Real awareness isn’t about hanging on to the moment, but simply recognizing it’s there. Awareness of what’s happening with our bodies. Compassion for our friends and family. Thinking about the perception of us held by the people we interact with. Perception is reality, and awareness is the simple recognition of our reality.
Normally people will tell us to be aware of our surroundings without giving us guidance on what to look for. If we are told what to look for, it seems so obviously simple in that we need to look at, literally, everything! People who ask us to have more awareness ask us to look at the trees, hear their rustling leaves in the afternoon breeze, to look at the types of clothes people are wearing and imagine why they’re wearing them, to be aware of the smallest detail everywhere we go.
People advocate for this kind of awareness because it does in fact create a richer world view, it really does make our every day existence more beautiful, more thoughtful, and more exciting. By just appreciating the world around us, we can all life a fuller life.
Something that most people won’t tell us is that awareness is only the vehicle for the actual life change that we’ll be experiencing if we dedicate ourselves to living a life of attentive awareness. Living life fully aware REQUIRES us to turn our brains back on. In even the most ordinary situations, our minds are running at full capacity and our brains are full of thought and analysis. Our brain is a muscle, and using it constantly at high levels for situational awareness will create a new “baseline” of fitness for our brains. It will make formerly difficult thought processes and experiments seem normal, and it will take us to a new level in all of our activities.
At first, it will seem difficult, but give it three weeks, and let me know if you’ve experienced a change in your life!
