In this article I will share tips on how to how to develop awareness. The development of awareness sounds somehow painfully mysterious and enigmatic. At the same time, there is little mysterious and enigmatic here, this is a very specific concept (I have already written on this topic in a more general sense, in the article, in this article I will try to touch on the specifics regarding awareness, based on an example, and will also answer The question is how to develop awareness.

What does mindfulness mean? Let's try to figure this out right away. Awareness is the ability for a rational, mediated by consciousness, adequate analysis of external reality and internal subjective state, detached from emotions, the formation of behavior patterns based on conclusions from this analysis, the ability to track emotions and unconscious impulses of the psyche and the ability to resist them. In other words, awareness precedes any rational assessment and activity.

Example of mindfulness

I came up with the definition myself, so don’t scold me. Of course, I won’t leave it this way and will try to explain it with a specific example. Before we talk about how you can develop awareness, let’s talk once again about the nature of this quality in order to come to complete clarity. The main thing is to understand that awareness in many situations can precede some kind of physical action. Let's give an example. You have an important meeting, a serious exam or an important job interview.

In general, this is a situation during which you experience nervousness. Here is a case of a mental reaction that is NOT characterized by awareness: you came to a conditional meeting, nervous and on an emotional high, you understand that there is nothing to be done about it, because you think that you know yourself well and since in such situations you usually worry You will be this one too. Because of your nervousness, you get confused in the presentation/answers to the questions of the examiner/HR officer (although before that you spoke it out in your head and everything looked much more harmonious and logical).

You lose your thoughts and cannot retrieve the necessary information from your memory because you are worried. Your speech is confused and uncertain, your consciousness is not concentrated, you answer worse than you would if you weren’t nervous. As a result, the examiner/recruiter/business partner was not fully satisfied with your performance. HR concluded that you have low resistance to stress, the examiner noticed that you were worried and could attribute this to poor knowledge of the subject. As a result, you achieved worse results than you could have gotten if you had been collected and calm.

How does mindfulness manifest itself?

Now I will give the opposite example of a conscious reaction to what is happening and your competent behavior resulting from this.

So you came to an interview, meeting, exam. You started to worry because the event is important. You know yourself well and understand that almost any person will experience stress in such circumstances, BUT only if they do nothing and leave it like that. You are well aware that worry is pointless, it does not give you any advantages, but only prevents you from achieving your goals. As a result, you may not get a good job or do poorly on the final exam, just because you couldn’t control yourself and thereby made a bad impression. So why should you worry? Not only is this pointless, but it can also cause harm! (This was ANALYSIS).

You bring your breathing in order, calm your heartbeat, calm down yourself, come to the conclusion that the outcome of the meeting will depend on how well you can hold yourself and how collected and focused you will be. You are already tuning into such a calm mood and an ideal model of your behavior appears in your head, which you plan to adhere to. You deeply value your ability to hold on and pull yourself together, because you believe that this is a sign of your mental strength and psychological discipline. And you intend to use this skill.

You don’t pay attention to natural anxiety, you go to our conventional meeting, if you haven’t achieved inner peace, then you try to at least portray it with a cold-blooded expression on your face, because you know that not only your state determines your facial expressions, but also vice versa: your facial expressions determine your state(I will write a separate article about this).

Behave well, speak confidently, if you forgot something, pause, calmly remember and reproduce it, and if you still don’t remember something, then don’t start to panic under the stern gaze of your colleagues/HR officers/teachers, but tactfully get out of the problem. Even if your knowledge of a subject leaves much to be desired, you will make a good impression on others by how confident, focused and calm you are.

Since you are relaxed and show no signs of nervousness, you can compensate for your gaps in presentation with good tactics during the speech and good communication with the audience. (This was the same physical action) As a result, you got what you deserved, and maybe even more (if you managed to bribe the audience with your confidence and manipulate their attention, despite obvious errors in the presentation), successfully passed the exam or passed the interview.

Analysis and will

This is an example of awareness and the subsequent volitional impulse, designed to bring to life the behavior pattern created in the head. Here we observed an adequate, sober and balanced analysis of our emotions. Our experimental specimen did not succumb to feelings and nervousness, he showed ANALYSIS: he calmly and calmly laid him on the operating table and dissected the tension that had arisen in his mind, realized its nature, which was complete meaninglessness and uselessness.

And then, having drawn conclusions from the ANALYSIS, he formulated a model of his behavior in his head (I set myself up to be calm and confident, or at least pretend to be calm and confident) and moved on to action, which was expressed in attempts to correspond to the chosen model, when I calmed my nerves and went inside premises and calmly defended his position as a student/applicant/employee.

There may be a different outcome. Our subject realized that worries were pointless, tried to calm himself down, but due to lack of practice, he failed. Still, he was nervous and fidgeted in his chair. And then, after analyzing it again, I saw this as a problem area that would need to be worked on and promised myself to take measures so that this nervousness would not manifest itself in the future. Maybe he failed here or he didn’t achieve what he wanted because he couldn’t completely cope with anxiety, but in terms of self-development and awareness development he took a significant step.

He realized the nature of his anxiety, made absolutely correct conclusions about it, and set himself to help ensure that this did not manifest itself in the future. He did it distance yourself from your feelings and passions. And he intends to continue to work on himself and train willpower, strengthening the internal discipline of which he lacked in this situation. Even though it was not possible to cope with emotions, the hero of our thought experiment I no longer identified myself with my feelings!

And this is the most important thing! So don’t worry and don’t scold yourself if at first you don’t manage to resist your destructive, harmful emotions and in the end they will defeat you. The main thing is that you are always aware of these negative impulses, try to resist them and never give up, looking for new ways to defeat character weaknesses.

This example clearly illustrates that mindfulness can also be understood as a skill that causes you to stop identify with your desires, emotions, passions and fears. You begin to perceive it as something extraneous that still affects you, has power over you, but is not part of your personality and therefore can be controlled and trained. This is the power of awareness! Can you imagine what useful skill you will gain if you make an effort to achieve states of awareness!

You can have the habit of being carried away by feelings and excitement, completely surrendering to their power and thinking that these impulses are a logical extension of yourself and they stem from the characteristic features of your personality. You allow these feelings to spin and control you, to confuse your life, to confuse your understanding of yourself and others, to lead you away from your goal and move you away from its awareness.

But you can sensibly and soberly record the impulses that arise in yourself, which prevent you from living and achieving what you want. Be aware of them, make an effort of will to gain control over them and thereby live happily and in harmony with yourself, achieving the best for yourself, rejecting fears, anxiety and uncertainty!

Why is mindfulness needed?

In order not to be unfounded and not to limit myself to just one example, I will explain about some negative impulses that need to be realized and that need to be fought, I say, after which I will tell you how to train mindfulness.

What can cause a lack of awareness?

• Nervousness, excitement, restlessness
• Anger, irritability
• Envy
• Fear, anxiety, uncertainty
• Depression, tendency to despondency, mental blues
• Shyness, timidity, shyness, reticence
• The influence of bad habits
• Inability to adequately perceive criticism and the opinions of others
• Other character flaws

Now I believe you understand that the need to develop awareness in order to analyze and then cope with the above-mentioned qualities is not determined by my personal preferences. Above you can see a list of things that really interfere or can interfere with the life of almost every person and not only! On the scale of humanity as a whole, these properties manifest themselves in the qualities of universal evil: social disasters, misunderstandings, conflicts, illnesses and deaths.

In order to be able to resist them, awareness alone is not enough (willpower, discipline, strength of character, spiritual independence and developed critical ability are required; how to develop all this - we’ll talk in this blog), but this is a necessary stage that allows you to calmly assess the emergence of these feelings , spiritually distance yourself from them and stop perceiving them as part of your personality.

Awareness reflects a person’s desire to live with reason, resist instincts, passions and vices, and make correct, informed decisions, strive for well-being for themselves and others, pacify anger and envy, think rationally and cope with prejudices. Increasing the degree of awareness is one of the key stages of self-development.

How to increase awareness

Now, finally, my presentation brings me to the answer to the main question of this article about how to increase awareness. Please excuse me for the long introduction before moving on to the practical part of the article. I would not have placed all this material here if I were not sure of its necessity for our understanding of what we mean by awareness as the same thing. After all, before talking about something, you need to define it and come to a common understanding.

So there is no better way to develop and train mindfulness than regular daily practice.
Just as the best way to learn to swim is to actually swim, there is also no more reliable way to increase awareness than training it. Meditation can be defined as the training, the practice of mindfulness. These are sessions during which you place yourself in a state of awareness and try in every possible way to stay in it.

In this state, you achieve complete concentration and fix your attention on one thing. You relax and begin to see the internal processes of thinking and the movements of feelings as if from the outside. All your attention freezes at one point from which you calmly observe what is happening inside, you are aware of this happening.

During meditation, you may be carried away by some thoughts or feelings, memories and the bustle of the current day, but you still try to concentrate on something and distance yourself from them. This distance, the distance between the point at which your will and attention is focused and your internal processes is the measure of your awareness!. And the longer and more correctly you meditate, the greater this distance becomes.

It should be clear and logical. I mean the very principle that I described above. I do not resort to sophisticated terminology, I do not try to describe the process of meditation from the point of view of the work of energy centers, subtle vibrations, etc. I describe this as I feel and understand it, based on the conclusions drawn from the results of this practice and its positive impact on me.

And if you don’t believe me, then try it yourself, it won’t take much time and effort (your strength will only increase), but I assure you, as you practice, you will feel the same as me, you will feel the beneficial effect of meditation and my reasoning will become valid for you. I consider the main advantage of my self-development system to be that many of its conclusions are not of an abstract theoretical nature, but can be easily tested in practice, which is what I encourage you to do in every possible way!

But in order to develop awareness, it is not enough just to meditate! Yes, meditation is where you should start, but then, when it bears its first fruits, you will need to undertake another set of mindfulness exercises, which include the following:

• Meditate!
• Try to be relaxed throughout the day. Maintain a calm state of mind.
• Do not rush to succumb to sudden emotional impulses that lead to irrational actions. It is necessary to analyze the reasons for these feelings. If you are boiling inside, you should not immediately express it in action. Go out, calm down, cool your head and think things through.
• Rest more often during the day, let your brain relax, think about something extraneous during such rest, not related to the realities of the current day. This will help you maintain distance and not let you get carried away by the whirlpool of routine.
• Try to use your mind everywhere. In every little detail concerning your behavior, habits and relationships with people. You will notice that many of your actions that you are used to doing every day are not rational. Assess their impact on yourself and your life and select those that bother you. Work to eliminate them.
• Constantly be aware of your well-being and condition, determine when you are tired, anxious or nervous. This is necessary either in order to quickly take measures to stabilize your state of mind, or in order not to do anything stupid (I’m on edge right now, I’ll go outside to catch my breath and put my thoughts in order, or at the moment I’m in emotional trouble, so I’ll postpone taking important decision for later, when I calm down)
• Analyze the causes of problematic situations; it often happens that you dragged yourself into a problematic situation and there is no point in complaining about the circumstances
• Be honest with yourself about your motives and motivations

The development of awareness in practice is discussed in the second step, there are exercises that you can do to develop awareness.

Don't be upset if you can't complete all these steps. Learning to be relaxed and not give in to emotions is a very long and painstaking work that you still need to accustom yourself to. But as you practice meditation, you will find it easier to follow these recommendations. Also on this site I promise to reveal in more detail the components of this program to increase awareness.

Fulfilling these points not only helps you fight difficulties and understand the reasons for your actions, but also teach you to analyze, to the habit of looking at what is happening in oneself from the outside, which greatly contributes to the formation of awareness.

Don't take on too much! There is no need to strive to immediately overcome all your shortcomings and cope with the strongest and most uncontrollable emotional impulses. Start with little things, with trifles: don’t get nervous and don’t get angry when someone steps on your foot in the subway - close your eyes, concentrate and calm down, think about something pleasant. And gradually move from such trifles to global, most serious problems, when you feel that you are ready to solve them.

This is something like a gradual increase in weight when training in the gym: when starting to exercise, you do not start exercising with large weights, but start with small ones so as not to get injured and not to spoil the effect of the workout. Also, when it comes to increasing awareness, start small! And meditate, as you practice, you will begin to discover amazing abilities of self-control and introspection that you never had before!

In this article we will talk about what mindfulness is. It is important not only to understand what mindfulness is, but also to live mindfully.

From the great teachers of the past such as Jesus, Kabir, Nanak, Buddha, Muhammad, to modern teachers such as Karl Renz, Ethart Tolle, Dalai Lama, Osho, we can say that all these teachers taught only one thing - mindfulness.

Each teacher called mindfulness differently. Jesus called it awakening That's why he said more than once: stay awake, be vigilant, but people did not understand him, they thought that being awake meant not sleeping in bed, but they did not understand that even if they are not in bed, this does not mean that they are awake . You can sleep on the go.

Ethart Tolle called mindfulness presence, or the power of the moment now.

Osho called mindfulness witnessing. Whatever you call it, the essence does not change.

Awareness is a person’s ability to be here and now, to feel the world more than to think about it, the ability not to be fooled by the illusions of the mind. Understand that thoughts are just thoughts and the thoughts in your head have nothing to do with real reality.

Awareness is the understanding that thoughts are illusory and they carry only a shadow of the past or future, and the real reality is where the human body is, that is, the real reality surrounds the body here and now.

Mindfulness helps you see your inner world

Thanks to awareness, a person begins to get acquainted with his inner world; before this, only the outer world existed for him; now the inner dimension opens up.

A person who becomes aware becomes less and less reactive. It is more difficult to control him, he no longer reacts to the same stimuli in the same way, he has the opportunity to freely choose how to react to a particular stimulus. Such a person becomes more and more spontaneous and unpredictable.

Let’s say that if an unconscious person is shouted at, then, depending on his habit, he can either shout back or, fearing shouts, avoid conflicts. An unconscious person always reacts, for example, to shouts in the same way, but a conscious person can choose whether to shout, that is, go into conflict, or avoid conflict, and this depends on the situation. A conscious person increases the effectiveness of communicating with people and increases resistance to stress.

It is important to understand that there are three main aspects of the inner world to be aware of:

• body;
• soul.

Body awareness

The very initial stage of awareness begins with the body. At this stage, a person learns to feel his body, be able to direct his consciousness into the body, feel how energy flows in the body. The skill of listening to internal organs, heartbeat, etc. appears.

A person begins to better care and love himself, that is, his body. At first, it is difficult for a person to meditate on the body, thoughts are often carried away, a person constantly jumps from awareness to unconsciousness, and often falls asleep during meditation.

Over time, a new level appears when a person realizes that he does not fall asleep, thoughts still come to his head, but do not carry him away, and consciousness remains in the body more and more often and longer. Then a person begins to direct consciousness into the body already on the street, wherever he is, when communicating with people.

The hardest thing, perhaps, is to be aware of your body, move and talk at the same time.

Thought Awareness

Awareness of thoughts or observation of them is, perhaps, the second level of awareness - this is when a person already sees his thoughts and understands that thoughts are thoughts and they have nothing to do with reality.

A person can even laugh at the thoughts that come to his mind, since he has the understanding that he is not a thought and that thoughts often come from the outside, and are not always born in his head.

Life is not as serious as the mind makes it out to be!!!

A person who is aware of his thoughts lives by this principle. Such a person does not get lost in his thoughts, does not follow them, this person is already the master of his mind and does not allow thoughts to lead him into illusions, but consciously directs his attention to the moment now that surrounds his body.

Soul Awareness

Soul awareness is the third level, and can only be mastered after the first two stages of awareness have been completed.

In fact, all three stages of awareness of the three aspects of a person - body, mind, and soul - are very interconnected and complement each other, and they were separated for better understanding and assimilation of the material.

Awareness of the soul occurs due to the awareness of emotions and feelings, moods; at this stage, a person can clearly distinguish emotions from feelings and be aware of his mood and manage it.

Emotions come after thoughts, no matter what thoughts they are, positive or negative.

And feelings come from the soul, not from thoughts. Thoughts can come to mind after feelings, that is, emotions are a consequence of thoughts, and feelings are always their source.

Feelings are on a deeper level and most often come from the chest. And emotions are felt in the abdominal area, but this should not be taken as truth, all this is individual.

It is important to understand that this article on mindfulness is not awareness - it is just a direction towards it, but if you are reading it, then you are closer to awareness or awakening than ever before.

Awareness is directed towards awareness or perception

This is the fourth stage, which already happens to a person on his own, after he has already gone through the three previous stages. At this stage, awareness is directed to perception, the person already asks himself the question, who perceives all this, who I am, at this stage the person remembers Who He Really Is.

Conclusions on the topic of what mindfulness is:

• mindfulness helps a person to finally discover the inner dimension in addition to the external world;
• awareness gives a person freedom of choice, the ability to react the way a person chooses to a particular stimulus;
• awareness occurs in three stages: awareness of the body, mind and soul, all these stages are interconnected and complement each other;
• awareness has been called differently by different people at different times: awakening, witnessing, presence, being here and now, awake, alert, and so on; all these words have the same essence - a person rises to a new stage of evolutionary spiritual growth.
• The consequence of a conscious lifestyle is unconditional love, joy, a more fulfilling and vibrant life.

Secrets of esotericism on the site

There are people who are ardent skeptics. Or those who believe in God. There is a person who doesn’t care, he doesn’t argue, he doesn’t prove. He has no time - he works, improves himself. What is esotericism? Religion? Faith in God? In people? To the supermind? Or maybe into yourself? Many people don’t think about such things, and when they think about it, they don’t find answers to their questions.

Esotericism is secret knowledge that is not accessible to people ignorant of magic, mysticism, and the occult. At least that's what they used to be. Knowledge and skills that not everyone could have. Only the chosen ones.

After reading various feeds on the Internet, you can only get scattered data and a weak idea of ​​what esotericism is. Only by deciding to change yourself and your life for the better, by gathering your strength and taking a course of video seminars designed by specialists so that everything falls into place, can you achieve success.

The concept of esotericism and why you shouldn’t be afraid of it

Esotericism is a huge section of human life, helping to find oneself through knowledge of the world. Studying it is not for everyone. After all, this is not just religion or science. This is the same thread that connects all the nuances and aspects of the ordinary world and the areas of unknown magic that surrounds us.

The very first such secret society was the Pythagorean school. It was divided into ordinary and esoteric. Her secret part took a lifelong oath of non-disclosure of what members of the society were taught. And what knowledge they received there is still unknown to humanity. Now esotericism is not hidden from everyone. There is accessible information presented in video seminars or master classes. Why are people afraid or unwilling to touch the unknown and explore unexplored areas of their own lives?

Let's consider the main criteria of human reluctance:

1. Many people do not want to learn a new religion. In fact, esotericism is not only religion, although it is closely related to it. It helps you discover yourself and your own hidden inner potential. Yes, there is religion here - faith in yourself and the world around you.
2. Lack of belief in the ability to change your life. Thought is always material. And wishes are always fulfilled. Everything is possible - you just have to believe and go through this difficult path to knowledge.
3. Reluctance to gain new knowledge, since there is already success in your personal life. Esotericism makes it possible to gain success not only in one area of ​​human activity. It allows you to balance all the criteria that are extremely important. Achieve what you want and your deepest secrets in every possible way.
4. Fearful attitude towards the concept of magic. It is worth noting that the unknown is not only magical. It's just unfamiliar. After completing the seminar, it becomes clear that what seems incredible and impossible is often considered magical.
5. Lack of free time. Naturally, it takes time and a lot of time to complete the training. But in the end, the hours spent pay off handsomely. Life balances out, everything falls into place and everything happens in its own moment.

An already established branch, science, like psychology, has long taken into account esoteric opinion. He resorts to her methods. Favors the practice of secret knowledge.

What does esoteric knowledge give?

Why is it believed that esoteric knowledge is not given to everyone? Only a select few? Because not everyone is ready to say goodbye to the old world, three-dimensional space, or the feeling of the precarious stability of their life. Each person is the architect of his own happiness. Those who understand this strive for the best.

To transform yourself. From the inside. Starting with thoughts. And thoughts are what happens to us. Esoteric practices give people not only knowledge. They help you feel the surrounding space. Start thinking differently than before. Wake up one day and realize what is happening. What you need to do to succeed in your desired industries. Understand that the world is not three-dimensional. It is completely limitless. Consciousness is omnipotent.

Why does a person come to esotericism?

Different roads can lead to one or another knowledge. Events, people, chance? In any case, esotericism appears in a person’s life when it is needed. The reasons may be different:

1. Search for new, unprecedented sensations. When it becomes boring, the world loses its attractiveness, those around you do not bring the same joy. Esotericism will help you look at everything in a different light, see something new and believe in a miracle.
2. Search for a treatment method. When traditional medicine is powerless. When the pills didn't help. And we are talking not only about habitual illnesses, but also about constant depression, about the disease of life itself, when, no matter how hard a person tries, he cannot achieve his goals. The man turns in desperation. And esotericism, magic, rituals help to heal.

Esotericism and magic are ancient sciences. This is knowledge accumulated over many years and centuries. This is great wisdom that anyone who really wants it can comprehend. And help yourself overcome difficulties. Free yourself from heaviness and become free. Achieve results and be happy.

It’s easier to say what esotericism is as follows. This is an attempt to explain the complex structure of the visible and invisible world and the processes that take place in these worlds and influence a person, his actions and even fate. Almost everyone has heard about the extraordinary experience of modified consciousness. Most modern commercial practices for achieving financial success, practices for fulfilling human desires or shaping events are built on this principle.

Esoteric practices are aimed at achieving a sustainable expansion of human consciousness, which would allow one to obtain a more perfect worldview. In a narrower, applied sense, all esoteric teachings are aimed at studying the inner world of man, his hidden capabilities and developing specific techniques for self-realization and spiritual development. There are esoteric movements in all world religions, although there are many independent esoteric systems.

There are theoretical worldview systems that consider only the spiritual development of the individual through the accumulation of special knowledge and meditative practices. There are movements aimed at achieving the final result with the help of ceremonies, rituals and other things. These include the occult, which involves the use of magic, appealing to the unrecognized powers of spirits, natural forces and inhabitants of parallel worlds. Representatives of religious systems have an interesting attitude to the question of what esotericism is. For example, there is an opinion that any esoteric practices are prohibited by Christianity, and turning to such knowledge or practices is regarded as a grave sin, for which severe punishments are provided.

But this attitude of the church does not stop those who see esotericism as a means to solve their life problems. This state of affairs, in our opinion, is also due to the fact that the official church imposes a strict ban without explaining the real possibilities of esoteric practices. At the same time, there are a huge number of specific rituals related to the so-called church magic, which are available for review and are widely used. It is useful for a modern person to know the answer to the question: “Esotericism - what is it?”, since this is an opportunity to learn more about one’s internal structure, nature and the world around us. Knowing about esoteric methods of cognition, a person will not be afraid to make mistakes, and problems will not seem to him an insurmountable obstacle to happiness.

Awareness of one's “I” is an extremely complex phenomenon. This can be achieved through the exercises described earlier, or by directly creating the sense of “I”. means to feel one's own essential individuality (what a person really is and what distinguishes him from all other people). This essential individuality has nothing to do with personality, body, intellect, or emotions. She also cannot be called , although it is based on it. Awareness of one's “I” is a much deeper and broader concept.

It is known that during the day we sometimes have moments of self-awareness (but they are rare) and periods of “self-unawareness”. For example, when a boss suddenly reprimands one of his subordinates in front of all his co-workers, he suddenly awakens, becomes self-aware, and at the same time feels shame, fear, disappointment and embarrassment.

Let's remember what we said about the “I” in previous chapters: “I” is what belongs to the essence of a person, “we” is what does not belong to it.. All people have their own “I”, but usually it does not participate in the work of the intellect. Moreover, this “I” is undeveloped, immature, small, fragile and asthenic.”

What happened to the employee who was reprimanded by his boss? Why did he feel so uncomfortable, stupid and defenseless? Let's analyze this situation in more detail. The man worked as usual, "his "I" was asleep, and his "we" was awake. Suddenly he finds himself in the center of everyone's attention, is forced to passively listen to the boss and experiences emotional shock. His sleeping "I" suddenly wakes up (any emotional shock is "shook off" from human normal state of sleep) and displaces “we” from consciousness. At this moment, the person clearly sees himself, that is, his subconscious “we” structure, and identifies himself with it. He feels like a powerless child, naked and burning with shame. His mask personality has fallen asleep, and he, like those around him, sees himself as he really is, and not as he wants to appear (the word “personality”, in Greek “prosopon”, means “theatrical mask”).

The “I” is hidden under a thick veil of personality, which does not allow a person to know himself (to know his “I”). It is known that in a crowd a person behaves much more spontaneously and demonstratively than when he is alone. We like to meet and interact with people who behave spontaneously because they seem more humane and pleasant. However, spontaneity is the result of well-tuned automaticity. A person is capable of a spontaneous reaction in society only if his social automatisms function perfectly. When a person finds himself in a situation to which he is not ready to react “automatically,” spontaneity of behavior disappears. Compared to animals, man is the least spontaneous, and what distinguishes him from them is his capacity for deep conscious reflection. Thus, animals and children are absolutely spontaneous, but this does not mean that children have more human qualities.

What we usually think of as “spontaneity” is actually its opposite, since in reality it is a compulsive reaction, which is only the result of prevailing automatisms. True communication and emotions are not spontaneous, they need to be learned. When you first try to train the consciousness of your “I,” some unnaturalness is inevitable. This happens because a person learns to behave, think and react in a new way. Thus, self-awareness deprives a person of naturalness until he gets used to being aware of himself and acting on behalf of the “I”, and not on behalf of the personality. Not everyone can achieve , this is achieved only by those who really want to be a real individual.

Self-awareness is the identification of a person with his “I,” which is the point of connection between the past and the future. Self-consciousness also means not identifying with one's perceptions, emotions and thoughts that are not related to the true Self. This has nothing to do with egoism, since it is a mental phenomenon that is not associated with emotions or instincts. We do not mean the “I” that says: “I want this car”, “I want fruit” or “I want a cigarette”, “I am desperate” or “I am happy”. Our “I” is a pure and abstract mind that observes, cognizes, analyzes and draws conclusions.

A person cannot be an egoist if his mind is controlled by truly conscious and intelligent elements, without the possessive instincts that usually determine human behavior. From the point of view of the true meaning of "I", we use the word "egoism" incorrectly. A true egoist is a person who exists not as an individual, but as an “anti-individual,” since all his desires are aimed at satisfying compulsive needs and feeding his false “I,” which, like an insatiable idol, requires blind worship and sacrifice of the spiritual “ I".

Usually a person is identified with everything that comes into his field of attention, especially when it makes a strong impression on him. It is logical that such identification leads to a loss of self-awareness. For a person who identifies with what is happening, or, in other words, who projects his “I” onto what is happening, any unpleasant incident causes a shock. The viewer involuntarily turns into an actor, although he does not physically participate in the event. The true "I" is a thinker and must always remain so, otherwise it ceases to be "I" and turns into "we".

Let us consider an interesting fact that can significantly clarify the phenomenon of identification. From a mental point of view, the main difference between the dream state and the waking state is that the waking person retains, to a certain extent, the ability to separate himself from his imagination in order to observe and analyze it. If a person is asleep, he completely loses the ability to observe the kaleidoscope of his imagination and turns into an actor drawn into the action. This is completely consistent with our theory of levels of consciousness, since if a person were fully awakened, he would be able to observe, control and manage the activities of his imagination, which does not happen in practice. It is during the day, when a person seems to be in a state of wakefulness, that he constantly loses the ability to be an observer and becomes emotionally identified with events that do not directly affect him. The transformation of a spectator into an actor always occurs due to the projection of his “I” onto what is happening. Thus, a dream can be defined as a projection of the “I” onto the subconscious. The periods of sleep and wakefulness are characterized by an alternation of projections of the “I”, which manifests itself (albeit weakly) in consciousness during the day, and in the subconscious during sleep. In reality, our “I” hardly sees the real world, since it is usually located in the subconscious. The alternation of projections of the “I” provides the necessary homeostatic balance of the body during the transition from a state of excitation (waking) to stabilization (sleep).

Some psychiatrists argue that sleeping at night is a necessary escape from reality. More precisely, sleep is a temporary disappearance of the “I”, which at this moment is projected onto the subconscious in order to support and strengthen the vegetative functions of the body. Without these functions, vitality would be significantly reduced. But what happens to a child who does not yet have an “I”? The driving force of the Self, or dynamic energy, which is the basis of the formation of the Self, is the generative sexual energy (energy, not sex). Thus, the child has an exclusively libidinal “I” (formed from libido), which is projected onto the subconscious, or unconscious, in order to strengthen the weak organism. A child sleeps much more than an elderly person whose body is already worn out. The libido provides the building material for the construction of the ego, but when the ego reaches its maturity, it is no more connected with instinctive energy than a tree is connected with a seed.

Quite a long time has passed since the release of the film “The Matrix”. It would seem an absurd idea, but it is increasingly cited as an example by scientists trying to explain the picture of the world. No, we are not talking about supercomputers and cryogenic chambers in which the physical shell of a person sleeps. Rather, we can talk about a big “game” in which everyone plays some role. And this role does not always suit the “actor”. Awareness of your true essence allows you to break out of this vicious circle and begin to truly live. This means awakening - a way out of social anabiosis. We will talk further about how awareness and awakening can be initiated.

What is awareness

Awareness is a complete understanding and acceptance of everything that happens in life, including your actions, thoughts, desires. Why is this necessary? In order to live your life consciously, to fulfill your true purpose. Open your eyes and see your real life path. What will it give? A feeling of harmony, happiness, completeness of your life. After all, in fact, it doesn’t matter how much money a person has, what house he lives in, or what car he drives to work.

The main thing is that he is happy in his life, that what he has is enough for him. Awareness of yourself, your desires and needs, allows you to understand the direction in which to move, without being scattered on unnecessary things. Awareness and awakening are the key to your real and holistic self.

And if everything is more or less clear with awareness, then what is awakening? Why is so much emphasis placed on the need to do it? Awakening is the moment of transition from ignorance to awareness. It's like opening your eyes after a long sleep, or rather suspended animation. “Social suspended animation” dictated to us by society, its collective mind or traditions. But before we talk about awareness and awakening, let’s touch on the issues of this “sleep” and its “dreams”.

Why does the personality “sleep”?

Many thinkers reproached society for violence against the individual, for suppressing his true essence. Is everything really so clear? Probably not. The fact is that there are objective laws of social nature. What is good for one may harm others. How to maintain this balance? Society has not come up with anything other than rules, orders or traditions.

From time to time traditions change, then we talk about fashion. Awareness and Awakening are certainly useful for a particular person, but can be destructive for society, since it becomes more difficult for it to control a free personality. At least when it comes to a technocratic society.

Awareness is more spiritual term, but in this publication we will look at its psychological and social significance. Each person is assigned a specific role before birth. This is called life mission or purpose. Regardless of who he becomes: a creator or a destroyer, a revolutionary or an official. A certain role is embedded in his genes, permeating his spirit and aura.

But do society, as a single mechanism, need free-thinking people? He needs teachers, doctors, police officers, military men. Society needs professions, not individuals. On the one hand, it’s not bad if the social role at least slightly coincides with the purpose. But what happens if someone falls into the wrong place? – Depression, stress, loss of strength, sheer negativity, these are just the “first signs” on the path to self-destruction. Waking up becomes the only way to protect yourself. But how can you tell if a person is “asleep?”

How do you know when it’s time to “wake up?”

Signs that a person has lost his way are eloquent enough to go unnoticed.

• Lack of understanding of life purpose;
• Regularly comparing yourself to other people;
• Live in the past, not the present;
• Lack of development and progress;
• Passivity in decision making;
• Failures at work or in your personal life;
• Chronic fatigue, depression.

If all this can be said about any person, then he needs to start his awakening as quickly as possible, otherwise he will never wake up from the daily routine. To prevent this process from dragging on for many years, it is advisable to become familiar with the basic methods of awakening and awareness.

Effective awakening techniques

Since self-awareness comes only in the process of cognition, awakening is exploratory in nature. You can’t do this without introspection and working with your subconscious. We will not describe overly exotic practices, but will present those that can be done independently, without the help of a spiritual mentor.

• Ask yourself the right questions;
• Observe your body, emotions, mind;
• Accept your real self;
• To live an active lifestyle;
• Get rid of fears and complexes;
• Practice meditation;
• Stop chasing material wealth.

These simple recommendations will help you quickly achieve a state of awareness and awakening. Perhaps they will seem very simple to some, but you should not create unnecessary difficulties for yourself. Sometimes obvious things are right under our noses.

The right questions

To begin with, it doesn’t hurt to ask yourself a few guiding questions:

• Who am I?
• What am I doing?
• Why am I doing this?
• How do I do this?

Answering them will help you understand your life, turn off the effect of automatism, and trigger comprehension. It may not be possible to answer them right away, but the desire to do so will be the first step on the path to awakening.

Observation of the body, emotions, mind

Physical, intellectual and emotional activity are interconnected. By observing his breathing, thoughts, feelings, experiences, a person begins to realize the characteristics of his physiology and psyche. You probably won’t be able to learn how to control them right away. But it will no longer be a meaningless existence.

Accepting your real self

It's worth trying to be honest with yourself. If we feel anger, then do not lie by calling it something else. If we are afraid, then we must have the courage to admit it. Self-awareness is possible only through sincerity. Deception takes a person astray, preventing him from understanding who he really is.

Active lifestyle

Proactivity encourages action, development, and self-analysis. Even a morning jog, elevated to the level of a daily ritual, can awaken our hidden potential. Awareness is an active process. For it to happen, you need to overcome your inertia or passivity.

Getting rid of fears and complexes

Fears and complexes, most often, are alien to the human psyche. They arise in response to pressure from surrounding people: family, campaign, society. The fear of not meeting other people's expectations, worries about one's own inadequacy instantly disappear on a desert island. This means that the reason for them is not in ourselves, but in our reaction to others. Awareness will come much faster if you stop chasing social trends and start living the way you really want.

Meditation

By its nature, meditation is relaxation, immersion in your subconscious. It is absolutely not necessary to take intricate poses or shake the surrounding space with monotonous sounds. It’s enough just to come to a place where you can calm down in order to escape from the daily routine at least for a while. For some it’s fishing, for others it’s a secluded bench in the nearest park, and for others it’s a favorite hammock in the village. When a person is free from extraneous thoughts, then awareness of his true nature is possible.

Stopping the pursuit of material wealth

This is not about a hermit life. No, a person is a product of society, so it is advisable not to fall out of it. It’s just that, in pursuit of money, people very often deviate from the right course, eventually realizing that they could have lived differently. If you do what you love, then there is every chance of becoming a real professional. In this case, a person will always be able to earn money and will not be in poverty. And the wrong choice of profession, under the pressure of social trends, will ultimately only lead to depression or disappointment. You have to work to live, and not vice versa.

Today we looked at such important concepts as awareness and awakening. Without them, you may never find your path in life, ending up working where you would not like, communicating with people you don’t like, or living in someone else’s house. Self-awareness opens up a completely different reality, full of bright colors and joy. Since most people are fast asleep under the power of society, they need to undergo an awakening, due to which their eyes will literally open to the world around them. The next stage will be awareness, which will bring with it a feeling of integrity and harmony, and will help you become yourself.

What mindfulness is is the topic of this article. By understanding the principle of mindfulness and implementing it in life, you can significantly improve your living conditions.

Mindfulness is the key to all doors. This has already been said more than once. In this article I would like to dwell in more detail on the topic of mindfulness.

From the great teachers of the past such as Jesus, Kabir, Nanak, Buddha, Muhammad to modern teachers such as Karl, Renz, Ethart Tolle, Dalai Lama, Osho, they all taught only one thing - mindfulness.

Everyone called mindfulness in their own way, Jesus called it awakening, so he said more than once, stay awake, be alert, but people did not understand him, they thought being awake meant not sleeping in bed, but they did not understand that even if They are not in bed - this does not mean that they are awake. You can sleep on the go.

Etkhart Tolle called awareness - the presence or power of the moment now.

Osho called awareness - witnessing. Whatever you call it, the essence does not change.

AWARENESS is a person’s ability to be here and now, to feel the world more and not think about it, the ability to see the illusions of the mind and not fall into them. Understand that thoughts are just thoughts and the thoughts in your head have nothing to do with real reality.

Mindfulness is the understanding that thoughts are illusory, and they carry only a shadow of the past or future, and the present
the reality is where the human body is, that is, the real reality surrounds the body here and now.

Mindfulness helps you see your inner world

Thanks to awareness, a person begins to get acquainted with his inner world; before this, only the outer world existed for him; now the inner dimension opens up.

A person who becomes aware becomes less and less reactive. It is more difficult to control him, he no longer reacts to the same stimuli in the same way, he has the opportunity to freely choose how to react to a particular stimulus. Such a person becomes more and more spontaneous and unpredictable.

Let’s say that if an unconscious person is shouted at, then, depending on his habit, he can either shout back or, fearing shouts, avoid conflicts. An unconscious person always reacts, for example, to shouts in the same way, but a conscious person can choose to shout to him, that is, go into conflict, or avoid conflict, and this depends on the situation. A conscious person increases the effectiveness of communicating with people and increases resistance to stress.

It is important to understand that there are three main aspects of the inner world to be aware of:

• body;
• soul.

Body Awareness

The very initial stage of awareness begins with the body. At this stage, a person learns to feel his body, be able to direct his consciousness into the body, feel how energy flows in the body. The skill of listening to internal organs and heartbeat appears.

A person begins to care better and , that is, your body. At first, it is difficult for a person to meditate on the body, thoughts are often carried away, a person constantly jumps from awareness to unconsciousness, and often falls asleep during meditation.

Over time, a new level appears when a person realizes that he is not falling asleep, thoughts still come to his head, but do not carry him away, and consciousness remains in the body more and more often and longer. Then the person begins to direct consciousness into the body already on the street, wherever he is. When communicating with people.

The hardest thing, perhaps, is to be aware of your body, move and talk at the same time.

Thought Awareness

Awareness of thoughts or after them, this is, perhaps, the second level of awareness - this is when a person already sees his thoughts and understands that thoughts are just thoughts and they have nothing to do with reality.

A person can even laugh at the thoughts that come into his head, since he has the understanding that he is not a thought and that thoughts often come from outside, and are not always born in his head.

Life is not as serious as the mind makes it out to be!!!

A person who is aware of his thoughts lives by this principle. Such a person does not get lost in his thoughts, does not follow them, this person is already the master of his mind, and does not allow thoughts to lead him into illusions, but consciously directs his attention to the moment now that surrounds his body.

Soul Awareness

Soul awareness is the third level and can be dealt with only after the first two stages of awareness have been completed.

In fact, all three stages of awareness of the three parts of a person - body, mind, and soul are very interconnected and complement each other, and they were separated for better understanding and assimilation of the material.

Awareness of the soul occurs due to the awareness of emotions and feelings, moods; at this stage, a person can clearly distinguish emotions from feelings and be aware of his mood and manage it.

Emotions come after thoughts, no matter what thoughts they are positive or negative.

And feelings come from the soul, not from thoughts. Thoughts can come to mind after feelings, that is, emotions are a consequence of thoughts, and feelings are always their source.

Feelings at a deeper level most often come from the chest. And emotions are felt in the abdominal area, but this should not be taken as truth, each person is different and all this is individual.

It is important to understand that this article about mindfulness is not awareness - it is just a direction towards it, but if you are reading it, then you are closer to awareness or awakening than ever before.

Awareness is directed towards awareness or perception

This is the fourth stage, which already happens to a person on his own, after he has already gone through the three previous stages. At this stage, awareness is directed to perception, the person already asks himself the question, who perceives all this, who am I, at this stage the person remembers Who He Really Is.