The Nature of Awareness

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
- Anais Nin

In the training, teaching, mentoring and coaching circle, I have oftentimes heard people refer to Awareness as something that is essential and paramount to growth and self development. 

Yet, when I do ask individuals what awareness means to them, what I usually get is a rehash of the word itself. "You know, it's being aware", said one coaching client. I don't know about you, but even an apple means different things and draws out different senses and memories to you and me. I experienced that when I tried to described my thoughts and feelings on Jelly fish, and came to the conclusion that no two persons experience the same jelly fish the same way or in the same intensity.

I approached today's post in the same style as the way I tutor kids, and that's by inquiry in a coaching style. Let's broaden our paradigms and experience what comes.

From Wikipedia, "Awareness"  is the state or ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects, or sensory patterns. Taking a step back and just digesting this description, when one is aware, what it seems to mean is that one taps into our human senses, and notice the experience. It is what Gurdjieff means when he talks about self remembering. It is not just sitting and meditating, feeling or thinking. It is realising that what we experience in our inner landscape is separate from the objective reality of others, and that it may be the same or it may not. It is in fact, a state that is separate from what we think is our personality. We are not what we think or feel, we are perhaps more.

What helps in the development of awareness? 

Now, this is what my student taught me about awareness through our really fun session on what was studying techniques. We learnt about what our maps of learning are, and through experiencing the differences... we learnt from it.

Awareness comes as a by product of the following:

1. Looking at Language
In coaching, one important aspect of rapport is to have a good understanding of our client's map of the world. I've found that many people have limited vocabulary in the area of development that they most sorely needed. 

A client who wants control over anger, has next to no words to describe it beside "angry", and my student's vocabulary for anger is just "angry". Asking what really being angry is yields a surprised and baffled  look.

What I discover is that if all we know is angry or sad, we experience, usually, either anger or sadness. We don't look at what the feeling is really telling us, and what the real deal behind the anger is.

Anger is a state of emotion that arises when things different from what we want or expect turns up, and we are angry for vastly different reasons.

I'd like to borrow just two examples from the Enneagram to illustrate what Anger means to different people:

Perfectionists experience anger that is tightly coiled, controlled and it often means that a important standard has been breached, and corrective action needs to be made

Individualists experience anger as a hot expressive force that spins out of control. It signifies that a strong emotional reason behind the anger, something of value is lost, and it cannot ever be recovered again. 

As you can see, when we enrich our vocabulary of what the anger means, we learn much more about ourselves.

2. Experiment
In developing awareness, it helps to be somewhat playful with ourselves. I ran this exercise with my student when she asked why people get angry or sad. We talked about a dog she used to play with many years ago. When we talked about the dog's death, I asked her what she thought of, and when we talked about the best moments with the dog, again what her memories are.

At the end of the session, through her own effort, she learns that what we feel is often related to what we thought about, and if that is the case, we have full control over what we choose to dwell on.

We are sometimes our worst enemies, we believe things that make us unhappy, angry, powerless, defensive, unlikable people, and we use it to describe how the world or others really hurt us, when all we have been doing is using our own energy, and the fury of our fears and emotions to hurt ourselves. 

Being aware doesn't necessarily mean you are happier, it does mean that you have a great more flexibility in your life.

3. Joy
In tuition, all too often, teachers forget that everyone learns better when they are in a positive state. I've found that my student is amazing when she finds the positive energy to work on herself, she recalls past learning better, is more creative, and makes no careless errors. 

So really, what my role is, is to create such an environment for her. 

In being aware, being blissful and happy are also a supportive states. I am not a fan of developmental practices that requires people to seek out their worst memories and rehash them in vivid detail. The past is exactly that, the past, and reliving them is like eating last year's new year goodies, stale and not too tasty. 

If we learn from our negative experiences, which we do even if we don't bring it to the conscious, then we move on. Staying with the past does really nothing for us today, that it has not already done.

So in conclusion, what we can do to create more awareness in our lives, is to simply: 
1. Enrich our use of language   
2. Be experimental 
3. Be a child of bliss

Drop me a line, tell me what you think. What is your path to awareness?

"Only internal bliss is perpetual, nothing else is created to last. 

That's why God lives within us and all storms pass."

- Carl Henegan 

The path of synchronicity - between the ego and the shadow

It used to be that I often marveled at how life seems to happen in a flow, and that unrelated things and events happen that are just right for you. Perhaps it is true that when you love ferraris, somehow you will see bright red ones everywhere. I am a firm believer that when you intend something more often then not, things will happen. However, sometimes what happens is what you need rather then what you prefer.

I started my journey into Coaching also as part of a series of oddly synchronized events. I have been thinking of ways in which I can reach people better and more genuinely, and coaching appeared in the horizon. It was not by any stretch of the imagination a straight forward path. Perhaps I chose not to heed my instincts, perhaps it was fear, and perhaps it simply wasn't time.

I am now entering into the 12 and final session of my coach training, and it seems as if the more I learn, the more there is to learn. It is most curious and very disconcerting. Some people would say that the training enables coaches, provides training to 'do' the real job of coaching, but to me, this was a journey further inwards then I would have expected.

I am again reminded of my trainer Coleen's words, that as coaches we see people as fundamentally whole and complete, and that we ourselves must see ourselves as complete as well. Today as I went through the tele class, my old friend self doubt resurfaced. I am not sure I know enough, or can do enough to be a good coach, and I keep feeling like I've sailed off the cliff on wings of intention alone, and have found them wholly inadequate.

And true to the powers of intention, I opened Dr Allan Hunter's book on the path of sychronicity, where he says right at the introduction
that "a signpost does not have to be made of gold - it just has to point the right direction."

In a sense, I've stepped into a space between the ego and the shadow, where neither sunlight nor rain falls, and where I must be whole to start with, or perceive that I am, or perish. And right there was my insight: everything that I am learnt, it is indeed enough, trust your instinct and the process. Nobody said that it would be easy, only the ego promised a easy path, and the shadow whispered of fear, inadequacies and failure.

In a sense, my coaching journey has been one inwards where I reflect on why I do things, realized that I didnt know my self very well, and upon seeing who I am, I didnt like myself too much. Yet at the end of the day, this very battered signpost can still show the path to bewildered travelers and in doing so, serve its purpose.

Life is immensely wonderful, and I am grateful for all the people I met on the way, some benign, some lovely, and some, belonged right in Dante's journey into the underworld, demons of charm and horror. After all, hell is not just a place we've seen, it's also a frame of mind.

And the choosing of which we take, is not always as clear as we might have hoped.