The power of Self awareness practices

“We see things as we are, we don’t see things as they are”

The way in which I see the world is different from yours, hers and his. Yes, perceptions of people are different. No two people perceive an event in the same way. All of us see and perceive the same event differently and accordingly the manifestation of their realities. This is called paradigm. Paradigm represents our views of the world, our interpretation of what we observe in the world. What we see is based on our own perception and may not be the true reflection of the reality.

For example, let us imagine a scenario where you and I were walking in a park. Because of our difference in our perceptions, what you saw and what I saw were completely different even though the ambiance was the same. Even as you go through this particular blog, the way how you perceived this blog, the way how another person reading this blog and the way how I perceived when this blog was written were all completely different. Each of our perceptions was true and real in its own way but it was just a part of the bigger reality. The true reality of the event can be seen only with pure awareness. In fact, this is the purpose of practices such as meditation. Later, I will explain this idea in a separate blog.

Perception is nothing but assigning a meaning to an event by our mental interpretation with our sensations.

Perception = Sensation + Mental Interpretation.

Self awareness exercises comprise of practices like Yoga Asana, meditation, mindfulness practices, etc. Any such self awareness practice has the ability to change the perception. Our perception becomes deeper and increases with this practice. Say for example, when we practice asana, it is natural that our perception on bodily sensation moves from gross, solid sensation to subtler finer sensation. It moves from layer to layer to the deeper levels. In other words, we start to feel the sensation more vividly in high resolution which can be called as expansion of awareness. So, two things will happen with the self awareness practice.

1. Deepness of perception

2. Expansion of awareness. 

With regular practice, this expansion of awareness grows wider and larger. Gradually, it moves towards that pure awareness state which by definition is infinite.

Yes, our awareness field is infinite in size. I can explain this fact with a simple exercise now. Right now, you are reading this blog and awareness is centered in the process of reading these texts. Now, if I ask you a question, “what is the sensation that you experience in your left leg big toe?” Now, your awareness jumps and directed to feeling the sensation of your big toe. Now, if I ask you to listen to the sounds around you then your awareness shifts in observing the sounds around you. So, your awareness is like a spot light moving from one source to another. The sounds around you and the sensation on your big toe were there previously also but they were not in your awareness. So, in a way, one can expand his field awareness to infinite level and can experience all the time the dynamically happening events around him. Since, our awareness is as limited as a spot light, we experience only few events.

Perception is based on our past experiences and our belief system. Our belief system is shaped by our experiences and the way how we were programmed since our childhood. With self awareness practice, one can experience a deeper level of perception. This means, to say that one can perceive in a different way and in fact, that is his conscious choice. According to me, this is such a profound and powerful realization. Many of us don’t even know that we can perceive in a different way and adding to this that we can change our own belief system. In such a case, we not only operate on our own defined belief system but with the same spot light (the same level of awareness) and hence we experience life in the same way. So, naturally over a period of time, we experience a monotonous pattern of life.

Once, we become aware of the above explained mechanisms i.e , our perception and our reality , different perceptions of different people and their realities and our own conscious choice of changing our perception then we are simply empowered with a powerful tool called paradigm shift that contributes to the following.

1.       With the practice, the level of perception changes and hence we perceive differently. We start to experience change in ourselves and our belief system.

2.       With the deeper level of perception, we start to understand other people’s points of view in much better way and we value those as significantly as ours.

3.       Our internal mental state changes with the change in our belief system. External event is just a trigger. We make an interpretation and assign meaning to an event based on our own internal mental state. So, whatever the reality manifested externally is just our own internal representation, a mirror image of our internal state of mind.

We can change our external world by just changing our internal mental state.  Once we experience this concept experientially by means of the practice then we naturally stop blaming the external factors like less resources, no time, no finance, blaming other people, etc when we have a bad experience. Instead, we start working on correcting our internal state.

4.       Emotional Wellness: With regular practice, we gain a deeper level of perception and hence we start to watch things in higher resolution. This gives us the ability to watch even our own emotions more vividly as it unfolds in real time. This gives us the ability to balance our emotion. An untrained person has poor sensitivity and not trained enough to balance his emotion.

I promise you that when one programs his mind to this kind of awareness by regular practice , it becomes such a powerful asset to lead a well balanced life. So, GO FOR IT if you want to change your belief system, balance your emotion and create a beautiful world for you and yes, it is your conscious choice.