Photo by mslori411

“Awareness implies that you are not only conscious of things (objects), but you are also conscious of being conscious. If you can sense an alert inner stillness in the background while things happen in the foreground – that’s it! This dimension is there in everyone, but most people are completely unaware of it”. Eckhart Tolle – A New Earth

I wasn’t planning doing a second part to ‘Developing Awareness’ today, exactly following the first part. I was planning to let some other few articles in between.

However, I was flipping through pencil-written bookmarks and side notes I left on Tolle’s  book*, when I came across the verse quoted above.   It struck me a second time as being an important practical tip worth noting and sharing.

I would also love to hear your thoughts on this.

The alert stillness in the background:

This phrase says it all. For me it completely defines what I feel during mindfulness meditation.

It can be called stillness because your awareness feels still, centered, grounded and solidly whole but at the same time it is alert. Sounds like a contradiction but it isn’t.

The alertness comes from the freshness of being grounded in the present and the aliveness of giving soft attention to your surroundings and experience. You are there present with your being not floating in some hazy daydreaming or in anxious thoughts about things you have yet to sort out.

This alert stillness can be described to be in the background because it doesn’t come out in the forefront of your consciousness and awareness in any obvious way like thoughts or perception. It is subtle and sedimentary. It is felt when the constant stream of thought subsides and there is less intensity in the forefront (that is why some point at the ‘gap between thoughts’ as the access point to your inner awareness). The foreground noise is cleared and so the background signal emerges clearly.

When I first succeeded in having a proper mindfulness meditation experience it was nothing like I had previously expected. Before that day I had imagined that in a purely meditative state, the mind will be purely absorbed in nothingness as if no thought existed. When I then experienced a state of mindfulness meditation, I could exactly describe it as “an alert stillness in the background while things happen in the foreground.”

Thoughts were still happening in the foreground (although less in number and intensity) but they did not distract me or annoy me because my awareness was grounded in the alert stillness in the background.

Does this ring any bell to you whether in meditation or otherwise? Did you have any experiences of the alert stillness in the background?

Space Consciousness:

Tolle uses the concept of ‘space consciousness’ to describe this undercurrent of awareness.  Space consciousness can be distinguished in contrast to ‘object consciousness’.

Object consciousness is when your reality is fully anchored to the world of objects and believe that there is nothing more to it. It is unfortunately the reality of most people who take life at face value. For them the only concrete reality is that that of things, objects, thoughts and petty human conventions. There is nothing more than that.

“Space consciousness means that in addition to being conscious of things – which always comes down to sense perceptions, thoughts and emotions – there is an undercurrent of awareness.” A New Earth

This Dimension is there in everyone:

This awareness Tolle is pointing at is easily missed because of its subtlety yet it is there in every human being. It is there in you right now. It is always present there in the background but we are never taught to single it out. We take it for granted that outer reality and thoughts about that outer reality is everything there is.

If you do not have a concept of something, you can’t see it even if it stands right in front of you and slaps you in the face. We can only recognize patterns that we have a previous concept of. It’s the same thing with the awareness of our inner stillness – our space consciousness.

Since we are not guided into being aware of it, we never identify it even if I’m sure that everyone experiences it at some point in time.

The bottom line is this: If you have at least a foundation of it as a concept and recognize that it exists, the mind can more easily identify it when it arises.

The second step is watching out for it. I suggest using the observation on awareness I laid out in part 1.

Once you recognize it as part of your experience you know where to look for it next time because you would have opened up the space for that possibility. You would start having a ‘feel’ of your inner space – your space consciousness.

*(Even though I read the book some time ago I still keep it as a reference for some notes and concepts. The book was given as a gift by my special friend Valerie who I thank from my heart. )

Related posts:

1. Developing Awareness – Part 1
2. A Note on Happiness
3. How to Meditate while Being Active

photo by h.koppdelaney

Awareness is fundamental to all human activity. It is the basis of all our mental states and processes, creativity, perception, knowledge and culture. Everything starts from awareness. It is the portal between consciousness and the world around us.

Recently I have become more and more intrigued by the idea. The more I learn about it, the more I realize how it pervades everything we do and that by learning to focus it, expand it or redirect it consciously, we can transform ourselves by gigantic positive leaps. It’s the key to greater inner peace, happiness and self-mastery.  In fact there is no possible way one can walk on the path of self-mastery without learning to direct his awareness.

The different faces of awareness:

At a very basic level, you are aware of everything you do. When you walk around, prepare coffee, look for your keys, drive home, read, etc, there is always awareness going on otherwise you do not operate. However, many of these tasks happen on a subconscious level rather than on a conscious one.

When you start learning to ride a bike or drive a car, you are conscious about all your steps and movements. Once you learn the task, it starts becoming more automatic and subconscious. You are no longer conscious of every thing you do while you are driving but you are still aware at some level (obviously so, otherwise the roads would be a catastrophe everyday). This type of awareness however is not very thick and focused.

There is another level where your awareness is more focused.  For example, when you are interested in something, you start paying attention to it which means that you slightly focus your awareness on the object or event.

When you concentrate on something or you are totally absorbed in the task at hand (what psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi called being ‘in the flow’), your awareness is focused like a laser beam on the subject, closing off all signals from the rest of the environment that might distract you.  Your awareness intensifies and deepens on the subject in the present moment. There is a strong sense of aliveness in it because your heightened awareness enriches the perception of the world around you and your relationship to it.

This type of awareness, as observed from studies carried out on seasoned meditators such as Buddhist monks, is linked with a certain coherence in brain wave patterns. In our day to day mental tasks, our mind is somehow ‘fragmented’ and our thoughts point out at different directions. Our brain wave patterns are incoherent.

The diagram above shows the 2 basic levels of awareness

Individuals who have trained their mind through practices such as meditation, have the ability to consciously redirect their awareness to higher levels of consciousness and ‘defragment’ their mind to a more coherent unity. This why meditation promotes calmness, focus, improved memory and heightened awareness, amongst a long list of benefits.

The good news is that this ‘higher-level’ awareness, so to speak, can be trained and developed.

Being aware of your awareness:

The first step to developing higher awareness is being conscious of it. You need to start training yourself to be aware of your awareness. By getting in the habit of observing how it behaves you start learning to redirect your focus from subconscious awareness to conscious and more coherent forms of awareness.

In short, this means being more conscious and pro-active of your usually passive and subconscious actions, beliefs, emotions and reactions to life. This is why awareness is directly linked to self-mastery.

I invite you to try out these short but insightful mental observations. They only take a couple of minutes.  They are simple and can be carried out as many times as you like, anytime, anywhere. The more you do the more you grasp the feel and movements of your awareness (don’t do these steps in one go – try them out each at a time at your leisure).

Here we go:

1. Take time to notice what it feels like to be aware. Stop for a moment to be aware of your awareness. Don’t classify it or judge it, just notice it. How does it feel?

2. Now find any object (could be your own body or feelings) and be aware of it for more than 30 seconds without distraction. Is it any different from being aware for just a fleeting moment? Does your awareness solidify with time?

3. Are you at all aware of your internal sensations? Try to be aware of your current state of mind – is it relaxation, boredom, curiosity, impatience? What about your feelings? Your energy levels? Is your awareness more inclined towards internal or external stimuli?

4. How about your awareness of the present moment? The awareness of external and internal sensations that unfold moment by moment in the present. Can your awareness hold on to your present ongoing sensations without drifting off in thought or imagination in the past or future?

5. When you observe your environment, does your awareness shift from one object to the next hastily and erratically? Or is it more gentle and observant of each item? Try to move your awareness from one thing to the next and speed it up then slow it down. How does the difference feel?

6. Try also noticing the difference between expanding and narrowing your awareness of your environment. I find it easy to do this on my body before meditation. I focus my awareness on just my breathing first. Then after some time I expand it outwards to include the other bodily sensations such as my hand, feet, head, etc. I also expand it towards my internal feelings and states of mind then narrow it down step by step to my breathing again.

7. Another thing I do when doing mindfulness meditation is shifting my awareness across sensory modalities. From seeing to hearing to touching to tasting (not always), to smelling, and ultimately internal sensations. This and the previous exercise are the most useful steps in developing and expanding your awareness.

When you start getting closer in touch with how your awareness behaves and affects your everyday tasks, you also start to understand how to give it more space to grow. You start finding it easier to consciously direct it, focus it or expand it. This can have big positive effects that you start slowly observing in yourself day after day.

You become more focused when you do something or you start becoming more aware of things you don’t usually do. Your mind becomes more open to ideas and feelings. You become more in tune with yourself and your environment.

You also communicate better because you become more sensitive to the subtle messages in other people’s behavior.

And ultimately you also start feeling expanding as a spiritual being because your consciousness is expanding. Awareness is the food of consciousness. So the more you enrich and open up your awareness, the bigger the natural growth of your consciousness.

In part 2 I’ll be writing about the relationship between awareness and emotional balance and also about how to develop awareness through meditation.

Related posts:

1. Developing Awareness – Part 2
2. The Strength of Non-Resistance
3. Increasing Your Positive Self-Awareness

photo by elaine faith

As I was reading the article “A gentle honesty” on the blog ‘Beyond Karma’ the other day, the Zen saying “After Enlightenment, the Laundry” came to mind.

In the article, Kaushik, the author of the blog and the post in question, was asking how it is that sometimes after some experience of deep inner awareness that awakens us from our limited patterns of thinking, we return back to our same old selves?

To quote Kaushik’s own opening lines:

“A strange thing about awakening is frequently we feel we are very conscious, but then life throws something at us and we react in the same conditioned way we always did. It’s a humbling experience, and that’s the point of it.”

How is it that after some brief moment of enlightenment we relapse back to the same old habits and limited views?

This naturally leads to other questions such as “is enlightenment or spiritual awakening ephemeral”? Is it some short excursion beyond our boundaries just to give us a taste of what it’s like to be in a higher state of consciousness?

From the divine to the mundane

I find these questions to be genuinely pertinent and important.

Did this ever happen to you? Did you ever experience those rare and beautiful moments at some point in your life when you suddenly see things with perfect clarity? A sort of a blissful moment accompanied by deep insights that reveal different depths of you inner and outer reality?

Such experiences make you feel you are well beyond your everyday perception of your existence.  In actual fact you truly are. This is why it is called a transcendental experience because it transcends beyond the limits of the self-centered ego and connects with the higher states of your consciousness, the divine aspect of yourself.

Some time after the experience has gone, however, we feel sucked back into our normal mundane reality and back to our average worldly experiences and petty everyday problems. We find ourselves on the merry-go-round again with others going hectically about their busy daily life without any hint of that spiritual spark we just held in our hands just some time before.

Some things start tasting a little bit bitter when the sweet after taste in your mouth starts to fade away doesn’t it? It’s like finding yourself doing the dishes or taking out the garbage after a few weeks of mind-expanding traveling. Or as the saying itself goes, finding yourself doing the laundry after a moment of enlightenment.  It just feels like one reality shatters the other.

The illusion of the two realities

Here is where we should be careful. Actually it’s not one reality shattering the other in the sense that entering one state annihilates the existence of the other. They truly are one and the same reality although one aspect of it is more conditioned than the other.

The sense behind ‘after enlightenment, the laundry’ is actually mirroring this little dilemma but in the same breath also prescribing a way out of it.

The dilemma arises because we tend to see everything from a particular point of view. This is an inescapable position for every sentient being. So, when we change our point of view or our depth of perception and state of consciousness, we feel that one ‘reality’ started where the other stopped.

This is not truly the case. The statement ‘after enlightenment, the laundry’ can be seen as being said by a third-person who objectively observes that both states are actually the same from his point of view. Nothing really changed. That observer can be our inner self – the core of our being.

Another thing the Zen saying points at is that sometimes we are slaves and victims of our own expectations when we think that these enlightened states of mind are a one way ticket – a point of no return. Even life-changing experiences such as transcendental states of consciousness brought about by meditation, near death experiences, big transitions in life or just simple contemplations are just moments in time.

On some level these experiences are irreversible. They have changed us forever or at least opened some door in our reality which will remain open.

On some other level, however, the experience is transitory and finite. At one moment we are elated with the transcendental state of mind, soon after we are carrying on with our normal daily agenda.

Embracing the continuum

Accepting this continuum with grace is the solution behind the apparent dilemma. If we get entrapped in the expectation that some brief moment of enlightenment will change us into a super version of ourselves is what brings forth the disappointment.

It’s a truly liberating notion to grasp that the core of our being, that undercurrent that lies beneath our thinking and perception, is the same whether we are in a state of enlightenment or doing the laundry. If we understand this, and feel it with our hearts, we have escaped the dilemma and accept our ‘mundane reality’ with peace and enthusiasm.

Accepting the mundane more open-heartedly however does not mean denying or forgetting your spiritual self. You have to cultivate it and keep the spark shining through.

As Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the sensational best-seller ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ said when asked about how she felt when returning to America after a year of travel on a spiritual quest to find God:

“There is a small, new, holy part of me which I hold onto and treasure very carefully – cupping it in my hands like a freshly lit match. I try to protect that new part of me as much as possible from the sheering winds of 21st Century America. (Generally, this means avoiding particularly spastic invasions of too much television, consumer debt, competition, over-consumption, success-pressure, greed and other forms of our daily cultural life.) This is not to say that I walk around in constant, perfect bliss, or that I’m not still capable of exploding with rage at minor frustrations, but I do live differently now. “

Related posts:

1. Developing Awareness – Part 2
2. Pearls of Wisdom: Tolle on Spiritual Enlightenment