MINDFULNESS CREATES HAPPINESS - AWARENESS
AWARENESS
Of the 5 areas I write about in this series, we will spend most of our time here because mindfulness is the centerpiece of our experience of life. The degree of mindfulness (awareness) we exercise in any given moment determines the quality of our life at any time.
It goes without saying that it’s important to maintain a strong desire to learn, and an intellectual hunger, because continued learning keeps us mentally healthy, engaged, and active. It also gives us perspective. Continual learning ALWAYS enriches our lives beyond measure because it's a catalyst for the blossoming of wisdom. Hopefully, we are all constantly evolving and moving from a nebulous state of “being” into a state of “becoming” a better version of ourselves. This area deals not only with our desire to learn but the context we give to what is learned.
The mind and spirituality go hand-in-hand and are absolutely complementary, because what we fill the mind with plays an enormous role in how we advance spiritually and our conscious experience of LIFE itself. What I mean by that is that we can fill our heads with a lot of knowledge in learning new skills for our occupation, improve our financial status, or how to just survive in the world and still have little to no understanding of ourselves. That’s because few of us rise above living at the level of mere functionality and keeping up with all of life's obligations. With time often being in short supply, prioritizing things to allow for what is an advocation, can be daunting. But with determination we tend to find time for the things we want to find time for.
Social media and mass marketing through every medium cultivate an outbound focus, keeping us preoccupied with things that appeal only to our ego and constantly focused on our external reality.
As a result, we become invisible to ourselves, and almost completely unaware of the inner dimension of ourselves. Our self-concept is nothing but a hollow projection of the beliefs we hold of ourselves. Instinctually, we begin to attach our value, sense of relevancy, and self-worth to a series of false identifications we make with things external to us: our body, our appearance, our relationships, our career, our income, our possessions, and the status symbol in our driveway. Whatever we identify with, our minds begin to wrap around. Once we begin identifying with these as a means of defining who we are, we’re heading for trouble, because all of these things are external, temporary, and can be taken away.
When we look out and see life, happiness, joy, love, and pleasure as an external pursuit, we're in EGO. In meditating, we empty the mind of its contents, focus on our breathing, and go within ourselves. Here we are creating a gap between our thoughts and feelings, and us as the observer of our thoughts and feelings. In doing so, we begin to realize we are something altogether separate from the experiences we're having. We realize all these attributes of life simply spring forth from within us as a product of the quality of our thoughts. With this awareness the ego dissolves and we discovery our ESSENCE, which lies even underneath the experiences we're having.
Prior to this discovery, this separation eludes us. We feel powerless in changing the way we feel. This is why we get stuck in our emotions. Looking within to find the source of our unhappiness goes against the ego's tendency, which seeks pleasure and avoids pain. Instead of sitting with our pain, processing it, and transcending it, we by default, seek the path of least resistance and look for the next fleeting experience we can anesthetize ourselves with. When we live at the level of our ego, we become trapped in an endless cycle of pleasure seeking and pain avoidance.
So, how we experience LIFE, that is to say, our outer environment, is only a reflection of our internal environment, and based solely upon the relationship we’re having with our self in any given moment. That relationship is taking place completely in our mind, and based upon the string of identifications we make with things that are not us, but instead labels we identify with and pin on ourselves in a feeble attempt to define who we are. So, it’s best to be mindful of it and the internal dialogue we are having with ourselves.
Make no mistake; LIFE is lived out entirely in our heads. Every feeling we have ever had is coming from the reality that we have created within us.
Photo by Miki Takahashi 高橋未希
This can be a debilitating premise to some because prior to developing our awareness, the unfettered and unrestrained mind can make a mess of our lives by attaching meaning to all of our over-thinking. Trapped by our ego, we are always seeking validation.
In a society where we live our lives like machines, we have been hypnotized and programmed for misery. After all, living and making our way in the world is serious business! Places to be, obligations to keep, deals to close, quarterly reports to pour over and finish, and bills to pay. Who has time to be happy?
A very large percentage of the population at every tier of society is miserable, not because they live in dire circumstances, but because we have been lulled to sleep into accepting our role in society by living life as a series of scheduled events and a very acute focus on time. Our lives are compartmentalized into boxes of obligations and “To Do” lists. Consequently, we often seek to escape reality. We find ourselves often drifting back into the past, to ‘better days,’ or projecting ourselves into the future with hopes and aspirations of a better life, but rarely if ever, are we fully “present.”
Society doesn’t allow one to live fully present. There are too many things to tend to, too much to get done, and too little time. As a result, always focused on the next thing to get done or the next place to be, the process of living one’s life can take place at an almost entirely sub-conscious level where we are neither alert nor fully aware of what is going on around us because our mind is always somewhere else. We are never fully present. We’re always racing from one obligation to the next, one thought to the next, one fantasy to the next. This is all automatic thinking that is sub-conscious in origin and bubbling up to the level of conscious awareness.
When we awaken, we have an entirely different relationship with life and an entirely different experience of time. An awakened individual no longer dwells in the past, nor do they project themselves into the future. They no longer live lost in future aspirations (which does not mean not having goals), nor lamenting over the past. In other words, they stop living in their heads as victims of their memories or trapped in their imagination, compulsively creating thoughts that serve as the underpinnings of all their feelings in any given moment. The awakened individual knows only peace and joy because they don't project any bias, good or bad, on to any experience they're having. Everything simply is what it is. They know only how to be fully present moment by moment, by accepting life for what it is as opposed to what they want it to be. They are devoid of ALL expectations.
Until developing this kind of relationship with life, we tend to operate just below the level of our cognition (intentional - deliberate – focused thinking), below the level of our awareness or conscious thought, operating at the level of a whole system of patterns of learned behavior that are sub-conscious, automatic behaviors, learned in childhood. Subsequently, this is where we get in trouble emotionally. Think of this level of consciousness as running on autopilot, compulsively ‘reacting” to life. We believe we’re making conscious decisions and choices when in reality we’re not.
It’s unfortunate, but most of us suffer from a type of self-deception; the idea that as we decide upon things we’re making conscious, well thought out choices. We make choices from the time we awaken till we retire and go back to sleep, and really believe we’re thinking our choices through, but in most cases, it’s the automatic, pre-conditioned reactions developed from past experiences choosing for us!
This is why I have to draw a distinction between being conscious (the opposite of sleep) and truly being “awakened,” which is an entirely different realm of conscious awareness.
Again, at the level of awareness that most would consider being “conscious,” we operate in an involuntary, reflexive way controlled by biases, beliefs, perspectives, and from patterns of impulsive behaviors learned in our childhood that have been developed over time through recurring experiences and have created very predictable behavioral responses and perceptions in us. This is KARMA.
Sadhguru, an eastern mystic, explains karma very well:
“The very way you think, feel, understand, perceive, and experience your life is determined by all these past inputs. So, your mind, is deeply, deeply, deeply conditioned by all this past activity. This conditioning of the mind is traditionally what we call karma. Karma means action. More specifically, “MY ACTIONS.”
These are all the things that I did in body, in mind, in thoughts, in emotion, and energetically; most of them were done unconsciously.
The residual impact of all the activity that I have performed is right now ruling the very way I think, feel, understand, perceive, and experience my life. So, that is my karma, so this is how I am. Your karma is deciding everything about you.
So, the reason we say it is your karma is the very way you experience everything is your own making. In other words, it is determined by the biases, prejudices, and beliefs you developed from past experiences, that ultimately determines how you experience the present moment.
You are making up your experiences every moment of your life, but right now you are doing it in a compulsive way, so it looks like it is all just randomly happening to you. If you only become a little bit more conscious of this process you can make it happen any way you want. You are the maker of you all your experiences!"
Your experience of life is 100% you’re doing. So, whatever your past karma, that is the way you are.
If you are in love and hate, creating and averting, wanting and not wanting, your karma is growing. The stronger your likes and dislikes become, the stronger and more painful your karma becomes. If you have strong opinions about things, and a strong sense of like and dislike, your suffering is also intense, is it not?
Patterns of bondage are being built within you…
[In awakening], now a new sensation comes. You are equanimous. You simply experience the sensation for what it is. You neither like it nor dislike it. You simply experience it because, if you like it you will distort it. If you dislike it you will distort it. All the karma attached to that type of situation in the past will begin to crumble within you. So, if you maintain this equanimous mind, then your karma will begin to collapse.
Your mind will become equanimous when you become accepting of what is there right now. You are neither liking it nor disliking it. You are simply experiencing it the way it is. In order to experience life to its fullest, we need to develop this attribute.
As you accept, accept, accept, you move into higher and higher levels of freedom. As you resist, resist, resist you are digging your own grave all the time. Karma means action. Whose action? My action. Whose responsibility? My responsibility.
Karma is fatalism. Taking 100% responsibility of your life is the only way to overcome karma.”
Simply put, how someone treats you is "THEIR" karma, how you react is "YOURS!"
So, until we rise above the level of our karma (our conditioning and unconscious reactive behavior patterns) we are each a product of our past experiences. Each of us has learned a countless number of beliefs that create our perceptions. As a result, we see what we have been conditioned to see, seeing things a certain way, through the lens fashioned by the impressions made upon us by all our experiences.
Based on those beliefs our thinking is subjective; meaning our past experiences created beliefs that function as the lens we view the world through today. We unconsciously and instinctively compare what we’re presented with to what we know from past experiences. Those memories, particularly the painful ones, which forged the deepest patterns in our way of thinking, dramatically influence how we evaluate and react to things.
Our painful or traumatic experiences, which we may not even consciously remember today, unconsciously determine our choices. The option of whether or not we take a risk in most cases is predetermined. Unconsciously, we may be afraid to feel the pain of being hurt again and so we choose not to take the risk. We think our choice is well thought out because we believe we've weighed out all the available risk factors, but the real fact is, our inner fears outweighed any external facts about the risks and ultimately predetermined what our choice would be before there was ever even a choice.
In most cases, we probably already decided not to take the risk before it was even presented because we’ve programmed ourselves not to take risks above a certain imperceptible level of risk. This is because our thoughts bubble up to the surface in a never-ending procession from a wellspring inside of us often times creating very unrealistic fears and apprehensions. So, why are we so afraid?
Research has shown that the pattern and types of thoughts that run in the background, like apps on a phone, are a product of the rudimentary thinking that developed in response to our childhood experiences, and that those patterns of thinking become automatic thoughts and behaviors that unconsciously determine all of our conscious thoughts as adults. So even though we believe we’re making “conscious” decisions today, the decisions we make are most often predetermined by patterns of thought that we are oblivious to. They were developed in childhood and running in the background, as adults.
Running on this type of “auto-pilot” we tend to “react” without any conscious thought to our experiences, in a preconditioned fashion, applying no reasoning to those reactions.
* It’s important to note that these “reactions” are triggered, automatic impulses learned in childhood that are so ingrained in us they never make it to the level of conscious thought. They’re automatic and therefore reactionary.
Trapped at this level of consciousness we fall victim to the impulsive thinking that takes place within us, never realizing that we are in fact, separate from our thoughts and therefore always at choice in choosing how we engage others or respond to our experiences. As a result, these unconscious reactions hold a lot of energy waiting to be triggered and released with a myriad of corresponding emotional responses tied to them. But in reacting we have no control over how we feel. These patterns of thinking are completely compulsory.
So, is there any hope of rising above this automatic behavior and habitual thinking that is so prevalent?
Buddha discovered that until we develop our awareness and become the observer of our thoughts, which believe me, is an endeavor in and of itself, most of our beliefs and biases remain conditioned, impulsive patterns of behavior. Until we develop our awareness, our feelings will always lie beyond our control, and we will remain powerless in choosing how we feel about things and whether we “react” or “respond” to things.
It’s unfortunate, but few choose to ascend or awaken to a higher level of consciousness than the conditioned, well-learned, well-rehearsed, automatic, and programmed patterns of behaviors we learned in our childhood that govern most of our behaviors and decisions throughout each day. Doing so requires effort and a certain amount of tenacity. Living very hastily in a society of immediate gratification, the discipline of ‘mindfulness’ is one that must be entered into with commitment and patience with oneself, because it takes time and practice. After all, we're trying to undo and overcome years or even decades of cultural programming.
This is why so often many of us can feel like victims when our expectations are not met, and life fails to bend to our will because we believe that life is simply happening to us and we have very little choice in the way we feel about it.
Let me assure you, we have far more control over our experiences than we believe we do. This is the first step is developing our awareness our deeply engrained karma.
A good first step to truly developing awareness is to commit to turning off your television for one month. Remove yourself from all social media and news media. Simply be with yourself for one month, fully conscious of every experience you're having. Watch what happens.
When we turn off our television and remove ourselves from all media and news, we can begin to experience life as it is, unfettered and unaffected by the musings, perspectives, and opinions of others and outside influences. We can begin to exist as a piece of life, no longer feeling trapped by it. We become present, suspending all judgement and not projecting any bias on to what is happening around us.
Pay attention to everything around you and choose to be a part of it, existing only as an observer while suspending all judgment and allowing people to be who they are. Project the idea that you're connected to everything and that everything is merely an expression of your own inner reality.
Free yourself from all expectations and the need to have life bend to your will. Experience this and take note of how you feel.
...more to come.
See: MINDFUL LIVING CREATES HAPPINESS – BODY, RELATIONSHIP, & WORK
I would love to hear from you and hear your own personal thoughts on how you practice mindfulness or would like to in the comment section below. Let me know if the content of this article resonates with you, provides perspective, or helps you see things in a different way that empowers you to make different choices or see life and relationships through a different lens. I value your thoughts and feedback and look forward to hearing from you.
Love & Light to You in your continued Journey of Self-Discovery!
