Awareness

You can not teach a person something she doesn’t already know; you can only bring what she does know to a higher level of awareness. – Galileo

Awareness is the beginning of everything.

Without awareness, we don’t know, what we don’t know.

Becoming aware is a peculiar cocktail; it’s so easy, yet, we resist it like emeffers.

Allowing awareness in, despite the discomfort that often accompanies it, can be shout-from-the-rooftops, game-changingly liberating and life giving!

Many of us have heard the old adage that “Wisdom comes with age”. Unfortunately, for many, the package never arrives. You know how when someone comes over to your house, and you have to open the door to let them in? Opening the door and inviting awareness in allows for learning important life lessons and concepts – wisdom. If the door is sealed shut and water tight as a frog’s ass, wisdom cannot come in. One can be 87 years old and have missed much of the bounty that life has attempted to deliver right to him! Instead, delivery guy just slaps another sticker on the door.

Just because we’re chronologically adults does not mean that we’ve emotionally or spiritually matured beyond our childhood. Look at the way grown-ups behave with one another. Have you ever witnessed someone in a grown up body giving a brilliant and refined performance of “mine, mine, mine”, or “you can’t make me”? (Watch C-Span, sometime – very entertaining.)

By shutting the door in awareness’ face, life can become heavier and more difficult over time. The evidence of this can show up as labored or failed relationships, unemployed or feeling suffocated by a job, broke as a joke, or lot’s
of wealth, with no happiness to show for it, etc. If any of this sounds way too familiar, you might have some latches to lift.

Funny thing about the door – we’re often not even aware that it’s locked up, like Ft. freaking Knox.

Sometimes something provokes a large and instant reaction, from us. I refer to this as being “triggered”. Some symptoms of being triggered might be yelling, jaw clenching, shutting down, and inflicting guilt…. you get the picture. These, and many, more, are all ways that awareness knocks on the door. One must get curious and open the door, if wisdom is ever to move in.

Becoming curious about what we don’t know that we don’t know gives way to budding awareness. It’ll require courage, patience, and a highly developed sense of humor.

When we open the door and invite awareness in, we become conscious of what hovers beneath the radar and has been driving the way we react to people, situations and circumstances. Reaction is just that – reaction. No awareness of impact.

Living from awareness = blowing the roof off this party.