self. That is why observation brings us to a deeper level of presence.
When Anna came into my office she was struggling at work, in her relationship, and her life in general. She was not sure which behaviors of hers were helpful and which were hurting her. Although she was a thoughtful person, there were many areas of her life where she was still not very self-aware. Toward the beginning of our sessions, I introduced the concept of the mask, lower self, and higher self. Like many people who first learn about this schema, it took a bit of time before it made sense. However, before long we had a shorthand for where an emotion or behavior might be based. Anna learned that she used her spirituality as a way to be detached from others as well as be disengaged from her own life. In this case her spirituality had more to do with her mask than her core. So, we needed to find out what lower-self emotion it was covering. After some time it was possible to tell that one of the primary emotions was anger. Once Anna was able to see that her anger about having no control over her life was affecting her so deeply, she was able to gain quite a bit of understanding about how she had constructed her life and also do what was necessary to process her difficult emotions from the past. Doing so allowed her to easily change her behaviors so she could create a more satisfying life.
This very simple system can be very difficult to take in and understand, but, with attention and practice, it can be extremely useful. As you continue to read this book, I will reference this information so you can begin to see how these roles play out in your life. You can then use this awareness to create deep and sustainable change, better relationships, and more fulfilled lives.
OBSERVATION
Our number-one tool for developing awareness is the development of consciousness through observation. Observation allows us to see that the things we think of as reality are actually perspective and perception.
The first and perhaps most important part of developing awareness is the skill of observation. As I mentioned before, observation is the ability to step outside of our mask and lower self and see them for what they are. There are two different ways to express the outcome. One is to say we get into contact with the higher self. The other is to say that the observer is the higher self. If you look at various practices around the world, you will see different ways of exposing the higher self. None of them are more correct or more wrong than the others. They are different ways for us to access and understand our experience. I think it is important to add that the skill or technique of observation is not new. It has not been created by me—possibly adapted by me, definitely explained by me—but these practices have been in place as long as people have been curious about their awareness.
Observation of the Mind
There are different approaches to developing our observation skills. The one I am going to start with is the observation of thoughts. During any given moment, we can have a multitude of thoughts going on in our head—some of them conscious, some of them unconscious. Meditation is a process by which we observe our thoughts. We allow our thoughts to float by. That is the tool I am going to start with.
Now, as I said in the beginning, nothing happens if we do not do anything. You can read this whole book, but, if you do not put it into practice, the change you see in your life will be minimal. So what I suggest you do is create a schedule for yourself. Even if you read this whole book from front to back without implementing any of it, as long as you come back and use each of these tools on a regular basis, according to whatever schedule you want, you will benefit from it. One example of a schedule might be spending five minutes per day reflecting on the content of this book. At the same time, remember: we all have our different paces and life requirements. Whatever you can do is perfect. Something is always better than nothing when it comes to your personal growth. Sometimes, even a drop is all we need.
Several observation exercises have the same beginning, which is as follows:
1. Find a comfortable place to sit or lie down, whichever way you feel the most comfortable and well-supported.
2. Close your eyes completely, or bring them into soft focus. If you choose to bring them into soft focus, you will want your gaze to gently fall on a wall, ceiling, or other fixed spot.
3. Once you are comfortable, take a few deep breaths. Inhaling, you can imagine the breath gathering up tension in the body. Exhaling, you can imagine letting this tension out. Repeat this process at least three times and then let your breathing return to a normal depth.
Exercise #1, Your breath: Keep your attention on your breath. You might notice that thoughts begin to drift in. Perhaps there is a dialogue going on. Some of these thoughts might be mundane; some might be bizarre. Your job for now is to bring your attention back to your breath every time it slips away. You are practicing being the observer of your thoughts as they arrive and then practicing focusing your attention, for now, on your breath.
