It's Sunday, so let's slow right down and explore one of the core tenets of this understanding: awareness itself. Who we really are.
(No biggie, eh?)
I talk about awareness being ‘the solution’ to pretty much everything. Whether it's catching yourself indulging in ‘people prep’; stopping procrastinating by realising it's the mind procrastinating, not you; or navigating fluctuating moods with more grace and ease, the Dr Giles prescription is so often: “Be aware!”
But what happens when awareness goes ‘bad’? Isn't it sometimes better to just be in the flow of life? (That's another one you'll hear me say a lot.)
Can't we torment ourselves with awareness of the mind, and how it's making our life a misery?
😫
It's a super question, and there's one subtle distinction to see, that clears this one right up.
Waking up
When we have some insights into the nature of things, it's a sort of ‘waking up’ to the ‘truth’ (for want of a better word).
Think of it as a layer of illusion falling away. Seeing through the veil of Thought.
It's like that bit in The Matrix, where Neo's been given a glimpse of the ‘truth’ and is then offered the blue pill (forget anything ever happened; go back to living the life he was living before, in blissful ignorance), or the red pill (wake up completely and deal with reality as it actually is).
The whole red-pill/blue-pill thing has been co-opted by so many online tribes and meme-makers, that you'll hear it referred to a lot, and I was today years old when I learned that it first appeared in the film Total Recall!
Here's my all-time favourite funny greetings card I bought multiple copies of and send to the specialest of friends, when the time is right. “Neo's dilemma”:
😂🤣
And I'm going to be completely honest with you here – there are times when I genuinely wish I'd never ‘taken the red pill’ and come across the 3 Principles!!
When there's no one else to blame but your own stupid conditioned mind—and you know it!—it really does seem like awareness is ‘bad’. Gimme the blue pill, send me back!!
Another mind trap 🪤
But of course, this is just another of the mind's traps.
I dropped the answer to this particular conundrum into that last paragraph. It was: “and you know it.”
Sorry, who exactly is it, that ‘knows’??
🤔
Could that be the mind, talking? Again?
When we slow down enough to explore this properly, we find that this is just the mind, trying to take control of the concept of ‘awareness’.
It's trying to absolve itself of its natural tendency to worry/seek problems, by getting some fake ‘distance’ from itself.
It's actually just generating more thinking, as it tries to pull the wool over your eyes, making out like it's helping, when in reality, all it's doing is this:
🤷🏻♂️
So what is the answer then?
It's Sunday. No answers for you 😘
But maybe this is just a deeper awareness. That this is all the mind. That it's all ok.
Could that be enough, to allow it to settle, and reveal the peace of who-you-really-are that lies beneath at all times?
Being aware of being aware.
😎
Giles
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Yup. Practically every Daily Reminder I write is pointing to this, in its own special way. I may as well just direct you to the full Archives!
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