Awareness is often a difficult thing to quantify and define, as it encompasses many aspects of our world.
One can speak of awareness in terms of a personal level, as increased awareness will shed light on how our thoughts, beliefs, and actions affect our perception of the world. Awareness can also refer to our understanding of the interconnectedness of our world.
Whether it's the way in which our consumer products our made, how our economy is structured, or how our participation in various systems play a role in our world, awareness can mean having our eyes open to the way our world functions.
Awareness can also reflect our deeper understanding of the universe. Discovering the relationships between our life on Earth and the rest of cosmos can impact our spirituality and holistic experience of the world.
On a baseline level, awareness is the observer
If I were to encapsulate my understanding of awareness into a succinct, simple definition, I would define awareness as the observer state of being. It is easy to become misguided by our minds, as our thoughts are often deceptive traps that take us away from our true nature.
Old mental scripts placed there by parents, teachers, and outside sources can infect our view of the world, restricting our ability to experience life beyond the mental prism we filter reality through. Awareness allows us to take a step back, to breathe, to become rooted in our body and not our minds.
Sensory perception is a major component of awareness in this way. If you've ever meditated or been trained in some form of mindfulness, the senses are an important tool to utilize in the path to honing our awareness. Sight, sound, taste, touch, and scent can all play a valuable role in this process.
Awareness is empowerment
Without awareness, we are asleep, robotic creatures at the mercy of our programming. Individuals who do not seek to increase their personal awareness are doomed to fall prey to the forces working within them.
On the road to recovery, awareness is the first critical step. Without being aware that something is wrong, we are never going to seek an alternative or attempt to remedy the situation.
Awareness gives us perspective and a way to take a step back from ourselves to reexamine our predicament. Often, we get trapped into living our lives without any relief from the experience itself. A sense of personal claustrophobia can seep in, making us feel like we have no space to breathe, no respite from our endless personal story of ourselves.
By increasing our awareness, we increase the number of ways in which to view our life and the world around us.
We no longer have to become a victim of our circumstance. Instead, we can choose to see our predicament as a gift, or a test to strengthen our resolve. By stepping outside of our persistent thought stream, we open the possibility of achieving a different outcome.
In that way, perhaps the most powerful component of awareness is the fact that it can increase our choices. It can provide us with enough space to consciously make a different decision. Relieved from our mental prison, the possibilities open up in ways we couldn't have imagined.
Awareness is a gift, a tool for higher understanding, and perhaps the most foundational element to evolving ourselves and our world.
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