Awareness and its content

Awareness and its contents

The main goal of Unravel the Thread is to provide you with clear and easy ways to understand Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras so that you can put this ancient wisdom into practice in your life today. A few episodes ago, I mentioned that we are alternating points of view, sometimes zooming out to get a big-picture perspective of the framework the sutras provide, and sometimes zooming in to get familiar with the details of the practice. The questions in each episode have provided you with starting points for contemplation. In the next episodes, we will practice a series of guided exercises.

Some things to keep in mind as you practice: Although we use the Yoga Sutras as a guide, we are not dogmatic. In other words, we recognize that there are many ways to practice, and that the ways we suggest are not the only useful ways to practice. Also, because yoga is a lifelong journey of self-discovery, each practitioner consciously chooses to practice without strain, without struggle, and without self-judgment. It is important to check how we feel before, during and after the practice, so that we can assess whether our practice is improving the quality of our life as well as the quality of our participation in life.

Reflecting on our one goal in life and our fundamental needs (uniqueness and connectedness) complemented our earlier exploration of our true nature. Perhaps it is becoming clearer that there is an essential difference between our awareness and the content of our awareness. Awareness is our noticing, witnessing, and wordless knowing. The content of our awareness is constantly changing as we shift our attention either to our inner world or to the world around us. Our body and mind provide us with an unparalleled immersive experience of both our inner and outer worlds through the contents of our awareness in the form of sensations, thoughts, memories, and emotions.

Once again, let’s remember that our awareness is always here, just like the endless sky. However, awareness, like the sky, is sometimes obscured by its contents, our thoughts, emotions, memories, beliefs, and preferences. Whenever we believe that the content of our awareness is who we are, we embark on a journey that fluctuates with the ever changing sensations and emotions. Inevitably we rise with exhilaration and excitement when things go according to our preferences, and then we drop with frustration, impatience and suffering when our experiences are different from our expectations or predilections.

Let’s explore this difference between awareness and its contents.

Find a comfortable space conducive to being relaxed… Take time to find a position that is comfortable for you, enabling you to be free of tension and strain while remaining awake and aware. Close your eyes softly, if that feels good.Give yourself permission to be here now by letting go of other times and places…Take a few moments to consider how this exercise contributes to support you in your awareness, personal growth, and participation in life…Offer yourself your undivided attention.

This exercise guides you to become more familiar with your own awareness. This entails noticing your awareness as well as the contents of your awareness. We will alternate between open awareness, when we allow all sensations, thoughts, and emotions to flow freely, and focused attention. It is very likely that your mind will get distracted. This is perfectly normal and essential to the exercise.

Direct your attention to the sensations in your body. Start feeling your toes, your feet……We are just feeling, there is no need to narrate, describe, like or dislike. Just notice the sensations. Feel your legs…your knees…your thighs… As you continue scanning your body notice the direct experience of feeling, for instance do some sensations feel like temperature, texture, or pressure? Perhaps, the sensations manifest in a different way…continue feeling your pelvis….your abdomen, lower and middle back….If there is a sensation that catches your attention, stay with it… notice, are these sensations fixed or do they change from one moment to the next?

Now, let’s take a pause and invite your awareness to release its focus and just open ….notice whatever is happening, remember that there is no need to describe, narrate or explain…if a thought emerges, let it be, you do not have to like, dislike or control the thought, instead be curious to notice the thought and how it manifests, it may emerge as a word, a sound, an image, a feeling, just notice…there is no wrong way of doing this….

Now, invite your awareness to return to scanning your body, feeling all around your hands, arms, mid and upper torso, pay close attention to the specific sensations around your shoulder area, including the tops of your shoulders…your collarbones… your shoulder blades and your armpits…feel……remember, your mind may get distracted by a thought, a sound or noise, that is OK, just be aware that you got distracted and then return to feeling…now be curious to notice the sensations and how they manifest around your neck and throat…you are aware of the sensations, as you witness the sensations, notice that the sensations, thoughts and emotions are the contents of your awareness… when you get distracted, your awareness is following the thread of your thoughts, like a list of things to do, or something that you are planning, or a memory that appeared…

Let’s pause again and allow your awareness to rest, no need to focus on anything in particular… just be open and notice all that is happening…there is no effort, just awareness…release everything and just notice the changing thoughts, sensations, emotions, perhaps your mind follows a line of thought, allow it to do so…just notice and welcome whatever you are noticing, aware of what is happening, yet without any need to control it…

Once again, return to scanning for sensations this time in your jaw…your lips….your mouth…your cheeks….feel the sensations in the area around your eyes…feel sensations in your eyebrows….now feel your temples…outer ears….back of your head…top of your head….forehead….feel the sensations in your whole head….feel your whole head…now feel your whole body…witness the sensations as if you were sitting on a beach noticing the continuous coming and going of the waves without having to control anything at all…experience directly the content of your awareness and notice how you are aware….remain here for as long as it is comfortable…at this point you may feel relaxed or deeply relaxed, or perhaps you feel calm and at ease …No need to comment, describe, like or dislike…just be….rest in your awareness…noticing, feeling…be aware that you are aware….just being…even when there are distractions, you notice that you are aware of being distracted, that is it…aware…just being

When you are ready, savor this experience and start feeling your body and its surroundings, remember where you are, if you think it is useful, set your intention to remember this feeling of awareness as well as the difference between awareness and its content…. Be curious to observe what happens when you are able to notice this subtle distinction between your awareness and its content. Does this make any difference in your thoughts, sensations, feeling tone or mood…if it doesn’t make any difference, it is perfectly fine…

Gradually move your fingers, toes, hands, feet, arms and legs, slowly open your eyes and see, as if for the first time, the space you are in…

In this practice we alternated between noticing the content of awareness through your perception of sensations in your body and focusing on awareness itself, your ability to witness. Although simple this is a very useful and powerful skill because it enables you to be present and to notice the always changing content of awareness. If the content of your awareness keeps changing all the time, does it make sense to identify with something impermanent? Consider practicing this exercise regularly so that it becomes easier to notice the distinctions between content of awareness and awareness itself.As usual, without strain, struggle or self-judgment be curious about what happens when you practice.

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This is an excerpt from the book Unravel the thread: Applying the ancient wisdom of yoga to live a happy life

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