Awareness
Awareness is what we want to develop with our practice.
Before we go on, take a moment and step outside of yourself. Gaze into your thinking mind —watch yourself with your thoughts. What are you thinking? Are you here mentally? Where is your mind? Are you hungry? Tired? Feeling any emotions? While you are observing your thinking mind, observe your heart space and what you are feeling in you heart.
Observe. Be aware of your own thoughts, feelings, and emotions— not judging or criticizing, just observing. Look inside your head and look inside your heart.
See if you can see in yourself what perpetuates what you are thinking — again no criticizing!
What is awareness? It is noticing. Stop thinking, and notice. When we are too much in our thinking mind we are preoccupied — not noticing the energies we are giving off, or the energies of those or what is around us.
Find it hard to learn something new? You’re probably thinking to yourself throughout the lesson so you are not really listening. Forget where your keys are often? You’re probably thinking about something as you mindlessly place your keys down. If you stopped the chatter, paid attention to where you laid your keys you would not misplace them.
Also when we quiet the chattering mind we are present. When we are with someone and talking more to ourselves than with that person we are not present with them.
Awareness starts with being aware of what we are thinking, and how that impacts us. Our thoughts create an energy field around us, what energy are you sending out?
Awareness is also noticing other people’s energies and sensitivities and how to navigate that without short-circuiting ourselves.
When we are noticing we are starting to tap into our intellect. Yoga is more about developing our intellect than developing a strong asana practice.
In yoga philosophy there are three states to our mind. There is the manas or the thinking mind, there is chitta -our previously remembered experiences which will influence the manas thinking, and there is the buddhi which is our intellect. The intellect is what we want to use the most.
Our intellect is activated when we engage in inner contemplation. Inner contemplation is more mindful than random thinking.
Inner Contemplation – watching our thoughts and feelings and mind chatter. Yoga has an inner contemplation as part of the practice, this is consistent in all the different yoga philosophies.
Contemplation is defined as an inner seeing or vision with a spiritual component — or even a mystical awareness. When most people are thinking they are so wrapped up in believing their thoughts that they are not evaluating their thinking.
Inner contemplation is watching your thoughts and feelings as if you are an observer of your thinking mind. We need to evaluate our thoughts. Most of our thoughts are imaginary and will never come to fruition.
On average we have three negative thoughts to one positive thought. Start to be aware of the quality of your thoughts. This is what mediation was developed for, it is not to stop the thoughts, rather to be aware of your thoughts and consciously direct them.
To do this mind work we need to strengthen our intellect – the buddhi in yoga.
It is the intellect that filters the thoughts.The intellect is what we use to monitor the mind and make the decisions as to which thoughts we are going to continue to think. Intellect is the mental capacity to solve problems, to understand concepts; it is not part of the thinking mind, which is why it can be used to filter the thinking mind.
Intellect is what we use to be aware. It’s a deeper mental space that we want to spend more time in.
There are different ways to strengthen and purify our intellect depending on your belief or culture. You can do meditation or prayer or any practice, such as forest bathing, anything practice that calms the thinking mind and allows you to access the awareness part of yourself.
We are trying to use the higher parts of our mind; in the front and higher areas of the brain are we contemplate and think wisely, and not be in the lower brain is where stinking thinking and stress response occurs. Think of it as an upstairs brain and a downstairs brain —we want to set the stage to be in our upstairs brain.
We’re using the practices of yoga (and we can use aromatherapy scents and nature) to access the higher areas of the intellectual brain so we can respond with more wisdom and less from our wounded child place.Through this work is where our inner growth and personal development improves.
When you are stressed or having a hard time taking control of your thoughts, use nature:
Citrus and floral scents change the chemistry of the body by helping your body uptake more of the calming neurotransmitters while eliciting a change in the hormonal response encouraging the feel good hormones to be released and taken up. So does just walking outside.
It is also where we find the deeper sense of oneness with all living beings. Within this layer of our intellect lies the beginnings of understanding oneness. This recognition brings greater compassion, love, and acceptance.
It is highly unlikely that one will be able to maintain this awareness 24/7, rather it will come in waves of perception, increasing in duration (hopefully) over time. As this happens you will notice you don’t get caught up in the daily dramas your mind tells you about. You also don’t get so caught up in what other people are doing. You will have less stress in your life and more calm.
It seems to me; being able to access and operate like this, is the essence of all yoga practices. One of the best ways to improve your intellect and your awareness is to practice the witnessing meditation.
The Witness
Its easier to witness yourself when you are with people. This can be especially useful in the challenging situation.
Next time you are interacting with anyone, take pause, get into your subtle body and rise above yourself gaze down on yourself watching how you interact and behave.
This practice is called CULTIVATING THE WITNESS —become a neutral observer of your own life.
The witness place inside you is simple awareness, the part of you that is aware of everything — noticing, watching what is around you.
The witness is actually another level of consciousness. The witness coexists alongside your normal consciousness as another layer of awareness. Humans have this unique ability to be in two states of consciousness at once. In any experience, there’s the experience, and there’s your awareness of it. That’s the witness, the awareness, and you can cultivate that awareness in the garden of your being.
This process of stepping back takes you out of being lost in your thoughts and into self-awareness. The witness is your centering device. It guides the work you do on yourself.
“So your first job is to work on yourself. The greatest thing you can do for another human being is to get your own house in order and find your true spiritual heart.”
– Excerpt from Polishing the Mirror: How to Live From Your Spiritual Heart by Ram Das
And then there’s a Deeper Awareness
I’ve been listening to people who have had near life experiences. I like how one woman explained hers (Anita Moorjani on the Dhru Purohit podcast):
It’s as if we are going through life in a big dark room with one little tiny flashlight. We are only aware of what our little flashlight shines on in that big room.
When she was in a coma, it was like the lights were turned on in this room, and it was not just big it was humungous. Like a football fiend that is 20 stories high filled with people (both living and dead —people she knew and people she did not yet know), animals, things, possessions, and love. Everything around her radiated with love. She was happy there and felt lightness and joy. In this dimension there is no gender, no culture, no race.
She had no desire to go back into her body. Her dad (who had passed) and was there with her in the coma told her to go back, he said she would heal and she has something to share with the world.
And just like that she was waking up in her body. Upon awakening she realized she was back to the little flashlight in the big dark room, however she was AWARE of the room and what it contained and most importantly the love that she never felt prior to this experience. She awoke still feeling the love and joy of being in that in between state.
And just to share the end of the story, she slipped into the coma dying of lymphoma cancer. She had big tumors all around her neck, chest, and underarms. With in a few days of coming out of the coma, the tumors started to shrink. Within 3 weeks the tumors were gone and in 5 weeks she was diagnosed completely cancer free and remains so today.
(Wayne Dwyer picked up her story in 2011 (4 years before he died) and that is what platformed her.)
The deeper awareness supports awe. Place your awareness that you are far more than this physical body. You are more loved than you know. You are amazing and magnificent beings. You are multi sensory and multi dimensional —you just have not been conditioned to believe it.
Remember on this dimension we only have a little flashlight in which to see or understand what is around us. Remember what you think is happening around you is only a sliver of what really is surrounding you.