Is a tree made of wood, or is a tree wood? It’s obvious: the tree is wood.
Now: Do you have awareness, or are you awareness (in and of itself)?
What is life if not awareness? If your awareness suddenly ceased, you would not be alive. You couldn’t interact with anything, including your own sense of Self, for awareness must exist for either to occur.
So, if you are awareness – if that is the base of existence – how much can you become aware of?
Psychology/Science says we have two separate minds – conscious and subconscious. But these designations are simply arbitrary; there is no delineation as to where one ends and the other begins. What happens when we look at these portions of self through the lens of awareness? We come to realize it isn’t “conscious” or “subconscious” at all, but rather, where is focus placed in order to grab our awareness?
This begs the question, can we become more aware of subconscious processes? I think the answer is a resounding YES. One thing we’ve learned over the decades is that the more you pay attention to something, the more you become aware of it.
Where do you place your focus? Where do you (like money) pay attention?
Of course, the physical organism can become incredibly distracting, in terms of directing the focus of awareness. The physical organism, with its nerve structure, eyes, etc., really works to place a very specific kind of focused attention with one’s awareness into the physical world. But this need not be the only “place/location” where awareness can focus.
As a medium, you can naturally hear me say your focus can move toward the spirit world. True. But it can also move to other areas – perhaps places currently unknown, since awareness has not been fully explored. For some, remote viewing is another aspect of focused awareness, where one can “see” or “intuit” a location far from the body. A great deal of research has been done on this topic. There is also medical intuition.
Basically, where you see the word “intuition” used, you could theoretically change it to mean where one’s awareness has shifted “off” the physical environment, off the physical self, off the ego identity, and focused somewhere else. “Intuition,” in a general sense, refers to awareness not perceived or obtained through the usual physical senses provided by the body. Once we shift focus away from the physical nerve structure, the potential locations of where else to focus awareness could be endless. All one need do is have the courage enough to explore through an act of “detaching” where the physical body impresses to direct the lens of your awareness. If what we are – fundamentally – is awareness, then it is imperative to explore the boundaries of such awareness – what can we learn? What are we missing by only remaining focused in one or two general areas, while the keeping the rest “blurred” or “darkened”?
The changing of awareness is not so mysterious as it may seem, as everyone does it nightly when we go to sleep. Our focus “lets go” of the physical world – we literally stop caring about it on a certain level – and shift to a different point of focus. For some, they move easily from daily life to a dream world. For others, they still believe they are quite focused and aware of the physical environment around them until their spouse or significant other ribs them and says “you’re snoring,” to which they reply, “No, I’ve been awake this whole time.” Well, technically, yes, one’s awareness has been awake, just focused off the physical reality of the body to such an extent an awareness of breathing and snoring has been completely “blurred” and taken “out of focus” so that it doesn’t exist.
What other realities are “blurred” or “out of focus” to the level our awareness does not perceive them? Snoring is just an example. Again, there could be many.
A tree is wood. You are awareness. What is the fullness of the tree: roots, branches, leaves, flowers – more than just the wood itself. What is the potential fullness of your awareness? More than the physical world you currently give your attention to. Pay your attention (like money) elsewhere, and you will not only expand your awareness, but also gain knowledge through these different pathways. You cannot know the extent of your awareness by only focusing it in one direction, when so many different directions are open and available.
The only caveat to this is superstitious ideas given to the notion of non-physical realities. Like Columbus dealing with notions of “falling off the edge of the earth,” there are ideas out there that would like to frighten people and keep them from engaging their awareness to look outside the “preferred channel.” The fact of the matter is, you are awareness, and no one has the authority to box your awareness in, or to keep you from looking out – and dare I say, you have such awareness for a definite reason and purpose. I posit, keeping it locked up is not the intention. And I would challenge: since these superstitious ideas have kept so many people from exploring for so long, how would anyone in today’s world know if the notions are valid or remotely true? No one. All it takes is one person willing to risk traversing such ideas to prove them wrong (as Columbus did) – and potentially uncover something truly remarkable we have been kept blind to, because of such short-sightedness (a literal stunting of awareness).
Awareness is a gift. The ability to perceive, and thus learn and grow. The fullness of that gift is not known – nay, cannot be known – so long as it is confined to a single focused location.