5 - Identity Awareness

As you become more aware of your beliefs, you will see how important they are to you. Even minor beliefs can be important when we are faced with conflicting information or other beliefs. At these times it comes to our attention that we disagree and we feel the need to express our opinion. Expressing our opinions is one way we present who we are to others. We consider our beliefs to be an aspect of our identity and we express that aspect to others with opinions. Some people feel the need to express their opinion at every chance they get and others may be too timid to express theirs but they still have those opinions going on inside their mind when faced with differing beliefs or contradicting information. Our beliefs are so important to us and so tightly held and rigid because we consider them a major aspect of our identity.

We identify with our beliefs. The act of believing is attaching an idea, thought or concept to our identity by making it a part of what we personally believe to be true or correct. The belief becomes a belief about ourselves. It defines us by what we believe we personally think is true or correct. Beliefs are a major portion of our perceived identity.

Not only are beliefs themselves a part of our identity, but then we use them to identify with other things to define us. These are all beliefs about ourselves. We don’t just identify ourselves by our body and mind, we identify with 100’s or even 1000's of other things. These are what I call identifiers. Our likes and dislikes are major identifiers of ourselves and very often take the form of opinions, judgments and beliefs. Our roles in life are major identifiers. Our possessions and wealth are often identifiers. Personal interests can be identifiers. Political and religious beliefs are frequently major identifiers. Our past is a very big part of our perceived identity as well. All of these identifications are in reality only beliefs of things that we consider to be aspects of ourselves. We have attached these things to our identity with belief. We have defined our identity with beliefs. Our identity is comprised of beliefs.

Our story and the life we have lived defines us in so many ways. We consider our memories a significant aspect of our identity. All of the identifiers from the past are in our memories and we hold on to them by believing they still define us. Our accomplishments, experiences, mistakes, behavior, circumstances, failures, etc. have been used by us to form our identity and our attachment to the past is a belief of who we perceive ourselves to be. Clearly if we had had an entirely different past then we would have an entirely different identity. There are many cultural and societal influences that have conditioned our identity into what we perceive it to be. If we had grown up and lived our lives in another country with an entirely different culture we would have an entirely different identity. That means that our identity is something that is formed and not predetermined. There are endless other possibilities for our identity. The fact that there are different possibilities means that our identity isn’t locked in stone and can change.

If our identity can change then what is it that changes if it does change? Does our mind change? No, just our beliefs in our mind and the perception of ourselves formed by our beliefs. Any aspect of ourselves that we would like to change can change by not believing it is a part of our identity. If we can effectively remove old beliefs, we can be anything we want when it comes to our behavior, thoughts or beliefs. We can change our perception of ourselves and remove limiting negative aspects of ourselves because the only thing that maintains them is our belief in them. This means that all identity is, with the exception of your mind and body, is a compilation of beliefs. Even the belief in the mind and body is an identifier and isn’t necessary. Identifying is a belief system that limits us to our beliefs about ourselves and also limits our awareness.

By becoming aware of our beliefs about our identity enables us to free ourselves from the limiting aspects of many of those beliefs. Freeing ourselves from those beliefs opens us up to countless possibilities of success, happiness and freedom. It enables us to be free of the negative effects of those beliefs and the emotional suffering, anxiety, fear and distress caused by those beliefs. It enables us to remove or change those beliefs that block happiness, contentment and fulfillment which are naturally occurring conditions if they aren’t blocked or overrun by beliefs. By removing certain beliefs about our identity can remove obstacles to achieving goals and success. It can change our entire perception of ourselves and life in general. By becoming aware of our limiting beliefs about ourselves can dramatically change our life and our perception of ourselves by simply removing those beliefs or honestly and sincerely believing something else.

What I’m sharing with you is experiential and not conceptual. My entire life changed immediately almost over night by changing one single belief I had about myself. I had the belief that I couldn’t be happy in the situation I was in. I had been chronically unhappy and depressed for decades. I finally realized I could be happy in just about any situation because happiness comes from within you. The awareness of that made me remove the belief that I couldn’t be happy and to believe I can be happy in my situation. I not only believed it, I instinctually and intuitively knew it. Now I can clearly see that single belief was blocking my happiness.  All I had to do was remove that one belief from my psyche and my life had changed. It was that simple with hardly no effort what so ever. Along with that change in one belief I had to let go of other beliefs as well, but that was easy as well because I was aware they were no longer true and so they ceased to be beliefs. I simply no longer believed in them and they vanished.

The power of letting go of a single belief that had had such a negative impact on my life has made me aware of the incredible power of beliefs and how they can block our awareness and limit us within the confines of the boundaries of a belief. Just that one simple change led to awareness of so much more about beliefs and how they affect our well being. It also brought about a great deal of awareness and understanding of the nature of happiness that I will write about later. 

Beliefs have unbelievable power even though they are always something that we don't know. We just believe we know. That belief in knowing shapes our perception of reality and is self fulfilling. That perception conforms life to the beliefs in our mind. It is so powerful that perfectly otherwise reasonable people that function well in society can actually believe the Earth is flat. The power of belief can make people believe in what is by all facts, information, evidence and data to be absolutely unbelievable.

4 - Exponential Expansion

Every thought, idea, conclusion, assumption, decision, assumption, judgment or opinion that you think is correct or true but isn't a known fact is a belief. Belief turns the unknown into perceived knowledge. But belief is not knowledge. It is the false presumption of knowledge. Beliefs are ideas that we believe we actually know what we don't actually know. That is the simple nature of belief.

Even what you know can be can be accompanied by numerous beliefs. You can have beliefs about facts and which facts are relevant or significant or even if they are true or not. You may think your beliefs are based on facts and evidence but the mind does a little trick called confirmation bias that makes you notice what supports your perspective or other beliefs and ignore what doesn't. We also suffer from cognitive dissonance that makes us uneasy when we are presented information that isn't consistent with our beliefs. Cognitive dissonance gives us a negative feeling when we are faced with contradicting information to our beliefs and that feeling is relieved by rejecting that information. You will most likely feel cognitive dissonance with some of what you read here. We pretty much believe what we choose to believe according to our own self interests and often those self interests are simply previous beliefs.

We have been piling beliefs on top of beliefs our entire life and our initial beliefs came from others' beliefs when we were young. Those beliefs may have been incorrect in the first place. Our beliefs and belief systems are incredibly biased. We really can't trust our beliefs but we do by governing our lives by them. Even though beliefs are ideas that we don't know for sure, they can be so incredibly important to us. We identify with them by believing in them and then consider them an aspect of our identity that we are proud of. We're proud of what we don't even know! We just believe we know.

Certainty gives us reassurance to our beliefs. It enables us to act with confidence according to our beliefs. It gives us the false perception that we actually know what we only believe. Certainty makes us hold tightly to our beliefs and not consider other options or possibilities. Certainty is an added belief to a belief. Certainty is our belief in the degree of being right about our beliefs. It is our personal sense of self-righteousness. Certainty keeps us from questioning our beliefs and doesn't allow for the possibility of us being wrong, but we could be wrong about any belief we have because we do not know because all beliefs have other possibilities. We have to believe because we do not know. We may think we know, but that is another belief. It is the belief in certainty. Certainty shuts our mind tight to other possibilities. We cant have an open mind with certainty.

Even beliefs that are based on a great deal of evidence, information or facts can be wrong. How we gather that information is biased and any information we have is likely to be limited anyway. We can't be an expert on all our beliefs and even experts are biased and closed minded. The fact is we simply don't know when it comes to our beliefs. That is a fact. If we knew, it wouldn't require the act of believing. If you want to increase your awareness you have to acknowledge this fact to open your mind. Then you have to be willing to let go of beliefs that block your mind from being open and for the acceptance of new awareness, understanding and learning.

 

For ever increasing awareness to occur, a major belief that needs to be let go of is the belief in the importance of being right or correct. It is the belief in certainty. If you can't let go of beliefs because of certainty then your awareness will be limited and will be blocked. You won't be able to take advantage of all the benefits of increasing awareness. You'll be stuck in your beliefs – beliefs that could very well be wrong and causing problems in your life or limiting possibilities in your life. Just by acknowledging you could be wrong opens up a great deal of awareness. It lets you approach knowing from a different perspective of understanding and awareness. It opens you up to new possibilities and a willingness to learn and expand awareness. By doing that you are going to become aware of so many things you thought you knew that you didn't and then you can learn or become aware of what is actually correct. That increased awareness leads to more expanding awareness and that is one of the great things about increasing awareness. It always leads to even more awareness, learning and understanding about more things in your life that you don't currently know or are even aware of. Being more aware leads to more possibilities of being more aware and can expand exponentially if it is allowed to. Certainty and the belief in the importance of being right blocks awareness from expanding exponentially. For that to occur all you have to do is admit that you don't know and perceive from that perspective.

Next: Self Awareness 

3 - The Price of an Open Mind.

Our entire life revolves around this basic fundamental magnificent aspect of Conscious Awareness, but we rarely consciously intentionally use it and take advantage of it to better our lives. Not only is it the giver of life itself to us, it can give us more life to our life to enjoy. It can bring so much more into our lives. If we use it consciously, it can add boundless fulfillment of joy and happiness within our lives.
 

There are many different aspects of life that we can increase our awareness of. In fact, there are endless possibilities because our awareness is unlimited if we allow it to be. We can become more aware of the present moment and of our own awareness and of awareness itself. We can become more aware of our environment and the world we live in. We can become more aware of people and their psychology as well as our own. All increased awareness leads to greater understanding of how and what things actually are. This understanding is particularly beneficial when it is the understanding that comes from awareness of our mind. When we become aware of ourselves, we become aware of the blocks that we have placed on our awareness and how that has limited our understanding and has limited us. By gaining further understanding through increased awareness we learn to remove those blocks which in turn leads to further increased awareness. This all leads to a more fulfilling happy enjoyable life.

If you want to grow your awareness and become more aware and receive all the benefits from ever increasing awareness, there happens to be a big price to pay. You will have to be open-minded. That means you have to give up your closed mind. You will have to give up the concept of being right or your perceived self-righteousness. You will have to let go of your certainty. If you are firm in your beliefs and perspectives as being right, you won't be open to increasing your awareness of what actually is. Increasing awareness requires you to have an open flexible mind because with increased awareness you are bound to become aware of information, beliefs, attitudes, and perspectives of yours that are incorrect, but that is exactly what makes increased awareness so beneficial. You are going to find out that so many of the beliefs that you sincerely believed were correct simply aren't and that will help you tremendously in your life. Your limited awareness and perspective has led to limited conclusions and many of those conclusions led to wrong beliefs. One of those extremely limited conclusions we have come to is that we know what we only believe.

We have 10's of thousand of minor and major beliefs. Beliefs are any idea or thought that we believe we know that we don't or can't actually know. Our whole inner reality is structured around our beliefs. Many of these beliefs are so minor that we take them for granted and we consider them knowledge up until they cause us to make a mistake and we become aware of them. If you truly analyze what you actually know that can be proven and what are actually beliefs, you're going to find how many beliefs you actually have. Just that is a major increase in awareness. Every judgment, opinion, perspective, decision or idea that has other possibilities is a belief. Then by questioning the certainty of those beliefs can lead to even more increased awareness. You'll see that there is so much that you think you know but don't. You just believe you do. So many of these beliefs are the cause of our problems or keep us from finding the solutions to our challenges and situations in life that we are confronted with..

If you honestly scrutinize and analyze everything you think you know, you're going to find out how incredibly biased and skewed that so called knowledge is. You'll become aware of how so many of your beliefs have blocked you off from other correct or more significant information that contradicts so many of your beliefs. You'll see that you've been governing your life by very limited information that led to incorrect conclusions that you have turned into beliefs. You'll also learn a lot about your identity and how it identifies with beliefs and strives to always be right about beliefs which has also blocked you from gathering more information and increasing your awareness of the actual truth about certain things in your life.

We all have so much to learn and we won't learn something that we were incorrect about if we believe we already know. Increasing our awareness of ourselves, others and the world we live in requires us to be willing to let go of our beliefs so they can be replaced by what actually is and to do that we need to have less certainty in beliefs. Certainty is the killer of increasing awareness. It robs us from the ability to acquire more correct information that contradicts our beliefs. It keeps us in a state of ignorance and unwillingness to consider other possibilities. Certainty takes away our ability to learn.

Certainty can keep us from acquiring added information even if we are correct. We might be correct about something but are missing a lot more information about it that would change our understanding of it. Certainty makes us think we know all we need to know. Our certainty is our sense of self-righteousness that we all have. Drop the certainty of beliefs and also even of your factual knowledge and you open your mind to the endless possibilities that increased awareness can lead to. Those possibilities can and will change your life for the better if you are open to them. The price for endless possibilities is your closed mind.
Next: Exponential Awareness Expansion

2 - Benefits of Ever Increasing Awareness.

Simply put, increasing our awareness makes us aware of what we weren't aware of before or more aware of things we aren't fully aware of now. It sounds very simple and obvious but most people don't understand how significant it really is. Increasing our awareness enables us to continuously learn and grow. It enables us to be aware of more information that can be used to resolve problems and issues and make more informed better decisions to achieve our goals within the maze of life. It opens us up to more experience and knowledge. Increased awareness gives us greater understanding of ourselves, others, situations, and the world we live in. It provides the true wisdom of the way things truly are instead of what we believe them or perceive them to be.

It is very easy to overlook the significance of increasing our awareness because most people think that it is a common practice and something they do on a daily basis, but they don't realize they have put blocks and obstructions in front of their awareness. We generally only increase our awareness within the boundaries of our existing beliefs, biases, personal interests and perceptions. All too often we think we are obtaining more information but in actuality we are choosing what information to retain to support our existing framework of our perspective. Increasing our awareness outside of that framework is where the true power of it lies.

Increasing our awareness outside our existing framework of our perspective enables us to be more objective and knowledgeable about our own limited perspective and how we are missing so much understanding because of it. It makes us aware of our own biases and self-serving inaccurate subjective beliefs that we have chosen to believe.  Many of these beliefs block our awareness of ourselves -- self awareness. Increasing our awareness of ourselves can help free us from damaging self defeating thoughts, perceptions and beliefs. It can free us from the limiting beliefs we have about ourselves that cause distress, anxiety and unhappiness and restrict our potential and achievements. It enables us to be more successful at every thing we do. It benefits our relationships, work and overall enjoyment of life.

You might think that increasing your awareness is something you already do on a daily basis and many of us do, but we do it in an extremely limited way according to our existing beliefs, knowledge, biases and perceptions. We do it with a closed mind to the many other possibilities. We do it with the presumption of already knowing through belief. That presumption severely limits our awareness to the boundaries of that presumption. The presumption of knowing by belief limits us to what we don't actually know but only believe we know. All beliefs have other possibilities and increasing your awareness always leads to countless other possibilities that can benefit us in countless ways.

Increasing our awareness of ourselves makes us more fully aware of our mistakes and how to prevent future mistakes. It also makes us more fully aware of our accomplishments and how we achieved them in order to learn from them as well. It helps us make better decisions with better information. Increased awareness particularly helps us learn to deal with emotional issues and our inner struggles in life. It helps us out of anger and all other negative emotions that are causing us distress and can help bring an emotional state of peace and calm while reducing anxiety, stress and even depression. It provides the information and understanding needed for freedom from fear and other emotional issues that are creating problems in our lives.

 Increased awareness can allow us to become cognizant of our sub-conscious and more fully understand our behavior. It allows us to more fully understand others' behavior as well. It adds understanding to the behavior of our loved ones and benefits our relationships. It enables us to see the effects of our own behavior on others and on ourselves as well. It makes the limits of our love aware to us and allows us to expand our love. It allows us to more clearly see how we react to others' behavior and how that can lead to unnecessary conflicts and it can also help us resolve conflicts by being more fully aware of the situation instead of just our emotions or the importance of our desire to be right. It can help us come from a perspective of resolution and understanding instead of personal offense or anger. It can make us aware of situations or of others as they actually are instead of what we project on to them with what we believe or think they are. This helps us in countless ways of problem solving and dealing with people and managing situations. It also helps the people in our lives by creating a more positive aware environment for them as well.

 Just increasing our awareness of the present moment by focusing our attention in the present moment brings immeasurable benefits to our lives in numerous ways. It can help us with concentration and performing tasks better and more efficiently by keeping our focus entirely on the task. It can keep us from stubbing our toe, spilling our coffee or causing a deadly car accident. It can make certain activities more enjoyable by being more fully aware in the moment of experiencing them. It can actually make food taste better and sex more enjoyable. It adds increased experience and depth to every activity. It can make you a better athlete or add more talent to the talent you already have and can make you aware of hidden talents you might not know you even had.  By simply being more aware in the present moment of the present and what is happening in the present moment instead of your attention being on your thoughts has nearly a magical quality about it. For every second your full attention of awareness is in the present moment is a second you add to your life. For every minute you unnecessarily keep your attention in your mind and on your rambling thoughts is a minute you take away from your life. I can't stress enough how being fully aware of the present moment can add to your life. I'll go into that in much more detail later because it is the fundamental aspect of increasing awareness.

The benefits of increasing awareness are innumerable. Increasing awareness is a learning process that expands all that we know, experience and are aware of. It allows us to see reality more objectively without our personal projection of our beliefs and thoughts on it. Because of that we are more qualified, experienced and wise to live life with more success, happiness, love, compassion and enjoyment.

Increasing our awareness helps us with the courage to face the sometimes overwhelming complexities of life in the modern stressful world we live in. Continuously increasing our awareness is the key to dealing with the challenging issues of life and to more enjoyment of the experiences of life. Simply put, it makes our life better in all ways.

The truly amazing thing about awareness is that we were born with it and it is at the very root of what we truly are. It is what is you experiencing reading this blog at this very moment and it is the key to life itself. Increased awareness adds dimension and depth to ourselves, our lives and the world we live in. It makes us more of what we already are which is awareness and life itself. It provides the solutions to our problems, challenges, goals and happiness as well as adding experience and depth to everything we do and to our life in general. It makes life fuller, more enjoyable and robust by simply being more and more consciously aware.


Next: The first step is the biggest: An Open Mind.

1 - Awareness: The Miracle of Life

I find consciousness to be the most fascinating aspect of our life there is. It has baffled philosophers, deep thinkers, theologians, scientists, psychologists and physicians for centuries and right up to this day. It is clear pure and immaterial and seemingly intangible, but its presence is obvious to everyone. It is obvious to us but we can’t put our finger on it and the greatest minds of all time don’t fully understand it. It contains nothing but itself. It doesn’t do or act. It doesn’t think or judge. It wants nothing and has no opinions or beliefs. It is pure and clear of anything besides itself. It is unlimited and boundless. It is the observer and perceiver. It seems to be nothing, but this clear pure nothing experiences all of our life. It is behind our entire experience of life. It is what makes the experience of life possible. It experiences all our senses, feelings, emotions, thoughts and experiences. It is the experiencer of life at every single waking moment and even in our dreams. It is the witness to life.

 Consciousness is our basis for life. It is the awareness of our own existence and the world around us and without it we wouldn’t exist as the person we are. Our body would be in a vegetative state unable to survive and function on its own without it. This is an obvious fact that we all instinctively know but we disregard it without much thought to it. We don’t inquire into it and simply take it for granted. Scientists and philosophers are perplexed by consciousness and it is next to impossible for us to even comprehend so why should we?

If we take a closer look at our consciousness we can learn and understand a few simple things about it. One simple fact about it is that it is the most basic fundamental aspect of our personhood. It is extremely significant to our life. Consciousness is life. Without it our personhood is dead. Our body could survive in a hospital being supported, but we would be gone as a person. It seems that most of us don’t really fully understand this or acknowledge it and see its significance. Many people consider their body to be the most basic fundamental aspect of personhood and disregard their consciousness altogether, but what is the body without consciousness? Without consciousness we would essentially be jelly fish without any self awareness. We couldn’t be what we are as the person we exist as today. If we don’t take this for granted and try to understand it, it is actually very profound. It is extremely profound because consciousness is what and who we actually are.

When we were very young we began to develop an identity. We weren’t born with an identity and how it developed was mostly dependent on cultural, societal and parental influences along with our experiences within our environment. If our life circumstances and experiences had been entirely different, we would have developed an entirely different identity. Consciousness is what makes experience possible. Psychologists agree that our identity is a mental construct in our mind. It is how we define ourselves as individuals. It can change and does so as we age and progress through life and have more experience. Consciousness doesn’t change though. It is the one constant in ourselves. Because of that we often feel we are the same person we were many years ago and essentially we are -- just our identity has changed.

As we progress through life our knowledge grows. We have more experience. Our understanding expands. Lifes circumstances change. We experience accomplishments and mistakes and failures. Relationships come and go and change. We learn more about the world, people, ourselves and how to approach and deal with the complexities of life and our identity adjusts to all of our life experiences. What makes all this possible is our conscious awareness.

 I prefer the term conscious awareness over consciousness because it more aptly describes consciousness. Consciousness is awareness but it isn’t just any type of awareness as in the awareness that is knowledge of something specific. It is a type of awareness that is conscious. The term consciousness can be too broad also and the meaning can include knowledge or awareness of something in particular. The term conscious awareness narrows the meaning down, but awareness, consciousness and conscious awareness all mean the same thing and are interchangeable so I use all three terms.

 Most people when asked to describe themselves fail to even mention consciousness. They may include their body in their description and aspects of their identity that they consider important, but they rarely mention their consciousness. This most basic fundamental aspect of ourselves that constitutes the life we are is commonly overlooked as if it were insignificant when it is the key to the life we have and our very existence.

 As I delved into my own conscious awareness to more fully understand it, I realized it is unlimited. It will become aware of anything that is placed before it by our attention. It is only limited by limits outside of itself and one of the major limits to it is our rational mind. Our rational mind is our thinking reasoning mind that interprets everything our awareness becomes aware of. It interprets and comes to conclusions that often restrict our awareness to those conclusions. Those conclusions form our perspective and determine our perception. Our limited perception often limits our awareness and keeps us from becoming aware of a great deal of information, understanding and knowledge that is out there for us to discover and can benefit us tremendously.

This information, understanding, knowledge and specific awareness that comes from removing the blocks obstructing our awareness has the power to change and transform our lives. Knowledge is certainly power and the power behind knowledge is awareness. By continually increasing our awareness we can become masters of our life by finding the solutions to the obstacles we come up against. It can give us the wisdom on how to properly approach life and to more fully enjoy it and get the most out of this precious short life we have.

Conscious awareness is very basic but at the same time it has incredible power by us simply realizing its importance, utilizing it and increasing it. The simplicity of its basic nature has us disregard it and not see how it plays the most significant role of anything in our life. It is real and you know that it is real because you are aware at this very moment. It is incredibly significant and can be used to our great benefit. Be curious about what I'm sharing with you here. Its powerful nature is right there right now for you to discover.

The benefits of ever increasing awareness are enumerable, but we can’t fully utilize awareness without removing the limits our rational mind and identity place on it. Removing those blocks is the primary way of increasing our awareness and receiving the transformational benefits of it. If you want the most out of life and achieve all that you can with happiness, joy and contentment, work diligently to increase your awareness by removing the obstacles that you have placed in front of it. The benefits of doing that are truly amazing and for many people are nothing short of miraculous.

Next: The incredible benefits of ever increasing awareness.