Awareness and focus are probably two things that matter in our lives. We all are aware of so many things in life. We are aware of our families, finances, jobs, relationships, friends, looks, clothing, society, eco-system, and so on. But what about the awareness of our own body and mind? Have we ever read the manual of this body and mind? Are we aware of the deeper and deeper layers of the mind? Are we aware of how the unconscious mind guides our decisions?
When we did some sessions with the students, we realized that the career choices made by the students were quite different from their areas of interest. Someone may have an interest in sports and has chosen engineering. Someone had an interest in cooking and chose a career in medical science. What is that which is driving these choices? It is the unconscious mind that is driving these choices. We are not aware of the depths of the unconscious mind. It keeps playing the most crucial role in our decision-making process. Conscious mind is just the tip of the iceberg.
From the most routine decisions to the most crucial decisions, the unconscious mind drives every decision. Say for example simple decisions such as what to eat for breakfast. Our unconscious mind may have a strong liking for something tasty, while the conscious mind may be trying to choose something healthy. Generally, the conscious mind may be able to prevail. However, the moment the conscious mind is busy with something, say examinations in case of students or some presentation at the office, the unconscious mind finds its way and by the time time we become conscious, we already have a cooky in our mouth. Decisions about career, life partner, change of place, kids, etc, are all somehow driven by the unconscious mind.
We have a very deep clinging to social validation in our unconscious minds. Since childhood, all the kids are divided into "Good" and "Bad" kids, and parents, society, teachers, and everybody around keep conforming to this division. To be "good", we just need to conform to the belief systems of society. If society says marriage is good, we have to somehow accept that without questioning. There is a perceived reward to being "good". We get validation. We need validation for our actions since we are not sure what the is truth and we have never made efforts to find the truth. That is why it is important that our actions are validated by the society, parents, and friends. It's a lot of effort to find truth and that is the reason why we settle for the second best being social validation, unable to realize that we fall into the trap and compromise our potential. Social validation keeps driving our lives and we never realize what we actually want to do.
Kids take the crucial decisions of their careers just to please their parents. Some kids make such decisions for social validation. They choose the careers that are given the best ratings by society. We make the choices of our life partners too. Choose a life partner that fits well into the family. We take up jobs that society validates to be good. Society appreciates wealth and power and therefore most of the decisions about our careers depend upon whether we get enough power and money out of these choices.
By awareness, I mean the awareness of all these dynamics. It means being aware of the missing pieces of the story. Our brain cooks so many stories around everything to enable us to make decisions. Usually, it deceives us by showing us a very limited part of itself and hiding a significant part that we are unconscious of. Probably, the level of awareness is one of the two key factors that decide the richness of the experiences we gather in our lifetime. It decides the range of our lives. Suppose we are aware of a relatively small portion of ourselves, in that case, we remain limited. While awareness of the deeper and deeper layers of the unconscious mind allows us to examine them. Once we become conscious of our unconscious mind, it gives us the freedom to examine and analyze, and we become free to make informed choices for our lives.
The second factor that decides how we live life is the focus. If we focus on comforts and pleasures, even if we have a complete awareness of our conscious and unconscious mind, we will just use such awareness to get more and more pleasures. That is what Ravana did. Probably, he was one of the most aware persons on the earth. However, his focus was on comforts and pleasures and we can see what happened to him. The moment we have a focus on outcomes, we are focused on one or the other pleasure. However, an honest examination would definitely reveal that focus on pleasures and comforts is so transient. All comforts and pleasures turn into pain very soon. The moment our focus shifts to the process, the present moment, the work at hand, the method, rather than the solutions, we get an immense joy that is not dependent upon any event. This joy comes to us while we are carrying out the action. I need not wait for the views likes and comments while writing this post. The joy comes from writing the post itself.
Awareness of the unconscious mind requires working on the mental stories that we have made over a lifetime. With repeated behavior, the mental stories keep getting stronger and sometimes, they appear to be more real than the reality itself. We need to work on the layers of our unconscious mind too by asking ourselves the reasons behind a particular behavior pattern. We need to work on the conscious mind as well by working on the misinformation and propaganda of society, especially in the era of social media and the internet, this carries even more significance. We need to work on different biases that our brains have so that our logic is pure and it helps us make rational decisions. However, even with this entire clarity, if our focus remains on comforts and pleasures, a clear mind would definitely help us achieve our objectives easily, though it will not bring fulfillment to us. Joy and fulfillment lie in the process and not in the outcomes. Finally, the moment we start enjoying the game, it does not matter whether we win or lose.
Comments