Many people who come to my programs, voicing their intentions, see the need to become more conscious. And I wholeheartedly support them in these desires, especially when it comes to awareness.
But what I have encountered is that people who are engaged in some form of personal self-improvement, see the way to awareness as a certain volitional process, it is enough to wish, to do some practices, to go through seminars and trainings or to meditate diligently.
I’ll tell you a secret: growing in awareness has nothing to do with will, wishing, or doing practices. Although they, in turn, can be an exceptional nudge and really help on your path.
Awareness is a direct result of your daily experience, and its growth is directly dependent on your participation in each successive day.
When we begin to work with mindfulness, it is as if we are going through a period of testing. Our “body memory” sits so deep in us on a cellular level that the trial of mindfulness can be a rather difficult and time-consuming process.
The Test of Mindfulness
Such qualities as jealousyanger, guilt, or shame, are difficult to control. These are things that were once engendered and are still alive in our bodies. But the joke of our growing awareness process is that greater awareness leads to a sharper perception of these very primal impulses that have plagued our ancestors for so many centuries.
That is, mindfulness opens your eyes to a great many conditionally unpleasant processes that previously
automatically, unnoticed.
How often the process of cultivating mindfulness is built on a struggle between consciousness and subconsciousness, as if we want to outwit, to overcome the negative emotions and programs that we have come to see. However, these programs are essentially the memory of the body, and this is a deep subconscious process.
And, of course, increasing awareness is not possible as long as our consciousness struggles with the subconscious, with the primal impulses of our body.
Awareness begins to develop precisely at the moment when we not only acknowledge the fact that we have an unknown and independent subconscious force that lives its own life, but also accept it with all its seemingly irrationality. Read more in article on the duality of truth..
By accepting the subconscious with all its pleasant and unpleasant contents, we are able to explore it, to go deeper into this mysterious world. True awareness manifests itself in observation, in acceptance, in one’s ability to ask oneself questions that lead us into the unknown, on a journey to oneself.
If you would like to take advantage of my help on the path to mindfulness, I would be glad to see you at my hands-on workshop The Sacrament of Life.
