We’ve all heard how important self-awareness is, but what does it really mean?
For starters, it implies there is a self to be aware of. So if I am aware of myself, who or what is that self I’m aware of?
And why is being more aware of myself supposedly a good thing?
And how am I not aware of myself? Isn’t it just everything I know about myself? How am I supposed to become more aware of something I’m already aware of?
These are great questions that we will dive into and much more, in this first lesson.
But first…
What are the three bodies?
Every human being has three bodies; the physical, the mental, and the spiritual.
- The physical body is the one most people are familiar with. It governs the awareness of our five senses; seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting.
- The mental body consists of our thoughts and emotions. This is where most people derive a sense of self from. More on that in a minute.
- The spiritual body goes beyond the physical and mental. For many people, this is where meaning and purpose come from. If the physical is the human aspect, then the spiritual is the being aspect.
Now, when we talk about self-awareness, we are really talking about the mental body, because this is where your identity is created.
This is the one we need to develop more awareness of because it is the most complex and tends to cause most of our problems.
Who is that ‘self’ you’re aware of?
All of the things you associate about who you are, such as your beliefs, your values, and even your name originate from the mind.
Even though your name was given to you, your mind accepted this as an aspect of who you are.
Going deeper, we can say the same thing about your nationality, your career, your marital status, and so on.
You might say: “But I was born in Britain/America/Spain, of course I’m British/American/Spanish. That’s not created in my mind, that’s a fact, is it not?”
Sure, it’s a fact that can be verified by your local government, but that isn’t what we’re talking about here.
We are talking about the specific ways in which you have become identified with who you believe yourself to be.
If I said “Tell me about yourself”, and your answer sounds something like this:
“I’m John, I’m an accountant from England. I’m a husband to Jane and a father to my son Josh. My hobbies are playing tennis, reading science-fiction novels, and making homemade pizza in my outdoor pizza oven.”
These are aspects of yourself you are identified with on some level, and this all happens in the mind.
But these examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Things like your name and job title are aspects of yourself you have conscious access to.
The real gold of who you are is underneath the surface, more specifically, in the depths of the shadow. We’ll be exploring the shadow more in the Illumination stage. Becoming aware of these deeper layers of yourself is where true transformation happens.
Why does self-awareness matter?
Without self-awareness, change is impossible. The truth is that we have become so accustomed to who we think we are, we never question whether or not it’s true.
Most people want to change something about their life, but they focus on changing things externally. We might get a better job, more money, or a better body, but if the motivation to change comes from dissatisfaction, that dissatisfaction lingers.
This is how most people live. Constantly changing or improving things on the outside and wondering why they’re still unhappy.
They repeat the cycle over and over without realising it starts from within. That’s a lack of self-awareness.
They are essentially asleep to themselves. On autopilot, or like a machine. Without self-awareness we are unconscious. We think we are in control of our lives, but we are not.
To completely transform ourselves, we have to wake up from the dream we’re in.
But you can’t wake up from something if you don’t know you’re asleep. This is the goal of self-awareness; to wake up to your true self.
Why do we do what we do?
Becoming self-aware is about recognising our inner drives, negative thoughts, unresolved emotions, and dysfunctional habits.
Carl Jung famously said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
In other words, what we hold in our unconscious mind directs our lives and the ego convinces us we’re making conscious choices.
Until we recognise the unconscious drives that trigger our emotions and actions, we’ll stay stuck in repeating patterns that only satisfy one thing; the ego.
The result isn’t a life of happiness, peace, fulfilment, abundance, and joy. It’s a life based out of survival.
- Fear
- Patterns of thinking
- Limiting beliefs
- Coping strategies
- Bad habits
- Attachments
- Low confidence/self-esteem
- Lack of clarity
- External validation
These are what drive the ego to keep repeating the same patterns because trying something new may end in death.
To the ego, this makes total sense. But to the soul, it’s imprisonment.
Does that make the ego the enemy? Absolutely not! To set ourselves free, we should kill the ego? Nope!
Actually, the complete opposite. The ego mind is just misinformed.
With awareness, patience, acceptance, and trust, comes true freedom.
A path to conscious transformation and true awakening
What most personal growth and even some spiritual gurus teach is becoming a new version of yourself so that you can be, do, and have the life you want.
While there is some truth to this as a successful process, they miss a crucial piece of the puzzle.
That adopting a new identity that enables you to create the life you want doesn’t automatically set you free. It just creates a more sophisticated ego.
Even if it did, reprogramming a new identity doesn’t happen overnight. If you follow that long path expecting to become enlightened, you set yourself up for more disappointment.
So before you try to shift your identity or become someone new, you better make sure you acknowledge your ego self that got you here, so you can let it go graciously later.
This is what the lessons in this stage are designed to do. To become your true self, you don’t add, change, or force something new onto yourself.
You deconstruct what is false.
This is known as Via Negativa, which means to describe truth by defining what it is not. I can describe your true self and share self-awareness practices until the cows come home, but I’ll just be rehashing the words of those such as Eckhart Tolle or Rupert Spira.
Instead, you will learn the mechanics and patterns of the ego. Because when you see how your mind works, you stop letting it run your life, so that you can create a new one.