THE IMPORTANCE OF AWARENESS
14 DECEMBER 2021 (13 MIN READ)
While watching the blockbuster movie, Free Guy, I realized how easy it is for most people to become completely unaware of themselves. In the film, the protagonist wakes up at the same time every day, puts on the same outfit, gets the same cup of coffee, goes to the same office, sees the same people, and maintains the same state of mind—without ever checking in on how he really feels inside or what is actually best for him. Then, suddenly, a light bulb goes off in his head and he realizes that unless he steps back from this boring routine, and checks in with his heart’s desires, he will never get what he really wants out of life. How often do we as humans in this modern world take a step back and assess what’s really going on? Unfortunately, the answer is not much. Have you ever been completely spaced out while driving and then you suddenly arrive at your destination? If so, that’s how many of us live our lives: completely fucking checked out. The key to combating this is cultivating awareness.
At its core, awareness is simply asking ourselves, at a deep level, why we do the things that we do, as well as paying attention to how those things make us feel. Until I was twenty-one, I never did any of that, I simply did things without ever checking in. I ate whatever I desired when I was hungry. I smoked weed whenever my anxiety got too extreme. I took Adderall whenever I couldn’t focus. I chased women around because I thought it was fun. After years of these habits and failing to discover why I was really doing these things, my body and soul started to deteriorate. The unhealthy food and constant eating destroyed my gut health, which affected my happiness levels since most of your serotonin is produced in the gut. The habit of medicating my anxiety and inability to focus gradually led me to become a pretty serious drug addict, ruining aspects of my life in the process. And constantly chasing women around without understanding why led me to enter several toxic relationships, destroying my heart in the process. All of this culminated with me being deeply suicidal, which is when I decided to step into awareness, investigating the motives behind all of my actions. In doing so, my healing process began and I became the person I am proud to be today.
Almost every deeply spiritual or highly emotionally intelligent person I have met has at one point been suicidal. Even crazier, getting that low is what drove them to start becoming aware. We are so fucking stubborn as human beings that we do not make real changes unless everything crashes and burns. The only time we go up is when there are no more steps to climb down. I’m here to tell you that this doesn’t have to be the case. You can start climbing up halfway down the ladder—before it’s too late. I was lucky enough to not take my own life, but many who reach the bottom don’t come back up. And all they really needed was some awareness.
In order to properly convince you about why awareness is so important, I will cover four main sectors of life—and the role of awareness in each one: love, mental health, physical health, and societal health. In doing so, you will come to realize how awareness will improve those fields for you, and how staying unconscious will cause more damage than you think.
LOVE
Without awareness, love becomes a complete shit show that turns you into an egotistical maniac. About two years ago, when I first started seeing my current girlfriend, I would try and control her as much as possible, getting angry whenever she did something that made me feel anxious. Back then, I would constantly see her as being in the wrong, when it was actually my fault for not loving her unconditionally. What was getting in the way? Although I was a huge asshole, it’s not as simple as that. I was not aware of how the emotional abandonment of my mother still affected me as an adult. As a child, I had no control over my mother’s hurtful actions. I would just wait in misery for her to show me that she loved me. Thus, when you put big muscles and good looks on top of that wounded child, he will use those charming tools to manipulate romantic situations to go in his favor. My ego thought that I could control my partner’s actions to save myself from getting hurt.
Once I realized that a hurt little kid was ruining my relationship, I tended to him and tried to recognize what he needed. Most importantly, he needed space to grieve what he could not comprehend as a child. I gave him that space and shed a lot of tears with him. He also needed someone to care for him and put his needs first, which I also granted him. With this new understanding, whenever my girlfriend would trigger me, I would go straight to my inner child and see what he needed, rather than avoiding my feelings by getting angry at my partner. Just this one piece of information changed my whole love life for the better. Without it, I would have continued living in the shadow of a controlling monster. In terms of your work, reflect on how your parents treated you throughout your childhood. Whatever hurt the most is what you will need to heal in adulthood, otherwise someone else will pay the price—like my poor girlfriend at the initial stages of our relationship. You tend to attract whatever emotional wounds you need to heal—so allow your romantic partner to act as a mirror, showing you the internal work that needs to be done. Do not use them as an excuse to keep repressing your pain and acting from your shadow. You cannot love all of your partner until you start loving all of yourself, so stare at the dark sides of yourself that have been negatively ruling your life and start coating them with loving awareness.
Once you start treating love as a way to investigate your internal wounds, it’s crucial to be with someone who deals with it in the same way. If you are constantly using your frustrations at your partner as growing points for yourself, but your partner does the complete opposite, you will either start veering back into unconscious territory with them, or you will start viewing yourself as the problem, rather than them, leading to issues of low self-worth. Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” But if the partner you are with is like rubber, you will become increasingly dull and rust away over time. Because of this truth, choose someone who matches you on a level of awareness and consciousness. You will notice how much faster both of you grow as a collective unit.
MENTAL HEALTH
Our intellect has an amazing ability to masquerade our emotions, repressing them in the process. This is why I believe that the smartest of people are often the ones who are the most emotionally damaged. Let me explain this concept a little deeper. Let’s say you are feeling anxious, but instead of feeling it, you start spiraling in your mind—searching for answers to justify the emotion and make it go away. But that painful emotion does not just magically vanish, it stays in your system ready to explode the next chance it gets. And the more you keep repressing those emotions, the more fuel you are adding to the fire—creating a nuclear weapon ready to detonate in the future. In college, I would always go straight to my mind when I felt anxious and often found a logical solution, but the constant emotional repression led me to have daily panic attacks later on. To prevent this, allow awareness to enter the equation. When you notice spiraling or depressive thoughts, feel your body and label the emotion. If you feel anxiety in your stomach, move that energy. If you feel sadness in your heart, let the tears flow. This method will release the feeling and free you from its hold, rather than feeding the brain those emotions and having the mind make things much worse. In short, be aware of how your mind will try its best to not allow you to feel your emotions. Dare to own and release your emotions or else they will own you and damage your mental health.
Another way we avoid our emotions is through addictive habits, with such things as digital technology and social media, or even worse, drugs and alcohol. Let’s begin with our favorite little gizmos. Often, whenever we feel anxious, sad, or “bored,” we go straight to our smartphones and start swiping away. Similar to hiding behind intellect, this habit just represses those emotions and adds fuel to the emotional fire—which you will have to deal with sooner or later. Although more severe, the same concept applies to drugs and alcohol. You are only reaching for those substances because you cannot deal with something in yourself. So, to combat this destructive habit, simply ask yourself why you are reaching for your phone or a substance. Get curious about what it is that you are avoiding. Then, challenge yourself to sit with that emotion and work through it. The more you do this, the more likely you are to stop needing those escape mechanisms, and the more you will find yourself enamored by the present moment. This strategy is what got me off of the pills I was addicted to for years. It is incredibly difficult in the beginning since those emotions have been left unattended for so long, but I promise it will become easier over time. I truly believe that once you feel like you can handle whatever emotion life throws at you, you become resilient and free. But you will not arrive at that place if you keep hiding behind your phone and drugs.
One last way in which we avoid our emotions is through playing everyone’s favorite game: the blame game. Unfortunately, this game has become increasingly popular due to both political extremes constantly blaming each other for their issues. And, making matters worse, the Left has started to reward people who have the most external circumstances to blame, creating an oppression Olympics where there can be no winner. Often, when I feel the energy of those who are constantly blaming others, they are deeply anxious and angry people. And they want to do anything but feel those emotions, so they make other people responsible for them. Consider the alt-right aficionados angrily blaming Kamala Harris and Bill Gates for any deviance in their life, or extreme liberals believing that anyone who doesn’t think exactly like them poses a danger and thus deserves all their anger. I’m all for getting mad at politicians, especially these days, but do not do it as a way to escape your own emotions. I truly believe that if you find yourself on either political extreme, you are emotionally dysregulated. And that’s because if someone disagreeing with you causes you to throw a hissy fit, then you have some internal work to do. That work involves deep awareness and owning your emotions. The minute you feel angry over something, that is yours to deal with—shouting at a person and blaming them for making you feel bad will get you nowhere. It’s like you are telling your body that you refuse to acknowledge it—over and over again. I hate to break it to you, but nothing and no one is coming to save you. The only way through is by taking responsibility for your negative emotions, and playing the blame game will never get you there.
PHYSICAL HEALTH
Physical health is the most important component of living a good and healthy life. I used to believe that everything was mental, refusing to give in to my physical ailments and continually listening to that military commander in my head telling me to “keep fucking going” no matter what. This belief changed when I went to a functional doctor a couple of weeks ago—she told me I had a bunch of stomach parasites and viruses in my brain, questioning how I functioned at such a high level for so long. After having done her health protocol for a bit now, I feel better than ever—more mentally clear and happy overall. Life seems like less of a battle now and more of a beautiful journey—all because I got my physical health in check. For the years that I refused to listen to my body, I was ignoring the whispers that told me, “You are seriously depressed and your stomach is not functioning. Your brain cannot recall information it once was able to.” I kept ignoring those whispers until they became screams and I could no longer take it anymore. I refused to listen to my awareness telling me that something was wrong with my body, and I paid the price. After having gone through this, I make it a constant effort to check in with my body, especially after eating, because whatever you put into your body directly affects your state of mind.
Do you ever eat a heavy lunch and feel incredibly groggy and moody afterwards? If your answer is yes, then you are just like every other human, except many have zero awareness about it. Consider the vast amount of people who grab a quick burger and fries for lunch, without even considering how it will make them feel later on. To combat this, check in with your body about forty-five minutes after you eat something. If you don’t feel great, keep shifting what you eat until you find something that makes you feel good. This same strategy should get applied to everything you do in life. For example, pay attention to how you feel throughout the day after having exercised in the morning, versus skipping a workout. After you realize what your body needs to operate at a high level, you will never want to go back. With this improved physical health, your mental health will be smoother, and with better mental health comes a better love life. As I said in the beginning, it all starts with physical health, which feeds off of awareness.
SOCIETAL HEALTH
As I noted at the end of the “Mental Health” section, we are facing a deep divide in this country, where both sides blame each other for everything. I believe the cause of this is tribalism and echo chambers, which are amplified by a lack of awareness. These days, if you are on the Left, whatever The New York Times, CNN, or your lefty friends throw your way, you will immediately believe without questioning. The same goes for the Right, who believe whatever Fox News and conservative journalists are saying, without searching for the truth themselves. The problem is that these news organizations are monetizing off of division and fear, forcing them to hide certain truths or manipulate them to fit into their agendas. To fight this, instead of immediately believing whatever divisive information is thrown your way, first become aware of what reaction they are trying to get out of you. If those emotions are anger and fear, take a step back and understand that you are being manipulated, so consult a wide array of perspectives before you choose what to believe. Personally, I read information from all sides and have friends on all sides, just so I do not get stuck in one echo chamber. Also, I like to make my own opinions, rather than having them forced upon me without me even knowing.
Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Fifth Agreement says to “be skeptical, but learn to listen.” How many of us these days are immediately believing what those in our political tribe are telling us, and refuse to listen to anyone on the other side? Unfortunately, most of the country. This is what politicians and major news organizations want: to make you believe whatever they say and discredit those who disagree. So, to heal the divide and to stop being a pawn in a political game, become aware of when you are not being skeptical and when you are not listening. Because the minute you stop doing that is the minute you have been brainwashed.
