How to Live in Conscious Self Awareness in the World

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This week I was I asked to talk to staff at an organisation about self awareness. Now the very definition of self awareness is conscious knowledge of one’s character and feelings, but I am using the phrase conscious self awareness here very deliberately.

I do believe most people have a modicum of self awareness, but when I think about the degree of my own self awareness, I can see that I was pretty unconscious of lots of aspects of myself in the many seasons of my life to this point, I can also see that my self awareness is still unfolding.

In hindsight there is a great divide between conscious awareness versus unconscious or subconscious. I was aware of myself in many basic ways, I was aware of myself as a physical entity, and I was aware of some of my character traits, values and beliefs. But I was almost completely identified with my thoughts, I was not aware of myself from many other perspectives – including a more conscious awareness of myself.

The process of conscious awareness really began in the kind of self development work that has become common in many corporate type workplaces; the aim was to understand my traits, styles and preferences. This was in search of career and personal success.

As I began to understand myself more in relation to others, I realised I couldn’t just be categorized neatly into a personality style or a Myers Briggs profile, and my personal inquiry moved into more probing questions like:

What is it like to work for me? Have me work for you?
What is it like to have me as a customer?
What is it actually like to live in close quarters with me?
What is it like to share responsibilities with me?
What is it like to have me as a mum? What is it like to have me as a daughter?
What is it like to have me as a neighbor? As a member of the community?
What is it like to have me as a friend? As a relative?

The more I looked, the more confused I got initially, a big warning sign that I was not living authentically, but I had no idea who the real me was.

Since success did not bring the happiness I thought it would, with an unfulfilling career, lack of energy and clashes in relationships disfiguring the landscape of my life, then began the search for meaning.

I began to ponder questions like Why are we here? and What is the meaning of life? Like a fish swimming in the ocean, who sees only the water world before it and knows nothing of the existence even of a world above, that is how equate my own perceptions of life until I started to learn about the nature of our existence.

As I began to see my life and our world through an entirely different set of lenses, a much broader part of me began to awaken and ask “who am I?”

This led to questions like:

What would it be like to be free of the cumbersome impossibility of trying to control people and circumstances?
What would it be like to look at everything in my life as helpful, prompting me to look at myself, others or situations with curiosity rather than defence?
What would it be like to feel myself as an essential part of a perfect whole?
What would it be like to feel connected to everything else?
What would it be like to sense the universe within, the collective individual consciousnesses of the thirty seven trillion cells of my body?
What would it be like to feel an intrinsic part of our cosmos?
What would it be like to truly know that I am master of my own destiny?
What would it be like to co-create with the very imperative for life?

With a broader perspective on life itself, I started to see how interconnected everything is.

This question of Who am I? is one about my true nature.

I can look in the mirror (literally), and see all that my mind tries to hide from me. My soft sensitive skin tells me what my mind and experiences cannot, it displays my essential self. But the set of my jaw and lines on my face tell me about the harshness of the journey.

When I observe what is going on in my body, there is much more to be revealed about the emotional waters upon which I sail.

When I look in the mirror figuratively and see what is being reflected back to me from other people, all the things that trigger me, and the things I admire, there is a wealth of knowledge to be uncovered.
Claire Zammit talks about this process of discovery as the old stories, old patterns that halt us on the way to self actualization. These lie at the deepest level of self awareness, and they arise and get set in motion from our earliest childhood years, long before our conscious memories begin.

The kinds of mantras going on (unconsciously) within us are things like I am not worthy, I’m powerless, I am not enough, I’m a failure, I’m alone and so on.   

She gives some examples of how these halt our progress towards the things we really desire in our life, and stop us from reaching our full potential:

• “You cannot attract love and an extraordinary partner on top of an inner sense of being unlovable. You could meet the right person but you can’t receive their love so you push them away.”
• “You can’t magnetize support on top of a belief that you’re alone. Because you have ways of being where you’re hyper self sufficient so there is no room for anyone to contribute to you.”
• “You can’t generate success on top of a deep feeling of being unworthy because inside (this feeling of being unworthy) you don’t really invest the amount of time or resources that you would need to do a good job/to create success, and you use that as evidence you don’t have something of value to contribute.”
• “You can’t discover your purpose on top of a feeling of not being enough because you won’t show up for opportunities or take the next steps as they come to you.”
• “You can’t make lasting changes with your health if you believe that you don’t matter. Your self care practices are not going to stick because you will habitually turn your attention back to taking care of everyone else because you feel so anxious when you shift your attention towards taking care of you.”
• “You can’t make an impact on the world if you secretly feel you have nothing worthwhile to contribute, because even if you met that marketing genius who could help you launch, the chances are you’d create something that doesn’t produce value for people – which would be more evidence of I don’t really have anything worthwhile to contribute.”

Probably like you, I have a lifetime of hurts, I decided to let them mean something and propel me towards more joy. Everything before this level of inquiry on the journey to conscious self awareness is simply scratching the surface.

My old stories and patterns were so entrenched that this slow unfolding was probably necessary to get me to even see them. The level of pain derived from being separated from my essential self generally has to be pretty intense for me to take action, after all, perhaps like you, I learned to be someone else to please everyone else from the starting gate.

Despite all that, I don’t believe life is ever done pointing me in the right direction. When I say right direction, I don’t honestly think any one of us can get it wrong. It seems more like a game of snakes and ladders where we might go forwards a few steps and then slide backwards, but eventually we end up in the right place.

Will you take the risk to look at your own inner stories and patterns? Because the truth is, when we are held back by an unhelpful belief that is a sure indication that the very opposite of that belief is the one that will unlock your potential.  Stepping into conscious self awareness at a deeper level, is about fulfilling our potential; our potential to feel joy and feel fulfilled and to make a positive impact on the people and world around us.

If you want to dive deeper into conscious self awareness there are many roads that can be taken. In my articles I often refer to those resources I’ve found helpful; there is an abundance out there taking many forms from self help to online courses and working with various practitioners. The work of looking at our subconscious inner stories and patterns is often referred to as just “the work” or “shadow work”, as well as many other names like parts work, fragmentation/completion process, Internal Family Systems, Inner Child Work, Jungian Psychology, Freudian Psychology, Inner Shamanic Journey Work and the list goes on.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy I Am Worth It – Are You?, Why Projecting is the Best Tool for Self Awareness, Honour Your Story but Free Yourself of Its Shackles and How to Heal the Past so You Can Live Your Best Present. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.