What’s the state of your awareness? Are you half-awake and half-aware? Are your responses on auto-pilot?
I Love You/I Love You, Too. Feel Anything?
In your day to day life you often become inured to what you see around you and to the experience you have of life. Interactions with others take on a habitual tone: post/riposte; how are you? /I’m fine; how are you?; I love you/I love you, too.
You walk down the path you take every day and see the same things. Unless something is fresh and new, it becomes invisible. You walk around it never even noticing what is right in front of you! Or you react to a situation the way you did the last time you were in something similar.
Your awareness is not active.
Build Your Awareness. Claim the Unfamiliar.
A first step in going beyond your patterns is to actively become aware of your surroundings. Look around you. Activate your peripheral vision. On your morning walk look for three things you’ve never seen before. Notice details.
In your interactions with others, look for an aspect of them that had escaped your attention. Is there a quality you have never seen?
Looking inward in your quiet meditation time, ask your inner self to reveal something new to you. Then allow it to come and notice. Don’t just ask and then forget to pay attention! It may be something that appears as simple as a feeling of spaciousness within you or as dramatic as a new insight into a problematic situation.
Your perception of your life creates what you experience. Making space to welcome something unfamiliar or unaccustomed allows you to have a fresh experience. What are the possibilities?
Take time to do this each day in different situations. At the end of the week, take some time to review. How have you changed? What do you notice?
When you are ready for having more of what you want in your life, deepen your awareness. That’s the first step.
Take Time to Reflect
Take a breath. Release it. Take another. Devote some dedicated time of concentration/meditation. It doesn’t need to be hours of quiet, perhaps only 15 minutes. Then allow the question to simmer within you. Let responses bubble up into your awareness. Notice new ways of thinking, of images or ideas that arise spontaneously. Pay attention to your dreams. Let it happen. Be aware. See where it leads you next. Let yourself savor this process of receiving from yourself. Don’t judge whatever comes up, just receive it. Make notes.
You may want to share something from this process. Sharing is an important way to anchor an insight in your body. It leads you to deeper insight. It stimulates action. Feel free to share something that moves you!
