Credit: www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com
(Concluded from yesterday)
As lightworkers who are destined to become busier simply by the direction and flow of events, it can be useful to contemplate our path of development or spirituality before the rush starts.
One of the reasons I do so is that the more I have matters like that laid out for myself, the more confident my actions will be when it’s busy. I’ll know what ground I stand on, what the principles are based upon which which I take action, the filter is through which I see things.
Let me take up where I left off with the perceived benefits of the awareness path.
First of all, it’s useful to know that awareness heals. There isn’t a lot of action often needed once we become aware of something. The working out of the issue seems to follow if we simply remain aware of it and ourselves: what Archangel Michael calls to “stand back and observe.”
Secondly, once we become aware of something, it’s almost impossible to stop that awareness from having an impact on us. If we’re being rough, we find it difficult to be rough from a point of awareness. If we’re being melodramatic, that gets tougher too. We often break out laughing at ourselves when we see what we’re doing and how silly we look. At least I have.
Let me give an example of an event on the awareness path.
It’s 11:00 a.m. and I just felt myself relax for a minute and contemplate doing something I actually wanted to do. I could have been utterly unaware of it. I could have glanced at it and moved on. But on the awareness path, we notice it and remain open to the impact of our awareness of it.
Up till now in the day, I’ve been attending to other people’s requests or matters that I “should” do for one reason or another.
But at this moment, I contemplated doing something I liked.
I looked more closely and observed myself being stressed over all the “shoulds” I had to do. Then I became perfectly relaxed and even felt joyful when thinking of doing a “like.” Seeing that had an impact on me. I left the solution of it to the future but simply made a note of it: I do more “shoulds” than I want to. Note to self.
Next I saw that I create a goodly amount of drama in my life and then other people add their mite to it. And all this drama brings tension and sore necks and an obliterated awareness. I wasn’t aware how much drama I create. I also noticed that the drama was related to stress. My penchant for drama rises as my stress level rises.
Going back to my original focus on the benefits of the awareness path, that discipline offers me an “out” from all this. For anything to happen anywhere, at any time, we must first be aware of it. And our simple awareness of it is often enough to bring us to take action on the matter – we may join Greenpeace or write for a blog!
The more we can increase our awareness, the more we can raise our consciousness, the better life is from all perspectives.
How do we raise our awareness?
- We raise it each time we move up the ladder of knowledge from belief to thought, from thought to feeling, from feeling to action. As we move up the ladder, we feel more confident in our speaking and decisions and our awareness unpacks.
- We raise our awareness each time we do anything that relaxes us, gives us pleasure, brings us joy.
- We raise our awareness every time we listen more closely, observe more completely, or acknowledge to ourselves what the truth of something is.
- We raise our awareness when we contemplate, meditate, and express.
There’s a difference between awareness and information. Awareness is a whole-body, whole-being affair. It may involve sensing, intuiting, feeling by a sentient being (me). Information is simply something factual as contained in and conveyed by a non-sentient medium (paper, TV, radio). Information is dead compared to awareness. Awareness leads to aliveness.
I remember how I stopped reading at Cold Mountain Institute because anything that was happening while I was observing awareness as a path was much more inviting, engaging and informative than anything I could possibly read or watch on TV.
The more aware I was, the more I sensed and felt and intuited. The greater the space I could extend my awareness to – whether seeing, hearing or inner sensing – the more fully “me” did I feel. It was as if I was expanding into myself.
And indeed I believe that is what occurs. We emerge from our shell of hiding and ignorance. We leave behind the old ways. We walk out into the sunlight of openness and transparency. We let the light of awareness in and we let the light out.