Awareness

Awareness: Key Points 

"The truth shall set you free."  

Keys to Awareness 

  • Feel that your own well-being and functioning matters. Get on your own side; be for yourself.   Question: How many people does it take to change a light bulb?  

 Answer: Only one. But the light bulb has to want to change.  

  • Cultivate wanting to be in reality, to know the facts of the inner and outer worlds. Know and  trust that your greatest safety and hope is in seeing what's true, no matter what it is. Whenever you  move into awareness/observation mode, you instantly distance yourself from things (inside or  outside yourself) that are painful, and center yourself in a place that is inherently calmer and wiser  than just reacting. And the only way you can intervene in your experience or your environment in order to make things better is by knowing what the facts are and what has caused them to be.  • Bring compassion and kindness to yourself and to whatever your awareness finds. Hold your  innermost feelings and longings with the sensitivity and concern you should have received as a child.  

"Bare Witnessing" 

  • Be a neutral watcher of your experience and the outer world, an "observing ego." "No praise, no  blame." "Just the facts, ma’am." “Don’t know mind.”  
  • Your observing awareness is separate from experience and world. You have thoughts, etc., but  you are not the thoughts, etc., themselves. Know your experience without identifying with it. You are  being with your experience, but not caught or hijacked by feelings, wants, etc. Watch the movie  without jumping into the screen.  
  • We all repeatedly get sucked into our experience and lose the peaceful detachment of observing  it. Don't worry, don't scold yourself, just return to an awareness of whatever's arising.  

Awareness Is Never Tainted or Harmed 

  • Awareness is like a screen on which experience and the outer world register, "like a pond on  which shadows are cast by geese flying overhead," but it is never sullied or changed by the passing  show. No experience can hurt consciousness itself, the essence of who you are.  • Allow whatever is there in awareness to be present, without resistance. Sincerely and resolutely  push through any reluctance to seeing the truth, both good news about yourself (often the hardest to  let in!) and the world, and painful or dark things. Accept the way it is. Receive it, don't fight it.  

Active Inquiry 

  • Actively peer into yourself, like a scientist. Inquire, turn over stones, look ever more deeply. The  textures of experience and the landscapes of personality are endlessly interesting.  • Track both the breadth and depth of your experience. "Breadth" means the full spectrum of:  thoughts, feelings, sensations, wants, images, memories. "Depth" means looking down into the  layered mosaic of the self, which includes (A) structure (e.g., traits, sub-personalities, fundamental  values), (B) softer, more vulnerable material beneath rigid positions and anger, and (C) material from  childhood beneath here-and-now adult reactions.  
  • Look for recurring patterns, "psychodynamics," what leads to what.  
  • Develop a model of yourself, a growing picture. Be guided by knowing “the usual suspects.” 

Essential Inner Skills 2  Awareness © Rick Hanson, Ph.D., 2005   

Awareness and Attention 

  • Awareness is about attention: a spotlight illuminating objects.  
  • Attention is knowing: “Breathing in, know that you are breathing in.”  
  • Concentration is a tight "beam" of attention on something, like the breath or a specific emotion.  Mindfulness is a more diffuse, free-floating attentiveness to the whole of your experience. Getting  better at both through informal and formal practice is the foundation of skillful awareness.  

Concentration 

  • Concentration has two central factors: applying attention to an object and sustaining it there,  like an ice skater plants her foot (applying) and then glides along (sustaining).  • When you practice formal concentration, keep returning attention to the object (e.g., breath,  sensation, emotion, memory of your mother), fully aware of it, absorbed in it. If other thoughts,  concerns, plans, etc. bubble up, let them arise but don't follow them, and keep giving your full  attention to the object.  
  • When doing concentration, don't be tense or hard on yourself, but serious and intent, like a cat  watching at a mousehole. Set a bit of your attention to watching how well you are staying  concentrated, like a guardian, and to alert you to bringing your attention back if it starts to wander.  • Let each moment with the object be fresh. For example, notice the qualities of each breath.  • To help yourself be concentrated, especially in the beginning of practicing, you can experiment  with counting breaths (up or down from ten; if you forget where you are, just start over) or with a  soft mental note naming the object (e.g., "rising" [belly with the breath], "sadness," "planning")  • Useful objects of concentration: sensations of the breath around the nostrils or heart or belly; the  feeling tone of positive/neutral/negative of each experience; good intentions, lovingkindness toward  yourself or others (e.g., "May my body be at ease." "May I feel safe." "May I have happiness and the  causes of happiness." "May my father be at peace." "May my daughter be healthy."  • When doing concentration meditations, you may experience feelings of bliss, happiness, and  one-pointedness; without striving, you can invite these feelings to arise and see what happens.  

Mindfulness 

  • Anchored by background attention to a benign object – often the breath – mindfulness is a  spacious, inclusive awareness of whatever is arising. Since that keeps changing, the trick of  mindfulness is to stay aware of each part of the passing parade without getting sucked in.  • Experiment with dividing your awareness between the breath (or perhaps an image or a  mantra) and the flow of experience.  
  • You could explore the four classic objects of mindfulness: (A) the body in all its sensations  (notably, the breath), (B) the feeling tone of experience, (C) all the other psychological phenomena of  thoughts, feelings, desires, etc., and (D) consciousness itself (so that you are aware of awareness).  • And you can explore mindfulness while sitting quietly, walking, talking, or doing other actions.  

See the Nature of Experience 

  • Focused awareness lets you see into the fundamental nature of all experiences: Constantly  changing; the result of endless prior causes; cascading along without need for an "I," a self; never  affecting awareness itself -- accepting these facts brings great wisdom and peace of mind. 

Essential Inner Skills 3  Awareness © Rick Hanson, Ph.D., 2005   

  • Notice that when we resist our experience . . . or scold ourselves for having it . . . or cling to  some part of it . . . or fill it with self . . . . or think it will last . . . ----- then we feel bad and suffer.  

 Know Your Innate Goodness 

  • See the facts of your good qualities, like any other objectively true thing.  • Be aware of any resistance to that knowing. Let it flow and go.  
  • Reflect on your: Good intentions. Kindness toward others. Good character qualities.  • Sense your own essential being: conscious, interested, benign: a peaceful happy abiding.

Self-Awareness for Kids and Grownups 

Sometimes I'm with my kids (or driving in traffic or talking to my husband or . . . ) and  suddenly I'll start feeling angry or frustrated or sad -- and I don't understand where that  came from. Other times, our preschooler will just start lashing out but he can't say what's  bothering him. Any ideas?  

Great question! You're talking about self-awareness, which is one of the five  essential inner skills (the others are letting go of painful experiences, insight into  oneself, taking in positive experiences, and choosing well).  

Although these inner skills get much less attention than the outer ones - like  long division, writing business letters, or driving a fork lift - they make a much  bigger difference in a person's lifetime happiness, income, and contribution to  others. So it pays to help children get good at them . . . and to get good at them  ourselves. This is a profoundly important idea for every family.  

For example, a toddler who can notice early on that she's getting frustrated  and go to her mom for comfort is going to be happier (and easier to raise) than  one who builds up tension and anger to the point that it explodes and  overwhelms her. Similarly, a parent who can sense the softer feelings of being let  down beneath the surface of anger is going to be a lot more effective in  communicating with his or her partner.  

Everybody's self-aware, to some degree -- and here are some ways to get  even better at it  

For Children 

  • Adjusting your feedback to the age of the child, mirror back what he or she  is experiencing. For example, you could say "Wheee!" exuberantly in tune with an  infant breaking into a smile. Or you might sigh in quiet sympathy with a teenage  

daughter who's frustrated with one of her friends. Children come to see  themselves in large part through being mirrored by their parents.  • Accept your child's experience as it is; that will help him accept it, too,  which is necessary for complete self-awareness. Separate what a child is feeling  inside, which is always alright, from how he behaves, which can be good or bad.  • Accept that children are usually more aware of themselves than they can  put into words; their verbal abilities lag behind their self-knowledge.  • In appropriate ways, describe your own experience to your child, like "Well,  mommy feels both sad at missing you while you are in childcare but also happy 

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at being able to help make money for the family." Get across the idea that feeling  two ways at once is normal and OK.  

  • Take a moment at meals to be aware of oneself and the food - perhaps  combined with a religious blessing - before diving in.  
  • When something is bothering a child, try to get him to describe his  experience in age-appropriate detail. Focus on her experience, not the  circumstances and what she ought to do. Just that alone often helps a child feel  better.  

For Grownups

The inner world has its own reality, and you can become a very skillful observer  of it as well:  

  • Take a minute or two at least once a day to check in with yourself and assess  the full spectrum of your experience, including your body sensations, emotions,  thought, desires, and images.  
  • Whenever you feel at all upset, do a quick check through the full spectrum  of experience described just above.  
  • Do an honest self-assessment about the aspects of your inner world that you  tend to ignore, suppress, deny, disown, or push to the sidelines. People who  know you well can help with this. Remember that resisting your experience just  makes it persist. The fastest way to help it move on is to open the door wide to it;  otherwise, it keeps on knocking!  
  • Cultivate a daily practice in SOMETHING that centers you in an inner  sanctuary of peaceful, interested, kind awareness. Meditation, yoga, or prayer are  the preeminent methods for this, but you could also get a lot out of very  consciously cooking, gardening, walking, playing music, or making art or crafts.  Then, from time to time during the day, take a moment to re-center yourself in  this inner sanctuary of simply being.  
  • Imagine that your experience is a kind of layered parfait, with adult levels  on top and younger parts underneath, reaching all the way back to earliest  childhood.  

Notice your attitudes toward your younger parts; these are often an  internalization of your parents' messages. Do you accept those younger parts or  push them away? Do you bring kindness to them or meanness? Experiment with  being especially kind to them, and see what that's like.  

Whenever you're upset, try to sense into the younger layers beneath the  surface of frustration, loss, or anger. Your awareness of them will help them flow  . . . and move on.  

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Like any other skill, you get better at the inner ones with practice. Each day has  many opportunities to help yourself or your child develop greater self-awareness.  Enjoy!