What is the Awareness Mind?
You may have heard the term awareness mind or witness mind and wondered what it was about or how to access it.
Firstly the awareness mind is the act of being aware of what your mind is thinking. It’s not getting caught up in the thoughts, but just watching or witnessing them as if they belonged to someone else. Remember you are not your thoughts and if you cannot separate yourself from your thoughts any self reflection work will become very difficult.
Think of it as watching a river from the bank, its lovely standing on the side and witness the river, but if you fall in that river it is going to take you wherever it wants and it’s very hard getting out of a fast moving river. When people talk about your thoughts having you, instead of you having them, this is what they mean. You are drowning in the river of thoughts and cannot get out. When you are in this space it is very difficult to see any other way of being, so you act out of conditioning instead of free will. When you have your thoughts, you can choose how fast the river flows and in what direction, which means you can choose how to show up in the world.
How does one activate their awareness mind?
This is a skill that will need to be practiced, so go easy on yourself and at the same time don’t give up. Most people start practicing the awareness mind with guided meditations. This is where you listen to a meditation where someone is leading you and reminding you of what you are focusing on. It is easier to start with some guidance until you get the hang of what you are suppose to be doing, otherwise you can feel lost or get easily distracted. ‘Healthy Minds’ is a free app, worth checking out https://hminnovations.org/meditation-app. You can also search YouTube for guided meditation, breath counting meditation, or Body Scan. These are all entry level practices that will engage the awareness mind while providing you the support you need to get started.
After a while you will be able to start practicing on your own, just watching your thoughts, not interacting or judging them, just witnessing. You can do this when you are brushing your teeth, cooking dinner, working out, etc. Ideally you start practicing this awareness when you are in a calm state, not when you are being triggered or stressed. Once you feel more comfortable accessing your awareness mind in a calm state, then you can start making real progress with your inner work. You will be able to notice when you are getting attached or judging the thoughts and you will have the skills to pause and redirect your mind. Being able to feel when you are getting caught up in a story or are being distracted will bring great insight to what your ego does not want you to look at.
I can’t do it, it won’t work for me!
… Is that true, or is that resistance talking? The awareness mind is not just something you just start doing. Like running a marathon, you need to practice and build up stamina. Your ego does not want you to just watch thoughts. The ego was designed to judge and it loves the panic state of “what if’s”. You might get really uncomfortable not judging, because that is what the mind is always doing. To sit and watch the thoughts and not judge them feels dangerous. All too often people give up because they feel so uncomfortable and they don’t give themselves enough time to learn how to just watch their thoughts. It sounds easy but in practice it is very difficult because this is not how the mind is wired. Most people accept practicing physical things, but we don’t allow enough space for practicing with our mind as it “doesn’t feel real”. Don’t give up on yourself, keep practicing! Overtime you will start to notice the awareness mind turning on, like a reflex, when your mind starts racing. It is a really great feeling when you have the awareness that you need to step back and take a breath, or two.
Tips for engaging the awareness mind
Try lots of different mediations, some voices are easier to listen to than others
Try active meditations, you might need to distract your mind with physical movement while you are work with it
You can start with 30 seconds intervals at a time, 30s on 30s off. Gradually build up the time you are engaged in awareness.
Celebrate the small wins. It is easy to dismiss the 1min of focus time when others can sit in awareness for a full hour. I guarantee you they did not start that way
Practice daily, like anything the more you practice the easier it becomes
Why I am doing this again?
There is lots of data out there about how meditation is good for your overall health, but the same can be said about so many other practices. The truth is all of these different practices are very similar and often have different words for the same thing. Find a practise that challenges you to work with your mind, not necessarily controlling it but directing it. The more you purposely engage your mind, the less it will run wild and the less you will act on conditioning. Cultivating the awareness mind can help you stay clear headed when you are being triggered providing you the mental space to separate the true reality from the false reality your ego is creating. Without awareness we walk around in a world that is mostly made up in our minds and this can lead to a lot of confusion. The more awareness you cultivate the more clearly you can see the world as you pull back your own projections. This means you can make better decisions, be firmer in your actions, and have more compassion for yourself and for others.
Remember you are not your thoughts and you are not your emotions. You need to have awareness to be able to separate your true self from these human experiences so you can learn from them.
