Lesson 8: Awareness Changes Everything
This week changes to the theme of “Inviting Awareness”. We are invited to simply reflect on the words “Awareness changes everything”. It’s a simple statement, yet holds so much power and truth to it. If you’d met me over 2 years ago, I was definitely an oblivious drone to my surroundings, environment, self, the world …. The list really goes on and on. I was very much a person who needed to buy everything and anything to make me happy, I wanted to impress people I didn’t care about, had no environmental impact awareness, didn’t recognise my own shortcomings and had a massive lack of action in my life.
There were 2 instances in which I came to be self aware. It wasn’t until I interacted with a work mate that talked about how self-aware he was and also reading a book “Conversations with God” by Neale Donald Walsch, that I really came to know the concept of self-awareness. Both instances opened me up to self-reflection. Interesting concept when you've never been exposed to the very idea of it. My work mate showed me that anyone can become self aware if you're willing to try really. It's about looking at your characteristics and personality which allows you to understand yourself better. You start to recognise your bad & good habits, thoughts, emotions, reactions, strengths and weaknesses. It's about embracing you, faults aand all as well as working towards helping change parts of yourself that you may feel you need to alter. Its about having the power of you, that drives your openness but also helps you to understand others. When you're in control of your thoughts and actions, you know what will help you towards living a better life for you, reducing destructive behaviour.
Although the book was based on a man of Christian faith, the whole message was about connecting with your self. That all the answers you hold is within you - that you already know. It talked about the power within and you can achieve anything by really digging deep within you, visualising who you want to be and working towards being that person. Neale wrote that book when he was at the lowest of lows. He questioned God and got answers by writing the answers down. When I read the book, it seemed like automatic writing and didn't see it as God but some higher power that exists within us - whether that be the universe or your own higher consciousness. The book did go over recognising what needs to change within you and your habits in order to be the person you want to be. Recognise what needs work, embrace it but also work towards a positive solution.
I've been self aware for a couple of years now and it's been helpful to getting me out of situations that have brought me down. It's telling yourself that you can do it. I know that with some life experiences I've been made aware of more issues that are global than just my immediate environment. I feel like the media is one big farce. We seem to be saturated with celebrity news that shouldn't really impact our lives also. The media has the power to control what we see but we aren't exposed to the issues that really matter. More and more I learn the of the Earth really suffering but we're not really doing enough to save it. We are driven so much by consumerism and it's actually destroying the world at the same time. We take things for granted without really knowing. Global warming will have serious impacts, our food chains will suffer, people are forced out of their homes due to rising sea levels, there are plastic islands polluting the oceans that in turn poison our sea life, we popluating the earth at rapid levels that will cause strain on resources, we produce more food to feed the animals people consume rather than feeding starving humans, and our animals are slowly becoming extinct which impacts our food chain. These are just topics that gains some light on the subject but not enough - even I was a overly potent consumer, never knew my environmental impact and changed my ways because of a series of occurences exposed me to wanting to do more for the planet. I had no awareness of these topics but not anymore. I just wish more there was more awareness by our very own news channels.
So that's about where I'm at with my awareness at the moment and I know there is so much more to be done. Without my awareness, I wouldn't be able to drive the change in my life.
