Awareness!
Awareness is the most valuable tool that we have. It is something that is always accessible to us. It is the key to spirituality, success, and progress.
Awareness is the ability to directly know and perceive, to feel, or to be cognizant of events. More broadly, it is the state or quality of being conscious of something. Wikipedia
Normally most of us are walking around very unaware, detached from reality, and ignorant. We become very caught up in our thoughts, our story, our desires, and our dreams of the past and the future. We spend a lot of time worrying about things that are wrong in our lives, or things that can go wrong, and planning for ways we can improve our situations, or secure our happiness somehow in the future. Living like this causes us to suffer greatly, we are never fully experiencing or appreciating anything. We are too occupied judging it all. When we become aware, truly AWARE, we live in such a deeper richer dimension of life. This true awareness, or direct perception of reality can be very challenging because we have made such a habit of obsessively thinking. We may feel unproductive, like we are missing out on something when we try and quiet the mind. This is the farthest thing from the Truth.
Naturally, when we step into the light of awareness a new dimension of existence is available to us. We can finally see the beauty in the simple, and the complex nature of all that is. Challenge yourself to simply just perceive the world around you. As long as we are labeling everything, putting it into categories, telling ourselves we like this, and dislike that, we are taking away from the rich reality that we have always lived in. Think back to when you were a child, didn't things seem more magical? We were able to find joy in simply going outside and playing in the grass, dancing, being around our friends, using our imagination to create adventures. As time goes on we gather more and more ideas about how life is, and isn't. We are taught of good and evil, right and wrong, and that we must look out for our self. We become more involved in the idea of becoming someone, and all the pressures of life get to us.
The real change that brings on all this suffering from childhood to adulthood is our beliefs, our ideas and our judgments. It is additions to the mind that cause us emotional pain. Naturally, as it is, the mind is at peace, we are aligned with the harmony of existence. The purpose of meditation is to slow down our racing mind and bring us back to this peace. Peace and happiness are our natural state, the world is very intricate and beautiful, and it takes awareness to see this. Even these concepts of happiness, goodness, and positivity fade away in the light of awareness. No thought in our mind could ever really describe reality. It just is. As we become more aware, we can realize that We are inseparable from this reality, that.. our awareness actually gives life to reality and that all is interconnected. The only thing that separates reality apart is our words, our thoughts, and our beliefs about it.
Thinking is an important tool that we need to function in the world, and can help us greatly once we understand that's all it is, a tool. We become slaves to our thinking, entangled in the idea of our selves and our stories. But, if we detach from our ideas, especially the idea of self, then it no longer has a pull on us. We Let Go. Life is a very beautiful thing, and Nature is in perfect harmony.
