Stepping Out From the Looking Glass

Stepping Out From the Looking Glass

Next to the power of choice in our arsenal of life-improving tools is the power of awareness. Two little tiny things, miniscule shifts in what we do, and the quality of our day-to-day can improve so much.

Awareness is a very subtle shift in attention that we can make easily, instantly. By shifting our focus from the doing of the thing to the experience of doing, we step into awareness.

There is another subtlety. We can never do enough, but we can always be more.

Enough is a tricky thing, a slippery slope. Problem with enough? It’s always just out of reach.  Enough power, enough money, enough misery.

Enough gets tricky because we are so adaptable. Talk about irony. We think, “It’s not all that bad. I will leave when it gets bad enough.” And it gets a little worse, and we get used to it, that worse becomes familiar, it becomes normal. And we say, “It’s not all that bad, I will leave when it gets bad enough.” Ooh, bad loop. Dangerous loop. The nice stuff in our lives starts to drop away, and we get smaller and smaller, bringing our focus in tighter and tighter until our life is pencil thin, and we feel lost and maybe crazy.

It’s the same thing striving for power, or money, the bigger house, the nicer car.

It also happens when we try to atone for our guilt by doing for others. Bottom line on that one? There is one of me, and over seven billion youse. No matter how much I do, how hard I work, I will never be able to do enough to abrogate my guilt. Not until I choose to let it go will I be free.

But back to awareness.

How do I feel when I am aware? What makes me notice my experience? How do I know what I’m feeling?

When I am aware, I am in my body, I know where I am, I am tuned in to what I’m doing, I experience my experience.

And that’s where the magic happens.

Why would I choose awareness? What makes me present? How do I experience?

When we step into our experiences with awareness, we will naturally find satisfaction. We will naturally find enjoyment. We will naturally feel contentment as we complete our experiences.

When we step into our experiences with awareness, we are creating a sacred space. Awareness is food for our spirit. Owning our experience feeds our spirit, helps us grow up, brings us more deeply into our natural life. As we get used to experiencing our experiences, even difficult things bring an enjoyment because we are experiencing them fully. As we get used to this, we find that we have more joy, more courage, more solutions, and peace. I like peace.

How have I changed from stumbling in the dark to becoming aware of my experience?

(c) 2014 Pam Guthrie all rights reserved 02082014