The revolutionary nature of awareness

The subject of awareness is broad and deep, and not easy to communicate its profundity in mere words, it’s the practice and experience of it that must be known to be fully appreciated. This is the wonder of it, a practice that anyone can undertake to discover its transformational power.

In the past this faculty of mind, considered more the domain of spiritual practitioners and austere meditation halls, has become more well known in the recent decades. This is in no uncertain terms due to the modern West embracing its abundant mental, emotional and physical health benefits, something our Eastern counterparts have known about well before the Common Era.

There is no activity in our lives that cannot benefit from more awareness, but what does that actually mean? What is awareness and how is it actually practiced? Also, what is the relationship between awareness and mindfulness? We will address all this and more, and hopefully leave you with even more questions!

What is awareness and mindfulness?

Firstly, for the sake of transparency, I will be relating to many aspects discussed in this article from Buddhist definitions and practice on this topic for a few reasons. Firstly, it is where I was introduced to awareness and meditation practices many years ago, so that is the primary context of my understanding and experience of its effective practice.

Secondly, awareness and meditation has been intensely studied, dissected, practiced and understood by Buddhist practitioners for millennia. It has been thoroughly tested through personal experience. It not a belief system that requires faith, it is a system of practice whose benefits can be directly experienced, so anyone can test those practices for themselves to reveal their real life effectiveness.

In the context of practice, the words awareness and more commonly mindfulness have been translated from the Pali word sati (Sanskrit: smṛti) which is used in the original discourses on this extensive subject. It is literally translated as memory or recollection but its nuances and practical applications are more broad than this and its ramifications profound.

With its adoption in the West, mindfulness is often used to describe the practice of applying awareness to activity in our daily life, being mindful of something. It’s used more as a doing word versus awareness as a state of being, a receptive state of consciousness or faculty of mind that we bring into being.

Despite these subtle differences, these terms can be and are used interchangeably and are pointing to this faculty of mind variously described as:

• Attending to the present moment
• Conscious intentness of mind
• Presence of mind
• Attentiveness
• Mindful alertness
• Lucidity of mind
• Self-possession
• Watchfulness of mind

Implicit in this is remembering to observe, even remembering oneself, as opposed to absent mindedness. We quite literally forget ourselves, an all too common occurrence of existing almost purely as habit with very little discerning or conscious intentionality.

Practicing awareness

It goes without saying that even though we humans have the gift of self reflective consciousness, the breadth and depth of that faculty varies a great deal. Maybe you’ve noticed how you can walk to catch the bus, take a shower, or eat your cornflakes while mentally being a thousand miles away. Who hasn’t been busy at work or driving a car, even carrying on a conversation without even needing to think about it or be mentally present. This is an impressive ability but unfortunately it means we can also live out our entire lives like that.

The practice of being more present in one’s experience is a conscious intention, a decision to be attentive to what’s happening rather than being an unwitting flow of habit energy. This includes the calm but clear effort to observe with neutrality and non-judgmentalness to what we are experiencing and our responses to it, instead of being lost in the story we create about it. This is relaxed and gentle watchfulness with receptivity and perspective.

Unlike thoughts where our mind can only think one thing at a time, awareness can take in the entirety of our experience all at once. This includes our thoughts, emotions, feelings, our bodily sensations, everything coming in through the senses, where we are in space and time and so on. We may focus in on particular aspects of that experience at times, but we continue to observe with a breadth of awareness, remaining neutral and maintaining perspective in relation to all that arises.

This practice can be undertaken at any time, which is the point. No matter what we are doing, whether it’s during highly demanding work activities or walking on a beach at a favourite holiday destination, one strives to be fully conscious of what’s unfolding and what one is doing. This is not a tight controlling hypervigilant state, but a relaxed and alert sensitivity to one’s overall experience. Included in this is heedfulness, we remain on the watch out for negative or unskilful thoughts and intentions that may undermine us and lead us in an unhealthy direction.

Be aware of what exactly?

During our daily life of activity, we may have moments of clarity and awareness when we notice our feelings or what we’re thinking, of how we are emotionally, of events going on outside of us. However, these moments of attention are usually fleeting, then we’re straight back into our barely conscious habit flow. In striving to be more aware, over time we connect those fleeting moments with longer periods of attentiveness, and an overall deepening awareness of life.

Usually, we only pay attention to what we think is important, what we’re immediately interested in or repulsed by, what we’ve been conditioned to give importance to. This is only a tiny microcosm of our entire ongoing experience. It’s a natural part of our development as we progress out of childhood to become more discerning about what we need to take notice of and remember. On a basic survival level, this is practical, but in terms of evolving our minds and going beyond ourselves, we need something more.

In the practice of mindfulness, we are opening up our field of perceptual sensitivity to everything, the totality of our experience. A tuned in curiosity to whatever arises in our sense field, both within our psychophysical experience, and in the world ‘out there’. This isn’t as difficult as it sounds as it’s not the same as thinking, rather, it’s the receptive and watchful observer that sees all without judgement or the need to think on it.

The awareness of our ‘internal’ experience comprises of feelings, emotions, thinking, ideas, the way we think and believe, what we perceive and how we react to it all and so on. This is vital to bring about self knowledge, we come to see the interplay of all these aspects of our experience and how they condition one another and drive us.

With continued observation and deepening understanding, we begin to see how attached we are to our fundamental views, to ideas, to people and things. We notice our convoluted, confused and contradictory experiences of ourselves and others. Even a basic level of acknowledging these things can bring some change and freedom.

Becoming curious and interested in the outside world is just as important, and in a way it’s not separate to our inner life. We aren’t really aware of much of the external world because we don’t really care about it unless it serves our immediate interest. Coming into a more authentic and engaged relationship with it means really taking it in, seeing the true quality of things, without bias, untainted by preference. We freely and openly experience the beauty and the chaos of it all, and our microscopic but profound part in it.

Awareness and meditation

Meditation and awareness practice are intricately linked in the sense that meditation directly trains our ability to hold attention, to remember to be aware amongst many other profoundly positive mental shifts. If awareness was a muscle, meditation is gym for the mind. Mindfulness practice and being aware in everyday life is just as important, but meditation significantly supports and improves that ability.

Meditation works directly on the mind in ideal conditions. Just through the attempt to focus on one aspect of our experience such as the breath or the body, we very quickly realise the waywardness of our own mind. Awareness in general and meditation practice brings us into relationship with the state of our mental and emotional life, we come to see the very nature of ourselves, up close and personal. It reflects back to us the effects of the way we live and the way we use our mind.

This may be very sobering, but it’s also the point of change. Mindfulness practice simply presents things as they are, things we had previously not been aware of. Seeing the obvious and more subtle ways in which we cause ourselves suffering, we begin to enact change. Yes, we will continue to step in the pot hole, we’re involved in the changing of long standing habits of body and mind. However, gradually we see the pot hole sooner and sooner then eventually, we step around it.

Meditation is itself a comprehensive topic which can be explored through a number of articles here at The Inspired Warrior, including an introduction to meditation, an article about its benefits, and instructions on meditation practices like the mindfulness of breathing and metta bhavana.

Other aspects of awareness practice

The exhaustive and painstaking investigation of awareness practice over the ages by real world practitioners means that its methods and aspects have been thoroughly mapped. Not only does awareness itself have many facets like observation, breadth and memory that all contribute to clarity of experience, there’s the faculty of ‘clear comprehension’ and the arising of real understanding that all contribute to increased freedom of mind.

I will attempt to elucidate the relevance and significance of these core points and how they all contribute to our overall psychophysical health and freedom. This is only a brief introduction so I encourage you to engage with your own practice of mindfulness and conduct further research on the subject to inspire, motivate and deepen further practice.

Awareness as observation

As already discussed, awareness of what arises is a purely observational practice. With an uninvolved and detached receptivity, one is wide awake in regards to the present moment. This is a kind of ‘bare awareness’, taking in the raw nature of experience, untainted by preference and prejudice.

Just by its presence, intentful watching can and does change experience by de-immersing us in it. The usual proliferation of thoughts, feelings and emotions in response to our perceptions becomes unhooked. Although these phenomena will continue to arise, we continue to remain as aware and uninvolved as possible, creating space from the story it all creates in our mind. Primarily, the role of this attentiveness is to gather data free of judgement and bias, other faculties are then employed to act on that information which will be discussed presently.

The relationship between memory and awareness

Perhaps it’s not obvious why memory would be a direct translation for the word sati, but the association becomes more obvious when we consider memory’s role in the present and our being in a state of recollectedness.

If there’s one trait that causes us more harm than anything, it’s our unceasing ability to ignore, forget or to not even notice that which causes us pain. In intending to be aware, we are also trying to not forget ourselves and what we’re doing, which implies remaining to some degree, conscious of the reason why. This is what it means to ‘keep in mind’ that which is important. Being mentally present and informed by our overall life experiences means that we may be able to avoid acting in ways that are harmful to ourselves or others.

Being more present also means that we remember what we encounter more clearly, it more effectively imprints on our memory. This means relevant experiences are more easily recalled at a later date, they even arise unbidden at the right moment to remind us to more appropriately direct our actions in relation to the present moment.

This highlights the role of memory in supporting the conscious intent to imbue the mind with positive thoughts and motivations, and conversely, to not entertain those activities of mind that will lead us astray. Without remembering why this is important, we have very little chance of countering our habituation to being a passive, misdirected stream of consciousness.

The role of discerning awareness

We discussed mindfulness’ role earlier as purely an observer, but it’s our discernment whose function is to make sense of this perceived biasless data. This ability to fully grasp or comprehend what is taking place is often referred to as clearly knowing or clear comprehension and is translated from the Pali word sampajañña (Sanskrit: saṃprajña).

Where mindfulness is the activity of consciously taking in what is unfolding with curious receptivity, it’s this introspectiveness that makes sense of its significance and furnishes us with an overall perspective of the moment. What this points to is that while we can be very mindful of what’s happening in our field of experience, our perceived centre of the universe, we still have to be aware of how we are affecting others.

This relates to the ethical dimension of becoming more mindful, being conscious of how we live and share this world with others, with all life. Awareness in all its aspects reveals the way in which we suffer and why, and that with discerning decision making, we can decrease that suffering. We can even cease it entirely in the sense of the mental and emotional suffering we cause ourselves, due to our own mental habits and responses to others.

Awareness and breadth of mind

A mind in which we have aroused awareness, a calmly attentive and pliable mental state includes an aspect of breadth rather than narrow focus. This state of mind is also one where the function of memory can be significantly improved. This is easily exemplified in the experience of straining to remember something that remains just out of grasp. No matter how hard we try, it eludes us, until moments later in a more mentally relaxed state, the memory appears.

It’s this breadth of mind that enables us to make connections between past and present information, memory or learnings and present us with new understandings and insight. I’ve had countless experiences of creative solutions spontaneously arising during moments of relaxed attention and meditation, of remembering important details or of general insightfulness. This condition of mind is of great importance and central to the last point that follows.

Awareness and insightfulness

This quality of mind is the culmination of awareness practice and ultimately its central purpose. The only way we can change our mental habits and misunderstandings is through self knowledge. This is very difficult to do when we are often completely immersed in our ideas, thoughts, emotions and feelings which create the story of ourselves.

In practising mindfulness and meditation, all these aspects of awareness contribute to the conditions for insightfulness to arise. Implicit in this is the restraint of the mental habits we experience in both daily life and meditation that obscure the mind and weaken its profound wisdom faculty.

In this wholesome integrated state, the mind functions with clarity and incisiveness to penetrate and understand the nature of things. For example, we may see that the way in which we become attached to people and things causes us suffering. We may then realise that all things in life are impermanent in nature, that they will not last so are unreliable for bringing us happiness.

Insights like this can affect us profoundly and therefore change us. We may find that we start to hold life a bit more lightly, our suffering decreases making us feel even more connected to life’s preciousness. As we continue to absorb new insights and understandings, they naturally guide our thinking and actions in positive ways. We become freer which creates more positive feedback that supports our continued balanced effort in striving to practice in this way.

If one can come to fully realise that everything we are is the result of what arises in our mind, then we can make the choice to direct it as positively as possible. Taking full ownership of our own mind is the first step to true freedom from all that keeps us down, both in ourselves and in a world that wants to hammer down the protruding nail.