Writings

The Attraction and Distraction of Awareness-Part 1

By Michael Kopel

What is awareness and how do we know when we have it? Awareness is experiencing; it is perceiving all that is happening around you and within you. Many reading this article have experienced awareness of events unfolding around you, witnessing. You stand there watching the world go by without opinion, judgment or emotion. It might have felt like fascination. It was on a train, a crowded street, in a meeting or sitting with friends. For the unaccustomed, you might call it a weird feeling. Others call it liberating, freedom. This is what we will call awareness of the outer. If you think you have never experienced this, you are probably mistaken, you just do not remember because the moment passed as easily and as quickly as it came.

Awareness of the inner is being aware of your thoughts, your actions, your reactions, your beliefs but more importantly why you react, why you believe what you believe. Many want this type of awareness; who am I now, who do I want to be, what would make me happy? For this series of articles we will focus on awareness of the inner.

Awareness of the inner can come and go as quickly as awareness of the outer. We have a very profound thought but as quickly as it came, it is gone. Most often it comes as an answer to a question you did not know you have. Call it an “Ah Ha” moment. Maybe you saw something about yourself that you don’t like, saw yourself say something and completely understood why you said it. Call it witnessing. Where awareness of the outer can be a very relaxing feeling, awareness of the inner can be revealing, enlightening. But if we are not careful, we can use the inner awareness to distract us from the very thing we want to be aware of. If we are not careful, we can use it as a lie to reinforce the very beliefs we want to change.

For example, say you realize that you take things personally and decide to really watch that, to not take things personally. At work a colleague or manager tells you that you could have done better on a project, that you were not good enough. You feel a twinge of pain, of fear that you have been exposed. Then just as quickly, you remember that you will not take anything personally and decide not to believe them. You feel proud that you caught it. Here is the problem; it’s too late. In that brief moment you did take their words personally and you reacted. If you had truly not taken that person’s word personally, you would not have had to remind yourself of it. But what you tell yourself is that you did not take the event personally when truthfully you did.

This is an example of lying to ourselves about awareness, the belief that we are living in awareness vs. just living with the determination to be in awareness. If we have to remind ourselves that we are living in awareness, then we are probably not. In future articles, I will discuss how we trick ourselves into using awareness to reinforce the very beliefs and fears we want to clear.