How Do You Engage Active Conscious Awareness?
Practicing mindfulness is equally easy and challenging.
Let’s get factual, shall we? Every single human being on Planet Earth is of three minds. Each of these has a job to do as part of your holistic, overall being. No one can function without the other.
The first is the unconscious mind. This is where your brain controls the pumping of your heart, the working of your lungs, digestion, synapses firing, and all the necessary things that allow you to live. Apart from breathing and practices to raise and lower your heart rate (which requires the use of the conscious mind), this is wholly automatic.
The second, and arguably most dominant, is the subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind is, to all intents and purposes, the home of your self-existence. In the subconscious mind, your beliefs, values, and habits live. Alongside them, you also have all your memories (which kind of turns this into more of a self-storage space). Because memory and habit live here, this is where you reside when you do things via rote, routine, and autopilot.
There are many things that are best handled subconsciously. This becomes a problem when you allow yourself to be manipulated and controlled by other people, places, and things. More about that later.
The third is the conscious mind. The conscious mind is where you actively engage with the world around you. It’s the conscious mind where you engage your six senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, extrasensory) and your inner awareness (thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, approach). What the conscious mind connects to is always there, but it’s not always active since most people live in their subconscious mind.
To find, create, or act on change for your life, it’s necessary to practice active conscious awareness. That’s mindfulness.
But how do you do that?
There’s no One True Way
Over the years, I’ve been studying mindfulness. I can’t tell you how many podcasts and audiobooks I’ve listened to, books and blogs I’ve read, and the like. This has included academic sources like scientists, educators, and psychologists. Then there were the mystical aspects, including philosophers, gurus, and other hooky-spooky practitioners, students, and masters. My studies have also included people who have, like me, sought out numerous sources and taken bits and pieces to gain understanding, and then shared it.
Some have then capitalized on this and created systems, brands, and products to share their way. There’s nothing wrong with that, with the exception of those who don’t actually walk their talk or knowingly deceive to make a buck.
The true students of this idea know that their way might not be your way. That’s because there is no One True Way. What works for me might not work for you, and vice versa.
When I share what I’ve learned, I’m aiming to present the bare bones to you. That’s why I’m often vague about certain practices. Because my practice might not be yours.
Take meditation. I meditate 10-20 minutes a day. However, I know full well that meditation isn’t for everyone. This is where my 2-minute deep breathing idea presents an alternative way to get yourself to the void/no-mind place that meditation takes me to.
So, that written, please allow me to share my process.
How do I engage active conscious awareness?
First, it’s important that you know this is not a one-and-done process. You can’t engage active conscious awareness and ALWAYS be mindful. That’s because people have tens of thousands of thoughts per day, and your mind cannot actively process all of them.
Hence, this is an ongoing process. Any time that I desire to engage active conscious awareness, that starts by pausing and taking in, via my senses, my surroundings. What do I see, smell, and hear? What’s that taste in my mouth? How does my shirt feel against my skin and the keys beneath my fingers as I type? Is there an active, passive, or currently null sense of dread in the collective consciousness of the world?
That puts me in touch with what’s without. Now, I must address what’s within. This comes down to questions that can only be asked and answered right here and now, in the present. These engage active conscious awareness and include,
- What am I thinking?
- What am I feeling?
- How am I feeling?
- What are my intentions?
- Is my approach currently leaning positive or negative?
- What am I doing (or not doing)?
Asking and answering these questions, coupled with recognizing the space I occupy, here and now, activates my conscious awareness.
Engaging with it is another matter.
Utilizing active conscious awareness
When you’re actively, consciously aware, you have clarity. That clarity, however, is a product strictly of the present.
It’s all too easy to start recrimination for past misdeeds you might have done by rote, routine, and habit subconsciously, or during a past moment of mindfulness. The trouble is, the past has come and gone, and you cannot do jack shit about it. All you can do is examine it, see what lessons it has taught you, and take that with you now as you move forward.
Once you become actively consciously aware, the way you utilize that is by making active choices and decisions. That is what mindfulness is. It’s thinking, feeling, examining who, what, where, how, and why you are, then choosing and deciding how that impacts you.
When you allow your subconscious mind to do the driving, and you largely live by rote, routine, and habit, you still make choices and decisions. However, they’re not entirely conscious. Before you know it, you are smoking that cigarette, visiting with that person you’re not fond of, giving up your time and peace of mind, or voting for someone who will hurt you and others you care about.
Which takes me to an important digression.
Everyone needs to spend time living subconsciously
Nobody, and I mean nobody, can live actively, consciously aware all the time. That’s because you have too many different thoughts, feelings, intentions, and the like happening all the time to be consciously aware of them all.
Remember, people have an average of 40,000 – 70,000 thoughts PER DAY. The human mind is incapable of actively examining every one of these. Similarly, there are 8 billion people on Planet Earth. On average, people can only remember maybe 5000 faces, total. Most of that goes into your subconscious mind.
Like the many repetitive thoughts among those tens of thousands you have per day, certain activities are best handled by rote, routine, and habit. In other words, subconsciously.
Take making your bed, pulling on clothes, and brushing your teeth. Do these require active, conscious awareness to be done? No.
Also, when you experience something earth-shattering, to process it, you might need to relegate certain things to subconscious rote, routine, and habit. This can apply to both good things and bad things. Because the human mind can only handle and process so much actively, subconscious, automated things allow you to live.
Thus, everyone needs to spend time living subconsciously. However, this becomes a problem when you spend too much time subconsciously.
Employing your limited but not insignificant control
Another truth we need to recognize is that shit happens. Random happenstance, freak accidents, and all sorts of things occur that you have ZERO control over. And I mean none.
You can do nothing about the weather, the actions of other people, natural disasters, space debris falling to Earth, your kids talking back to you, and more. Anything having to do with people, places, and things outside of you, yourself, you cannot control.
Yet, some people try to control others and things they can’t. Look at the state of the world right now, and you’ll see all sorts of examples of this.
The fine line between a leader and a dictator is guidance versus force. A leader offers guidance for you to traverse your own path. A dictator tells you it’s their way or you can go fuck yourself. A leader empowers while a dictator disempowers.
When all is said and done, you can only control what you do with the input you receive from your six senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, extrasensory) and what you do with your inner awareness (thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, approach).
This is where mindfulness, engaging your active conscious awareness, begins. If you are discontent with the results from the input you have consciously sought to recognize, you can do things to change it.
Don’t like what you’re thinking? Choose to focus on something new. Not a fan of the smell of your office? Clean it, buy an air freshener, or both. That’s how you engage active conscious awareness.
The more you employ mindfulness to control the few things you can, the more you find ways to foment change. The more you engage your active conscious awareness, the more you’re empowered. Empowered people empower others.
Active conscious awareness is not a weakness
Anyone who tells you that being “woke” is bad has fallen for a terrible lie. “Wokeness” isn’t some messed-up, liberal notion of fairness and equality. No, what it is is kindness, compassion, empathy, and caring about other people, places, and things, and their wellness and wellbeing.
There is a dangerous, ongoing campaign of disempowerment and disenfranchisement on the part of a vocal minority seeking to manipulate people to allow them control over short-term elements of reality. These include money, “power”, and influence. Resist them, and they call you out for standing up for yourself.
The only way to change the collective consciousness is one person at a time. And since the only person you can control in any way, shape, or form is you, that means you can change only yourself. If you seek to be empowered and to live your life the best way you can, engaging active conscious awareness is how you empower yourself to that end.
This is done via the choices and decisions you make when you’re present, here and now, and mindful. And it truly is that easy (while also that challenging).
It’s an ongoing practice. You won’t always get it right. But you, and only you, can employ mindfulness for your life experience. You alone can make choices and decisions actively, consciously, and mindfully.
Will you use your limited control to change yourself and be a source for changing the collective consciousness for the better?
This is the seventh-hundred-fifth (705) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to repost and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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