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Writer's pictureRussell Sturgess

Understanding Awareness - Part 1

Updated: Oct 27, 2022

In Awareness Nothing has a Meaning or Value

 


Last year I wrote a piece describing what awareness was, and began by explaining what it wasn’t. Over the next few weeks I am going to take each of these ‘not awareness’ statements and explain why they are the antithesis of awareness, to help you better understand the nature of awareness. So let’s begin…


Awareness isn’t giving your thoughts, feelings, sensations and desires meaning.


This means that in awareness there is no judgement.


There is no right or wrong, no good or bad, better or worse.


No more or less worthy.


Thoughts, feelings, sensations and desires are the mediums of consciousness. They are the way we give expression to who we are mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually, respectively. I begin by proposing that awareness is having the ability to observe your state of consciousness without adding any meaning to that state. Typically, the way you do that is to use the full-stop sooner in a sentence. For example, let’s say you just won the lottery. You can imagine your mind racing, thinking about everything you are going to do with the winnings. Emotionally you’d feel ecstatic. You’d be dancing around, and maybe there would be some adrenaline pumping. You would want to share your news with the world, but wouldn’t be too sure about doing that because everyone would be wanting you to share your winnings etc.


This is quite a cocktail of consciousness. You can imagine yourself being pulled every-which-way. It wouldn’t take long before the excitement of it all is overtaken by worry, fear or even withdrawal. Suddenly you’ve become imprisoned by your extreme good fortune. This is one of a million scenarios about how this could play out, but there is one scenario that invites stillness in the midst of the roller-coaster. Awareness. Winning the lottery and being in a state of awareness would look like this. I have won the lottery. (Full stop). Anything said after that, a judgement or meaning (giving it a value), is no longer being in awareness. In fact you can only perceive its value to you from your limited perspective, remember that we see the world as we are, not as it is.


So when you go to think that this is a blessing, it in fact might be a curse. I know of a woman who recently won the lottery and for all that it has afforded her materially, it has destroyed her emotionally. In the place of being the observer (being aware) you understand that you really don’t know what it means. In that moment, you don’t really know if it is good or bad, and from a whole-of-life perspective it would be difficult to know if you’ll be better off or not.

In the state of being aware you would, as they say, ‘state the bleeding obvious’.


I have won a lot of money.


I will have to do something with this money.


I don’t manage money well.


I will need help with this.


While you remain in the place of being aware, all you do is observe a series of facts without attaching any judgement or meaning, both of which are normally expressed as thoughts, actions and emotions. Understand that any feeling, thought or sensation we experience arises from our unique programming, which has evolved from your formative years (what we call your story) into the state of consciousness that is you, now. We can either engage our state of consciousness from the place of the observer, which maintains our stillness, or from our story, which is responsible for making it exciting, fearful or whatever we experience.


This is how it washes out in the end. Being in your story means that no matter what the circumstances, you will always get what you have always got, and many times, that’s what your parents got too! Giving someone with abundance issues lots of money, won’t change the issues. On the other hand, maintaining awareness results in gratitude and naturally leads you seeing how this abundance will allow you to enrich your purpose, your unique expression of service. Your stillness will not be disturbed, you won’t have restless nights and stressful days. Your life will be that more fulfilling because of your expanded capacity to serve. You will not be distracted from the work you feel inspired or called to do, in other words, your purpose. Remember, in awareness, nothing has an innate meaning or value, only the meaning or value that we choose to give it.


This Weeks Video


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