"Awareness is the greatest agent for change" – Eckhart Tolle
What is awareness? Why is it important?
Awareness like movement is something that we do – or not. Just as you might say, I am dancing, I am cooking, I am walking, I am thinking.
Being aware is a choice we make. It is as far from automatic as you will ever get.
You experience awareness each time you look in the mirror and recognize the person staring back at you as you. You experience it every time you think about an experience you had. You experience it when you observe yourself in action and realize you could be doing it differently, more to your liking. You experience it when you become self critical or when you take genuine pride in something you have accomplished. You experience it any time you set about improving the way you do something.
Like any other skill, awareness requires practice. The more we bring the observer into our lives, the better we get at being aware.
Have you ever driven somewhere in a car and arrived not really remembering much about the trip. Or finished some routine chore and not had much of a recollection of what went on whilst you were performing it? Without awareness we could move our shoulder or arm thousands of times, for example, and there would be nothing new happening in either our brains or our bodies. We could even do something new and without awareness it would be as if it never happened
One of the things most astounding about awareness is the lack of it. We have acquired habitual ways of thinking and moving unaware, and we are so accustomed to them that they are invisible to us, They have become like the air we breathe
Why is it important to be aware?
Awareness gets us to apply our brain at its highest levels giving us the power to make discoveries and create what otherwise would not be available to us.
True awareness allows us to improve, to grow. To become better, but not perfect. Our lives will never be perfect. We’ve all been cut deeply. But that’s okay.
Awareness helps us heal, and our scars make up the best parts of us.