Chapter 9,
Choosing Awareness Do you find life difficult at times?
Do you often wish things were different than they are?
Do you ever become frustrated in traffic and find it hard not to honk your horn out of anger?
Do you occasionally or frequently feel boredom,
Loneliness,
Or sadness?
If you happen to answer yes to one or more of these questions,
You're well on your way to succeeding in this thing called life.
You're already out of the gate and on the path to inner peace and fulfillment.
Congratulations.
And for those of us who are still having trouble answering yes,
Have you ever,
Even for a moment,
Felt tired,
Satisfied,
Or excited?
Okay then,
I think we've got everyone up to speed.
Now if you're wondering what the point of all those questions was,
Please let me explain.
That little quiz you just passed was an acknowledgement that you're alive and that your days are filled with a constant array of sensations and feelings.
In accepting this fact,
We can start to move beyond blindly reacting to our inner world and begin learning from it.
And lucky for us,
We've been given a big gift to help us do this.
This gift is called life,
The teacher that everyone loves and sometimes hates,
The teacher we're all blessed with for our whole time on this earth.
Whether we're aware of it or not,
Every moment in our lives is perfectly designed for our growth.
There are no mistakes in our curriculum.
There are no misprints or imperfections.
Life is constantly supporting us and providing us with experiences that are expressly created for our exact needs at all times.
And yet,
We resist the ones that cause us discomfort and crave those that give us pleasure.
We fuss and fidget like a three-year-old weighing over his head with his ABCs.
We get to the letter B,
Or perhaps the letter from the bank,
And start squirming like our pants are on fire.
We then invariably start searching through the fridge or the channels on the TV,
Looking for something to satisfy us,
To fill us up,
To take us away from our uncomfortable feelings of sadness,
Loneliness,
And fear.
By doing this,
However,
We're actually running from ourselves and the chance to know our true nature.
And the place that we're running from is the place that we're going to learn to run back to.
That is,
We're going to start running back to ourselves,
Instead of toward external sources of illusory comfort.
To help you better understand what this means,
Please close your eyes and for a count of five in-breaths,
Focus all of your attention on your breath as it moves in and out of your nose.
Now,
Obviously this is quite simple,
But it can also be very difficult at the same time.
Perhaps not for five breaths,
But if we do this same exercise for a bit longer,
Things can become somewhat trickier.
Why don't you try it again and see if you can keep all of your attention totally on your breath for five minutes.
Just keep watching your breath going in and out,
In and out,
And in and.
.
.
Wait,
What was that sound?
Uh-oh,
It's just the fridge.
And back and forth,
In and out,
And in and.
.
.
Boy,
My leg's itchy.
Seems like it's tingling.
I wonder if it's falling asleep.
Oh,
Maybe I should move it because I hate that burning sensation that I always feel when.
.
.
Oops,
I forgot about my breath.
In and out,
In and out.
And how did it go?
Perhaps you saw how much there is going on inside of you and around you,
And maybe you discovered how easy it is to become sidetracked by those things,
How the mind can quickly become distracted,
Constantly jumping around like a curious little monkey.
Maybe you also realized that you were able to bring your awareness back to your breath,
That it can be like an anchor,
A place to bring your attention back to when it strays.
And maybe you noticed that some thoughts brought up uncomfortable sensations within you,
Or maybe very pleasurable ones.
In fact,
There are many things that you might have seen,
However,
If you hadn't taken the time to close your eyes and look inside,
It all would have gone on without you.
That is,
You would have had the same thoughts and the same sensations and the same fears,
But you would have blindly followed them without even knowing it.
For just as our mind is automatically drawn toward whatever catches its attention,
So too are we unwittingly pulled wherever our mind goes,
And unless we make a choice to notice how this is happening,
We will never even realize that it is.
But we do have a choice in every moment,
One that can lead us back into ourselves so that we can find our way out of our old habits and negative patterns,
One that can show us who we truly are beyond the years of unconscious habits and beliefs that we have stored away deep within us.
This choice is the choice of awareness,
Or in particular,
Self-awareness,
Of our thoughts,
Our feelings,
And our sensations.
As we start to become aware of our constantly changing inner world of thoughts and emotions,
We can then begin consciously observing them and growing in presence.
And as we do this,
We can slowly start to learn from our inner experience and begin responding to it with wisdom and compassion instead of blindly reacting to it.
It is with this choice that we can begin unlocking our self-limiting patterns and our lost potential for true health,
Happiness,
And fulfillment.
And this choice is ours in every moment.
It is the key to our freedom and the path to our heart's desire.
As we begin acknowledging the power that we hold in our own hands and learn to unleash it by focusing our awareness on our inner workings,
We can begin learning from every situation.
We can begin to see that true happiness is found by looking within us and learn to not judge our judgments or hate our hate.
We can discover that the path to true strength,
Understanding,
And fulfillment is the one that is in front of us in every moment.
And we can realize that this moment is another opportunity to accept and acknowledge our right,
Our choice,
And our need to investigate,
Understand,
And embrace whatever it is that we might find within us.
And as we begin doing this,
Life will become a class where the subject is constantly changing.
And if we're paying attention,
No lesson is boring,
Not even the one on boredom.
