Awareness Development

Posted on October 7, 2007
Filed Under Spirituality, Consciousness |

Very broadly, our interpretation of the world can be divided into two categories. The things we have been taught, and the things we have experienced. In general terms, we are taught from another persons experience or knowledge, whether it is in the form of listening, reading or being shown. Teaching then, is a third-hand passing on of information. Conversely, experience is first-hand information; the things we learn by ourselves from direct interaction.

These two aspects sit directly opposite each other, and usually people tend to favor one aspect over the other. Some people become dependent upon what they have read, or been told. This is a dependency upon the authority of another person or thing. In extreme cases this becomes an unshakable faith in “authoritative knowledge”.

On the other end of this spectrum is the utter dependence upon personal experience. In extreme cases this manifests as “only believing what you see”. When this happens it doesn’t matter what a person is told, or what knowledge they are shown, it is irrelevant until they see it for themselves.

Knowledge vs. Experience

For the most part, we don’t tend to choose an extreme end of this spectrum. The spectrum can be viewed as a sliding scale, we choose a different position upon this scale depending on the subject matter and situation. Once we have chosen a position we stick to it, and solidify it with any argument, excuse or manufactured reasoning. It forms the basis of how we see the world and ourselves. This is one trick we all learn to excel at, no matter what walk of life we come from, or how aware we are. We aren’t only tricking the world – but also ourselves; we become convinced in our own reasoning, justifications and beliefs.

When we allow ourselves to release our grip on this position, we learn that we can move seamlessly between Personal Experience and Authoritative Knowledge. Indeed we discover both these aspects can be integrated with each other, that they can work hand-in-hand once we adopt an awareness of our own relationship to them.

Awareness

The manner in which we relate to Personal Experience and Authoritative Knowledge corresponds to our general method of thinking. Again broadly speaking, thinking can be divided into two categories; Emotional Thinking and Logical Thinking.

Both of these are pretty self descriptive. Some people have a very emotional approach to life – their reactions, thoughts and beliefs are very emotionally oriented. Whilst other people are far more logical with their approach to thinking. These opposing aspects can be taken to extremes, where a person is an emotionally quivering wreck, or an emotionally constipated rationalizing robot.

The Four points of Awareness

These four points; Personal Experience, Authoritative Knowledge, Emotional Thinking and Logical Thinking make up the four corners of our Awareness. Of course, each of these can be further divided, but for now I will focus on these main areas.

This field of awareness represents our perspective on life, and we can actually place a pin-point within the field to show the position our perspective holds. Whilst we do move around this field a bit, we generally tend keep to a fixed area.

Also you can see that our position on the field shows our how our perspective is relative to each of the four corner aspects. So, for example it would show if a person is a logical thinker, with some emotional issues and has a strong dependence upon authoritative knowledge.

When we adopt a fixed perspective, we become inflexible and this in turn interferes with our potential for development and self-growth. The more flexible and dynamic we can allow our awareness to become, the greater the development and growth we will experience. Learning to detach from our fixed perspectives is a matter of self-change, and can be achieved when we willfully undertake an approach to increasing our awareness.

Conscious Thinking

You can look at this in two ways. Firstly, the closer to the center of the field of awareness you get, the more balanced you become. As you become more balanced your awareness gains an increasingly stronger grasp of both your Self, and reality.

The other way of looking at this, is that you learn to fill more and more of the field of awareness. The implication to this is obvious – as it represents the expanding of your awareness.

Conscious Thought

An expanded or balanced awareness gradually leads towards conscious thought. This means we are not only aware of our Self and reality – but also able to consciously work with Self and reality.

Beyond conscious thought is a level which functions outside the foundations of the four corner aspects of awareness. Here we begin to develop our spiritual or etheral faculties, and glimpse at the senses which exist beyond the five-physical senses – as we begin to move further out into the spheres of awareness.

Comments

3 Responses to “Awareness Development”

Spirituality and Awareness of Reality : The Thoughts on October 7th, 2007 9:33 am

[…] One - Spiritual and Physical Reality Part Two - Awareness Development Part Three - Spheres of Awareness Part Four - Non-Linear […]
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Rejecting or Believing the Paranormal : The Thoughts on October 12th, 2007 9:53 am

[…] I mentioned in my post on Awareness Development - spiritual development comes about through the breaking down of our conditioning. Eventually the […]
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vicky on September 30th, 2009 3:33 am

This makes a lot of sense, what a great model, potential use to guide practice in health and wellbeing.
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