Answer these questions and then answer them again and again. These simple questions (and others like them) can take us into territory most of us have long avoided. These offensively simple questions challenge us to make use of an innate ability that we have been taught to ignore, discount, or to at least minimize: our ability to experience simple awareness.

Avoiding Awareness

Awareness is under rated, and often misused. It is under rated not just within our dysfunctional family systems, but throughout our entire western culture. We are programmed to take any piece of new awareness and move instantly to take some action. This kind of impulsive movement frequently removes us from any awareness we are beginning to experience, and results in more of a medicating or distracting behaviour. We actually move into this action to avoid the awareness, rather than moving to action as a natural outgrowth of our expanding awareness. More times than not in our culture these two words are good advice: SLOW DOWN.

Mis-using Awareness

SLOW DOWN. Be aware of the world around you and the world within you. Be aware of your own tendency to interpret your environment in self-critical ways. Be aware of your tendency to convert what is happening within and around you into self-indictment, into implicit and explicit messages about how you should do, feel and be different. Many of us expertly accomplish this even with self-help material, ie. "I should be kinder to myself. What a total jerk I am to criticize myself all the time." This excessive and/or consistent self-criticism is a mis-use of awareness. Awareness misused in this way is highly biased (against us), and results in an inwardly focused aggression that has nothing to do with healthy self-confrontation or mature accountability. We must face the possibility that awareness alone is sometimes the most powerful healing agent. When we can let go of the compulsion to "do something . . . do anything!" and instead use this compulsion as a signal to slow down and take stock of what is going on within and around us, and when we can accomplish this without buying into blaming and shaming thoughts, we take a giant step toward becoming the self-responsible, self-compassionate adults that we want to be.

Through the Fear.....Into the Action

The medicating and distracting behaviours (and this includes obsessive thinking) that remove us from necessary awareness are fueled by fear. The fear behind much of our resistance to remaining with our awareness is that awareness will lead us to hopelessness, to giving up, staying stuck, even agreeing that nothing can change. Awareness is not a way of agreeing to remain stuck. It is an essential step toward quality change and growth. If I want to get to Future City from where I sit right now -- which is Present City -- I not only need to know where Future City is on the map, I had better know where Present City is. Knowing exactly where I am right now will make all the difference in my travels. Criticizing myself for being in Present City when I want to be in Future City will be of no use. Avoiding the knowledge of where I am certainly won't help. Please do not misunderstand me to say that taking action does not have its place in our lives, because it certainly does. Taking action is an essential tool for any of us learning to move out of our victim ways. My point here is simply that our abilities to use awareness are atrophied, and need exercise -- rehabilitation. Action naturally growing out of sharp, accurate awareness is more powerful than any impulsive, compulsive or desperate action can ever be. And the secret, of course, is to SLOW DOWN.

Commitment

Canadian Quotes of The Day ... and more [on the lighter side]

Edition No.48
Insight EFAP International