Self-Awareness
Question: How can I practice becoming more aware of myself and will that awareness keep me from getting into trouble? Will it make me more successful in life?
Answer: Awareness is the most unique feature of your nature for the following reason: Your awareness of the Present Moment is the Present Moment.
You can, and should, pause here for a moment to breathe some life into this last, very important, idea. To take it out of the realm of thought, and into your direct experience, just choose to come fully aware of yourself. If you've never tried this before, here's some helpful guidance.
Come wide awake to your total environment this moment. Just know, without thinking, what are all of the sounds, sights, feelings, thoughts, impressions, textures and temperatures that may be all around, and within you, right now. Again, this knowing yourself, and your surroundings, is not arrived at by going into thought. And, if you'll practice this higher kind of self-presence, you'll see that this special awareness of yourself is the same as the Present Moment in which you just became aware. They are one and the same. Which means this self awareness, as it includes the Present Moment, is also a feature of your Being.
Your awareness of the Present Moment, which is a secret part of your True Being, doesn't have to think about which direction is best for you. It knows because it sees. Where your usual nature is often blinded by its own unseen self-interests, your Being, represented in the moment by your awareness of it, effortlessly sees into — and through — this unconsciously compromised thinking even as it's occurring.
The presence of this Higher Intelligence keeps you from defeating yourself. And this is the same as making you newly victorious! For each time you have the awareness not to choose from that bank of old patterns produced by your limited thought nature, new and higher alternatives appear before your inner eyes. These moments, and their messages, rise to greet you from your True Being. And with these directions as your guide, designing your own destiny is as effortless as you are now confident -- for how can you not succeed when Reality itself points your way!
Excerpted from Design Your Destiny
Question: I've tried to become more and more aware of myself, which has resulted in a realization that I am deeply asleep! I am beginning to see that I can't possibly have any "willpower" in this state of psychic sleep. Now what?
Answer: Your discoveries are accurate and will eventually serve your wish to be a whole person. One of the little-understood but essential steps in becoming a whole person requires discovering just how fragmented we are. We are, as presently constituted, little more than a merry-go-round of alternating selves, none of which knows the other. As this becomes evident, instead of acting out the impulses of these vagrant selves, our energies begin to be used to be aware of ourselves. It is this awareness, and in this awareness, that we find the whole life we seek.
Excerpted from Seeker's Guide to Self-Freedom
Question: Can you tell me, in a nutshell, how I can increase my awareness of the present moment? My suspicion is that becoming more aware might actually change (for the better) the way I respond to what is happening in my life… if I could just do it!
Answer: Whenever you can, and as often as you are able (right now, for instance), just come aware of yourself, of that to which to which you are inwardly connected. This awareness of what you are in relationship with in the moment instantly changes your relationship with everything around you. Come awake over and over again in this way, and watch how new and higher energies, and their commensurate inner states, make a happy home in you.
Excerpted from Seeker's Guide to Self-Freedom
