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| Sherlock Holmes Silhouette Postcard Drawing by Karen Arnold License: CC0 Public Domain |
Before you can run, one must first learn to walk, and so it is with improving one's awareness of self and their surroundings.
I've been talking a great deal over the last few posts about "greater awareness". This is all wonderful if you already have some clue as to what your awareness and sensitivities are. But what if you have no clue what I'm talking about? What then, how do you start? Well this article is about to explore that :-).
First, let's define awareness for you. It is what you are cognizant of this very moment. Look around your room, or pinch your self. Do something, almost anything will do and then pay attention to doing that very action. You have just brought your awareness into play. That's all awareness is, paying attention to the situation you are currently in.
Now, here's where it gets fun and interesting. You can choose to pay attention to something and then while you're paying attention to it, notice how it affects you... Congratulations you've just expanded your awareness a little bit. Call around your house and just pay attention to things. I bet you will find insights or maybe even old memories, that you never knew you had. It is difficult to say precisely because everyone's experience is different. You could even say: "You are made up of your own awareness. A product, unique to the individual." And pretty much impossible to replicate.
Here's a classic exercise which I learned many years ago, during of all things a course on depression. We had some very cool team leaders. I would to say they were hippies, except I'm not quite that old. We were all sitting in a classroom in a circle:
The instructors came by and place in each of our hands a raisin. And they just asked us to pay attention to it. Take a moment to understand what you can feel in your hand and what you cannot. To me it felt like a small pebble and nothing much more.-Talk about an underwhelming moment-that by the way is exactly what I told the instructor. Who smiled and said "With Practice, you will be able to understand what you are not aware of about the raisin." "What kind of garbage is this I am listening to?" I thought. However, another week into the course and I found out the instructor was right. This time it was the same raisin except I immediately noticed it was rough. I had felt the very same thing the first time I held the raisin except I did not pay attention to it. I expected all will be insight to be loud and profound. Just a week into the class I had learned to be a little more aware of the subtle things. To be clear it wasn't an amazing experience. But it does demonstrate that the little things are just as important as the big events in your awareness and life.
Frequently we miss these little things and what we don't realize is little things can build up into big things. This can either be a problem or a great advantage because it really is a cumulative effect.
So start there with your awareness and play with it. You are in full control of the great deal of things and the things you cannot change can be affected by the things you can. Next time you are watching TV or YouTube, plan around with the colour saturation (vividness) and see how over a couple of days it affects your experience with the device. And then switch it back to what it was. These are all ways to get to know where your awareness is.
Take care Patrick
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