Becoming conscious
What is consciousness?
Basically put, consciousness is a person’s awareness or perception of something.
The trouble is, so much of our life is lived unconsciously, without awareness. And much of that arises because of our subconscious and our false beliefs which create our reality, which I blogged about previously.
So how do we become increasingly conscious?
We observe our negative thinking, our emotions, our behaviours and our actions. We try to become increasingly aware of ourselves and our patterns.
Our brain is clever in many ways. It wants to make life easy for us and to do as little thinking as possible (I appreciate this may sound a little strange if you are an over-thinker like me). So the brain is in the ideal position to make subconscious decisions based on previous emotions attached to previous experiences.
This autopilot way of behaving, created by repetition, allows us to move through our day without having to relearn processes such as riding a bike or driving a car, and without having to think through the various detail of daily life.
However, since the subconscious mind has no awareness – it cannot think or discern – it can unwittingly hold us captive to unhealthy behaviours.
For example, I had an experience in childhood which made me take on the belief that I was not loveable, due to my believing that I was abandoned by someone I loved. This made me very sensitive to any perceived abandonment or rejection, whether real or not.
This caused certain behaviours which made relating very difficult for me, but I didn’t realise this until much later in life. It caused an inherent neediness and desire to grip onto anyone with whom I was forming a close relationship, whether romantic or otherwise, or do the complete opposite, and run a mile at the faintest whiff of rejection/abandonment. To put it another way, my fear of experiencing the feelings of perceived abandonment, caused me to behave a certain way which wasn’t always healthy.
It wasn’t until I discovered this belief, that I was able to challenge it, and recognise that I was conditioned to behave the way I did (unhealthily), because of my past experience.
I was then able to work with this, so that when the uncomfortable feeling arose, when I felt I was being rejected by those I loved, I was able to become aware of the thought and of the feeling which accompanied it. By cultivating this better awareness, I was able to make better decisions on how to act when faced with what I previously felt was an another rejection and/or abandonment.
I challenged the original belief too. And I began to see how much my life had been shaped by what was actually a false belief. I hadn’t really been abandoned or rejected, but because I believed it to be so, I made it so. Every time friends left my life to live in other countries or settle with partners, I took it very personally and perceived it as an abandonment and rejection, which fitted my story and allowed me to wallow further in my self-pity – here was evidence that I was unlovable.
It was a relief to unearth this root, and do something about it, so that I could let go of the story and start to shift the belief into something more positive, such as “I am entirely lovable just as I am”.
How we perceive an event determines our experience of it. Events are neutral. But we give them labels such as good/bad, beautiful/ugly, toxic/safe, beautiful/ugly, friendly/hateful, light/dark, and are really good at making them into stories, which we reinforce and feed through repetition.
Thus when we get triggered, which means that we have an emotional reaction to something, we can be sure that we have hit up against a limited belief, which makes us feel uncomfortable, because it brings up past memory which still has an emotional attachment to it and no doubt a thinking and movement pattern too.
However recognising this – that we have been triggered - is the moment we can change things. Rather than reacting like we’ve done plenty of times previously – in my case, immediately feeling wounded and closing my heart chakra to minimise pain – we can pause and observe our thoughts and feelings. This is making the unconscious mind conscious – becoming aware.
Only when we notice our thoughts do we have the opportunity to choose how we respond. And this is where meditation, yoga and Reiki are invaluable, as they give us the space to pause, observe and make positive choices, so we come from a place of response, rather than reaction.
For example, if we are made redundant, or in some way lose our job, and because financial security is so important to us in this current society, we could easily spiral into negativity, catastrophising and thinking worst case scenario of being broke, homeless and unemployable, never able to enjoy life again. Inevitably this will lower our vibration and make us feel really crappy about ourself and therefore disempowered and no doubt anxious or depressed too.
However if we are able to catch ourself before our negative thinking mind and emotional dysregulation kicks in, we can instead focus on challenging our belief system (is it true, will we really end up homeless? Are we really unemployable?) and shift our thinking to something more positive instead. We might elevate our awareness to the bigger picture and come to realise that the universe is handing us a gift, an opportunity for positive change.
Thus the perspective might be one of excitement, of potential, of finding a job which aligns more fully with heart and soul and allows new beginnings. This more positive thought will bring with it a more positive emotion, which will increase our vibration and make us feel more positive about the experience, seeing the potential, rather than focusing on perceived negatives because of our fears and limited belief system.
This is called living consciously – of challenging our belief system, of letting go and reprogramming/reconditioning the mind so that we can have more freedom to be who we really are, unencumbered by false and limiting beliefs.
We are not our thoughts, we are not our emotions and we are certainly not our negative and false beliefs. We can be however, the witness of our thoughts and our feelings and become increasingly conscious of our beliefs.
I’ll be honest – it is not a quick process. We have to keep working at it. But with discipline and practice we can shift from the negative to the positive and in the process we will become increasingly aware and conscious.
This is where spiritual life coaching is invaluable. Not only because I channel Reiki to clients, which starts to dislodge stuck emotions and negative thinking patterns, but because it gives clients the space and the material to start to notice where they are sticking themselves, the false beliefs and programming/conditioning which are getting in the way of them thriving and living more of their potential.
To put it another way, in pulling out the weeds, by letting go of whatever is not needed, space is created to plant positive seeds. I work with clients to establish Sankalpas (resolutions or intentions), which can be sown in Yoga Nidras, like positive seeds and we often incorporate affirmations too, to help these positive seeds to grow in a client’s. The increased level of awareness that client’s gain and the shift in consciousness this creates, helps to shift a client’s reality into something far more positive and full of potential.
It is in this way that we create positive change in the world at large. Thus spiritual practice, when viewed form this perspective, not only helps us individually but helps to positively change the collective too.
This is really my motivation for the work that I do. I am increasingly aware that we cannot truly change the external until we have changed the internal. The more people who positively change their internal landscape to one of peace, bliss and happiness, the more we will see this reflected in the external world. Sadly many people are stuck in fear and hatred, and we see this playing out in wars around the world and the suffering this creates.
Thus if we want to experience more peace in the world, it is imperative that it happens within each of us individually, that we stop being at war within ourselves, rejecting the parts of ourselves that we don’t like and instead appreciate that there is no good/bad only different aspects of the whole.
Whether we like it or not, we all have the capacity to kill as much as we have the capacity to love and the sooner we embrace, love, accept and approve of all parts of ourselves the better, especially the bits that others rejected when we were children and caused us to fragment and be at war within ourselves.
It is not just our relationship with ourself that is at stake, but our relationship with those we love too. If we can’t find a way to co-exist, to let bygones be bygones, to accept our differences and learn to respect each other and love harmoniously, then how can we expect to create peace and harmony in the wider world.
Simply put, if we can’t find internal peace, joy and happiness, then we certainly won’t find it externally either. We have to remember that consciousness creates our world
So change your consciousness if you’d like to change your world. Start noticing more of your internal negative landscape and transform it into something more positive. And joyful instead.
How can we do this?
Observe and release - The Ayurvedic technique is to observe and release. For example, when anger appears, be completely aware of it, watch the feeling as it unfolds from beginning to end. From this observation, we can then learn about the nature of anger and then let it go, release it. Ayurveda teaches that all negative emotions can be dealt with in this way – through awareness they can be released without us being attached to them or creating stories around them.
Meditate – watching our thoughts, trying not to deny them or become engaged in them, just observing them so we can understand more about our thinking. I work with a mantra, but watching the breath is a helpful and accessible technique, try 5-10 minutes a day initially.
Triggering – noticing when we are triggered and pausing to observe the thinking and the emotion, challenging it and respond more consciously and indeed positively.
Sankalpa – working with a resolution or intention to plant a seed during regular Yoga Nidra, which will transform your life in a positive direction. Establish it in the present tense as if it had already manifested in life.
Yoga – a regular practice will help enormously to notice unhelpful and stuck movements patterns in the body, so too tension, which will undoubtably have a stuck emotion and limited thinking pattern/belief attached to it. Yoga is healing, helping us to let go and expand consciously into greater lightness as a result – realising more of our potential in the process. I am biased but the Scaraveli-inspired approach works wonders in this regard as it challenges our movement patterns and helps to release deep seated tension.
Reiki – helps enormously for all the same reasons as yoga, but is quicker in its ability to help us raise our vibration and create positive transformation.
Spiritual Life Coaching - this is invaluable for those wishing to make positive change in their life, as they receive the support of me – I work best with those who are prepared to take responsibility for their own transformation and are happy being challenged, when they hit up against their denial.
I have learned a lot since I discovered yoga and Reiki in 2003 (Ayurveda followed in 2006) and am very aware that we have more potential than we realise, and that we have a habit of limiting ourselves. I love that spiritual practice breaks us free from our limiting conditioning, so that we may experience greater potential in our lives.
I feel deeply honoured to witness my clients and students start to love and approve of themselves again as they do this deep healing work to set themselves free of whatever gets in the way of them honouring their hearts and soul and living a life of conscious choice, aliveness, love and freedom - their lives positively change beyond their wildest imaginings.
I am grateful to every single person who has showed up and taken responsibility and done the inner work to literally be the change they would like to see in the world. This notion, encouraged by Gandhi has deeply inspired my approach to life, so too using death as our advisor - if you were going to die tomorrow what would you do differently today?
But ultimately, it is around consciousness. As Pranay writes in his book entitled Vedas & Upanishads, “The Vedas and Upanishads are ultimately about enlightenment of consciousness. This must begin with the individual. Where individual consciousness has become luminous, you can be sure that it’s able to make that luminosity shine within society as well”.
If you need help deciding what might work best for you, then do get in touch – emma@beinspiredby.co.uk.
