Conscious awarenessRemember these words: experience, consciousness and awareness. You’re aware of me speaking, you’re aware of my presence in the room, you’re aware of being present in the room. In this sense the word awareness is an adjective. If I were to tell you to close your eyes and to experience your awareness, then awareness becomes an object or noun. You’re experiencing the state of being or existing, experiencing yourself as consciousness. I call this awareness, "Conscious Awareness".I want to give you a couple of examples of everyday situations that will help illustrate what I mean by conscious awareness. Metaphor of the movie theaterWhen we’re watching a movie, we get so caught up in the story that we’re not in "conscious awareness". This is a good thing, of course, because it makes the movie much more enjoyable, like it’s really happening. Have you ever had the experience of sitting in a movie theater watching a movie, you’re so caught up in the story that you’re totally unaware of even sitting in the theater. Suddenly someone makes a sound and you become aware of yourself sitting in your chair in the theater. You notice the movie screen; you become aware of the projection booth and the light shinning on the screen. You become aware of all of the other people sitting around you in the theater, and you even notice how they are all still absorbed in the film, totally oblivious to the fact that they too are sitting there in the theater just as you were a few moments earlier. Before you were aware, your just weren’t "consciously aware". This "conscious awareness" is sometimes referred to as "witness consciousness".Another example of this is when you’re having a conversation with someone and you suddenly become aware of yourself standing there talking, whereas moments before you’d been so wrapped up in the conversation that you weren’t "self aware", or "consciously aware". This is especially true if we’re all caught up talking about ourselves, something we’ve done, or are doing, or something our children or spouse has done, etc. Daydreaming is another example. When you’re daydreaming, you’re so caught up in the world of whatever it is that you’re daydreaming about, that you actually forget where and who you are. It can be as dramatic as the movie theater analogy. These are all examples of our awareness being distracted to the point that we are not even aware of being aware. This "conscious awareness", or "witness consciousness" is the medium with which we discover and learn to know our true and deeper nature, which is the foundation and source of our "conscious awareness", and also how we connect and interact with our world and those around us. [ To Top ] |