Self-awareness, mindfulness, consciousness, or meditation – all these are similar terms. Self-awareness is a good way to realize the link between your thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Simple mindfulness technique
Just watch yourself and know what is going on in your mind and body, and how thoughts make you feel and react as a result. Pay attention, know what your body needs – it gives you feedback all the time.
On what is good for you and what is not. It sheds light on the mind and Ego’s aversive effects. If you always know what you feel within, if you can figure out what you need at the moment and are able to express it, you are a great communicator and a fully conscious/mindful human being.
When you silence the mind, you are about to realize how powerful, whole, and free you are; you realize you have everything you need here and now at your reach.
You come to realize how long you have been driving around in life, blindfolded by your Mind and Ego.
Furthermore, when you shut down the thinking and start to feel your own presence, you become intensely alive, you awake to your senses, and the whole universe lives in you, through you. You feel at one with the universe and everything that surrounds you and I don’t mean to sound cliché here, I simply speak from first-hand experience.
It’s a state of being attainable through feeling your inner body’s energy.
Just by simply being and feeling from within can lead to a radical transcendental experience.
You sublimate into life’s energy and become flowing energy as a permanent state, or progressively achievable through practice, depending on your courage, strength, and wisdom to let it all go and surrender completely to this pure state of being.
Essentially, the mind should be restrained to process things as they are and not how they should be.
The mind “should” be restrained to process only things that can be changed by you. To find a solution here and now to an identified problem. If you can fix it, then figure out a way. If you cannot, why worry about it?
All the rest of your mental activity is a complete waste of time. Junk material.
Keep in mind that if you cannot change it, you can only let it go.
But if really and objectively you judge you can change it, face and deal with it by taking small steps. Break it down into small, feasible tasks, so it no longer seems all so overwhelming. The first step is the hardest. The following ones flow once you make the decision to tackle the identified problem – the most important word in change is “begin”. Indeed, once you begin, it is always harder psychologically to give up your decision, because you have already invested time and effort in planning the steps and working out a solution.
Once you take the most significant step, relax and trust the process. Rome was not built in a day. Nor will important changes be. In conclusion, the mind, when used consciously, can be an extraordinary tool. It is capable of creating beautiful realities and futures. Imagination is key.
When we use the mind with full presence and control what enters and develops in it, we turn it from our bullying Master into our Servant.
It is vital to watch the mind and protect it from external events, more specifically from reacting to anything that is going on out there and in there (your mind). Unsupervised thoughts have a powerful potential: they trigger a chain reaction of feelings and subsequent behaviors in a harmful out-of-control fashion. It all goes very quickly. Become aware of this. This, specifically, can cause permanent damage to relationships and sabotage what you really care about. Be aware of how your mind reacts and arbitrarily interprets others’ behavior or words.
If you are reacting to someone else’s words and reactions, pause, take a deeeeep breathhhhhh, double check with the person what is really meant/intended if at all possible, and decide if it’s worthwhile polluting your inner energy by reacting to it.
Another Super Powerful Tip when you get triggered by something is: Pause, Breath Deep, and ask yourself: “what is this emotions teaching me?” Put your hand on the heart and you have it…..right there. The inner wisdom soothing answer. Listen & Tune in each time in this manner and you’ll go a very long way.
Nothing really is worth it when you aim for self-control. Fundamentally, thoughts, people, and situations are powerless without your reaction and that’s where your whole power lies.
Why are Thoughts not Real and Should not be Acted Upon?
As explained earlier, automatic thoughts result from a biased mind. From a virtual representation of the world and ourselves, based on past, social, and cultural experiences. Your reality is not someone else’s reality. Ultimately, everyone misses out not only on the actual reality but also on truly meeting each other as long as we humans live in our own minds. We are autistic individuals, in a circus, thinking we are communicating and relating to each other. We enter relationships expecting that the other can read our mind, accusing them of doing certain things on purpose, comparing the past with the present all the time, expecting them to be or act a certain way or hoping they will change eventually so they can fit into our own world representation, mold of values, preferences, and life visions.
The mind is the collective insanity of human beings. It’s the common illness that unites us in our tragic human condition and separates us at the same time. Relationships are hard, trusting others is hard, life is hard because we live in our minds. Because our reality clashes with what is in our mind and its unrealistic expectations. Realize this fundamental thing: people love us or hate us and this has nothing to do with us. Indeed, people project on us their own reality or their own dream.
We typically and (unintentionally) activate in them a dream they had once in their internal world or remind them of traits present but denied and rejected in themselves. This is called projection. The stronger our reaction to someone is, the more we are projecting. Everything that unfolds ever after they meet us is not so much dependent upon what we do or say than it is on their own mental processes and ongoing internal representations. Nevertheless, this does not exclude responsibility for our own behavior nor the high benefits of effective communication – we must learn to communicate our personal experience only, rather than projecting unconsciously our world and expectations on others.
This insight, once reached, will depress your Ego who will do anything to refute this truth as it is highly indigestible. After all, you have worked all your life to preserve and feed the idea of your identity, i.e. of your (false) Self. This realization will inevitably kill your Ego’s reasons to exist; it’s an immediate death sentence. A death sentence to the idea of Self and its actual value and impact on others, in our physical world of form, illusions and appearances. Well, let me tell you … Great! That is extraordinary news because when your Ego dies, you finally start living.
Conclusion
Deconstructing the idea of Self, the idea of a separate entity from everything that surrounds you, is your life’s mission and journey. An illusion cannot be maintained for long in a world where everything is impermanent. Your Ego is also subject to this universal law and will eventually crash with maturity, grief, loss, or near-death experiences. Look forward to these experiences because they will set you free. They will shed light onto what you really are and what life is all about.