awareness

Awareness and Acceptance are the core of bliss…

That’s the simple version… the more you develop your awareness, and accept your experience, the more your experience will transform into something magical, something that defies description… but for the sake of simplicity, we will describe it as bliss.

Much of day to day experience is serving primal drives with elaborate masks. We are social creatures…and as such, a large portion of our communications and other actions are geared toward achieving greater social approval. Big cars, big houses, and flashy clothes are all frequently used for greater social validation. Our consistent social behaviors are geared toward this as well: more talkative people get to make lots of friends and get their validation that way, while more aloof people get to appear ‘above it all’ or ‘out of reach’.

Social maneuvering is the enemy of relaxation!

With awareness, we can begin to notice these behaviors in ourselves. With acceptance we can notice our behavior without judging ourselves harshly for it. The most important part of your internal experience is the feeling… the physical sensations in and around the body. Be mindful of the internal images and internal dialogue as well, but keep in mind how these are leading the feelings, or being lead by the feelings. Without awareness, images, words, and feelings can become jumbled together… which leads to more unpleasantness of the experience… a greater degree of suffering. Awareness allows us to detangle what is going on internally, and thus better appreciate or alter our sense of self, and therefore our reality…

If you clean the windows occasionally, the world looks different!!!

Acceptance allows us to allow. The true unpleasantness of ‘negative experiences’ does not come from the experience itself, but from our resistance to it. If you begin to play with relaxing both mentally and physically, you will get a visceral experience of the flow of your life.

Keep in mind that acceptance doesn’t mean you can’t take action to change your situation… in fact once you begin to reduce/eliminate the resistance in your mind/body (it always feels like mental or physical tension to me… having one usually means both are present), you will find that you can change your situation much more quickly and efficiently.

Once you accept your experience of life, it becomes easy to change!

Formal practice (sitting meditation) can really help, but isn’t required. The best opportunities for this are already present in your life. What really annoys you? Who is it that you can’t stand? What do you see, hear, and feel internally when you encounter that which you dislike? What would it be like if you begin to bring a little more awareness and acceptance into your experience?

When you bring a little more meditation into your life… life begins to become your meditation!

keep smiling,

Ben

P.S. If you haven’t signed up already, get your free e-course in time for the new year!!!

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