Freedom through Awareness

Awareness can transform our consciousness and free us from the source of dis-ease that affects the mind. Whenever our consciousness becomes overly fixated with a thing, like watching TV, playing computer games, worrying about life, emotional or physical pain pleasure, it dominates us and we loose awareness. Awareness is not focussed on a single thing we that we experience, but is like the space that surrounds a thing in which it appears – a spacious field. Every experience appears within a context. For example your chair is in a room, the room is in a building, the building is on some land and on and on. Awareness is more like the space that surrounds us and all things we are conscious of yet it is not the same as the thing within.

Transforming our ordinary consciousness to awareness first of all means becomming aware of this space surrounding both – the outer and the inner – that is around us and the things we observe and that which surrounds our thoughts, feelings and emotions. Enhancing our awareness of this space – both inner and outer – and realizing it as a vast field of spacious awareness frees us from being dominated by any thought, feeling or sensation that arises within it. When we are able to identify with this spacious awareness field then we can acknowledge and accept everything that arises in it – pleasant or unpleasant – and at the same time prevent our consciousness from being stuck, focused or fixated on any one thing.

It then gives us another choice. Whether to identify with the things we are conscious of or to identify with the spacious field of awareness in which they appear, which will automatically free our consciousness from domination by any of its contents. By realizing that our awareness of things is not a thing itself we see that our awareness of thoughts, feelings, and impulses is not itself a thought, feeling or sensation. This leads us to true freedom!

Ranji Varughis

 

Ready to discover !!!!

 

Freedom

We hurry through the so-called boring things in order to attend to that which we deem more important, interesting.

Perhaps the final freedom will be a recognition that everything in every moment is “essential” and that nothing at all is “important.”

By Helen M. Luke

 

Love After Love

The time will come, when with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome
and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself,
to the stranger who has loved you all your life,
whom you have ignored for another,
who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

-Derek Walcott

 

One suffering you could avoid

“You can hold back from
suffering of the world,
you have permission to do so,
and it is in accordance
with your nature,

but perhaps this very holding back
is the one suffering
you could have avoided”

Franz Kafka

 

Practice moment to moment non-judgemental awareness

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Why is non-judgment an important practice? Non-judgemental approach means to make a conscious effort not to be critical of the actions or thoughts of others. The practice of non-judgment is essential to purify and deprogram the mind just like by eating clean, healthy food, and avoiding alcohol and caffeine we can detoxify the physical body. There is a distinction between judgment and discernment. Discernment simply is perceiving the way things are. Judgment is what we add to discernment of how things or people are and how we think they ought to be. So, in judgment, there’s an element of dissatisfaction with the way things are and a desire to have things be the way we want them to be. Left to itself, the brain will automatically judge things as good or bad, right or wrong, fair or unfair, important or unimportant, urgent or non-urgent and so on. This happens so fast that our experiences are automatically colored right when we get to them. Practicing non-judgement is to silence the mind by stopping the constant flow of thoughts analysing and evaluating everything and everyone we meet, ourselves included. When the mind is clear, we can see new possibilities, transcend perceived limits, and live a life of greater ease, joy and love. The key here is to bring awareness to the moments of our lives. Be aware when the brain is automatically judging a situation or a person, and we can pause and get some perspective. In this way we create a sort of “space” between ourselves and the thought so that we’re not so caught up in it. Labeling judgements as judgements can be useful. When we notice ourselves judging we can just say the word “judging” quietly to ourselves. When we name our experience we again create a small gap that gives us a sense of freedom. Was this judgment just something that popped in my mind? Is there another way I can see this? A practice of non-judgment helps us to avoid a lot of the suffering we experience on a daily basis. Some kinds of judgment are both good and necessarily practical. What I have tried to highlight are those kinds of judgment that are founded on either hatred, prejudice, rigid categorization, unsubstantiated generalization, or any act of making a ‘final judgment’ that closes the heart to another living being. It is not easy to reserve judgement and no one is entirely able to do so, but it is something we can strive for and put into practise as diligently as possible.