A Self Awareness Exercise

This is probably the simplest and most challenging meditation exercise you will ever do. Simple because there is no technique. Challenging because we are going looking for something that is extremely difficult to find.

Sit in a comfortable position. If you have some sort of sitting practice that will do. If you do not have such a practice then sit in a chair or on the floor on cushion will your butt slightly raised. Make sure your back is straight because that makes it easier to relax while remaining supported and that will keep you alert. If you are wide awake you can lay down on your back without a pillow, hands at your sides or on your stomach and your feet about shoulder width apart.. I say wide awake because it is quite natural to fall asleep when lying down and relaxing and we want to remain alert.

Now just relax your body. Don't fight with it or try to force it, just let it naturally relax. The positions I have suggested are conducive to relaxing so there will be no need to try to force it. Just breath, don't try to control your breath. Don't try to control your thoughts (you can't anyway). In fact, don't try to control anything. Just relax enough to give this exercise adequate attention. If you are distracted by something that you have to do or something is bothering you, fine, stop. Do what has to be done and return to this when you can give it your full attention. There is no hurry and I don't want you to be hurried doing it.

Ok, that's it as far as the technique is concerned. Just be comfortable, alert and available. Now close your eyes and turn your attention inward. Be aware of your breath. Be aware of your body. Be aware of your mind, that is, your thinking. If you have never encountered anything else I have written or said regarding awareness or even if you have, I will start with a simple preliminary exercise.

Think of a monkey. Really just do it!

Ok, now think of a mountain.

Now think of someone you know.

Great. I asked you to think of 3 things. You immediately told your mind to create images of those things and it did, effortlessly. It obeyed you directly and without question. Those of you who have meditated for years trying to control your mind please take note. But that effortless control is not what I wanted to bring your attention to.

I want to bring your attention to the one who told the mind to produce the picture and to the one who was looking at it.

We are so used to thinking of ourselves as a thing that we automatically assume that awareness is an attribute of that thing. “I am aware” or “I have awareness”. I am an entity with awareness.

Now, finally, we get to the heart of this exercise. I want you to look for that “thing”. I want you to start a thorough and exhaustive search for whatever IT is that is aware. Go look for it. Look inside, look outside. Don't leave any stone unturned. Search until you have exhausted yourself and every possibility. And don't just do it once or for a few minutes. Spend some time at it. Do it more than once. It is illusive and you will not find it easily or quickly. Don't give up. Enjoy the bewilderment. Engage yourself in how difficult it is to search. Become entrance by it until it becomes a quest. And a quest is something you don't abandon. You don't stop until you either find it or...

...

keep looking...

Even if you already know why I asked you to do this exercise and even if you know what the ultimate result will be..

keep looking...

What is Self Awareness and Why Should I Care?

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside awakens. - Carl Jung

What is self awareness?

Awareness. It is going on all the time. You wake up in the morning aware of your surroundings, your spouse, the cat. You are aware of the toast and coffee you are eating, the people at your job and on the street. You become unaware of them as you are sitting at your job daydreaming about that vacation to Aruba, but you are very aware of Aruba.

That is the thing about awareness, it is unbearably ordinary. It is there all the time. Without it though, like your breath, you wouldn't exist or at least, if you did, you wouldn't know it and certainly wouldn't care. Let's play with this awareness for minute.

We are normally so focused outside that we forget our bodies, unless they hurt or want something. But you can, if you slow down for a second and put your attention inside the body, become aware of a constant stream of feelings and sensations. A little tension here a little stiffness there. A warm sensation over there and a coolness over there. Those sensations were there all along of course. They didn't just appear the moment you went looking for them, but you had to look to become aware of them. You had to pay attention.

Now let's take a look at your mind. Focus there for a second and you become aware of the constant stream of thoughts and impressions. The constant monolog/dialog going on, sometimes to our distress. Pay a little attention and you see the vastness of thinking and its tireless, and often repetitive, nature.

Now for just a minute take one more step and become aware of the awareness itself. Notice the fact that you can move that attention, at will, all over the place bringing one thing into focus and completely eliminating something else and then bringing that back again. You can see yourself and lose yourself. You have become aware of the awareness, aware of that which is aware of everything else. This is self awareness. See, its not very hard.

When I speak of self awareness I don't mean awareness of myself. I don't go there because when I say awareness of self most people pull up their most frequently used version of themselves. Male, 36, loves long walks on the beach and vacations to Aruba. That "myself" is really just thoughts about ourselves, descriptions of ourselves. Those thoughts, discussions and descriptions are what we are aware of. What I mean by self awareness is simply becoming conscious of awareness.

Now, why should I care? First off, in our exercise above you became aware of things that were always there but you were not aware of all the time or didn't see any significance to. It is ordinary after all And you may find it a bit (or a lot) boring to focus on the endless stream of feelings that are in your body. You may want to get back to focusing on Aruba and the girl in the bikini. Still it might pique your curiosity a little that there is so much going on that you are not seeing.. It may occur to you that there just may be other things going on of which you are not aware. Maybe a lot of things. Or maybe you will have the feeling that this awareness thing is pretty amazing in itself. I mean, what would I be without it? Where would I be? Would I be at all? What exactly is it?

Why should I care? You might ask a new born infant why she would care about her hands. She has them, it is obvious to us, but not to her. They serve no obvious purpose and don't have much relevance to her life. It will be some time before their value will begin to dawn on her. But what if she just continued to ignore them. Decided that they don't really matter. Hell, I don't need to feed myself, mom takes care of that. Interesting and all but, why should I care?

Of course those very same hands are not just going to feed her. They are going to bring pleasure to her and to others. Those hands are going to unlock the potential for creativity, maybe writing a book or playing music or building a house or slam dunking a basketball. A world of self expression lies right there a short, short distance from her head. In fact, those vague, seemingly irrelevant and ordinary things are going to set her free. She just doesn't know it yet.

Self awareness holds a vast treasure chest of possibility. Hidden deeply in this ordinary, everyday, mundane experience lies a vastness of experience; "A thousand Mt Sumerus dancing on the tip of a hair".

When that little girl does discover her hand she will be entranced. I don't know if you have ever watched a very small child when they discover something new. They stare at it for hours on end. This includes body parts. She will start at her hand, move it, wave it, feel it, completely blissed out by the discovery.

Take away everything else. Take away everything of which you are aware. Take away everything of which you are not aware. Take away the body, the mind, thoughts, feelings and what is left is awareness and nothing else. If you can take that away there would be literally nothing left, oblivion, death. But if you can't take that away then you have found the true, real, final and ultimate you. If that is the case then self awareness is not being aware of your self. Awareness IS the self.

Try for a moment to imagine oblivion or not existing and you will see how solid and impenetrable awareness actually is. This is really the journey we are on. When you remove everything that is not you, what is left is you. Self awareness is not just a quality you possess. It is the You you have been looking for.