It started when I listened to Dandapani’s interview about this book in Talks at Google podcast during a jog. It is out of my realm but it was intriguing enough to want to learn more.
It is a great book; one that I should have learned and practised much earlier in life. The book is full with useful teachings of life connecting time and energy (life’s greatest gifts) to focus through awareness and the mind. Below is less of a summary; more of lots of highlights put into a post.
Part 1: A life of purpose and joy
Chapter 1: Foundations of a concentrated mind
A focused life is one in which you are able to give whoever and whatever you are engaged with your undivided attention. You are fully present in all your experiences and thus creating a truly rewarding life, though your experiences are not driven by a greater overarching purpose. A purpose-focused life, on the other hand, is one in which your life’s purpose defines your priorities, and your priorities drive what you focus on.
Many desired to live a focused life but most of these people never ended up living a focused life. Their desire is not strong enough. When they shared their convictions, they were going through a challenging phase in life, and the pain of it caused them to seek an alternative way of living. But often, when the pain subsides, the desire to live a different way of life ebbs away with the pain, and people default back to who they are.
Unless we make the case to ourselves for why we need to live a focused life, we will not do so.
Chapter 2: Setting up for success
There are three general impertuses for why anyone should lead a focused life: happiness, manifesting our goals and death.
Happiness
Life is meant to be lived joyously.
Gurudeva
When Gurudeva, Dandapani’s guru was dying and knew that he had only days left, he said to some monks: “What an amazing life. I would not have traded it for anything in the world.”
How many people can truly say that? Most cannot. Most cannot because they did not live a life of purpose. They were not clear what their purpose in life was, and as a result they were not clear about their priorities (who and what is important) and thus did not know what to focus on. Happines should never be pursued. Rather, one should pursue a lifestyle where the by-product is happiness.
One source of joy and happiness is giving undivided attention to al the people and things that truly matter to us including the experiences in life that we have so thoughtfully chosen to have.
One of the greatest blessings of knowing who and what to focus on in life is knowing who and what not to focus on. When you spend time with people you love and you can focus on them when you are with them, the by-product of that is the feeling of happiness. Construct a lifestyle, based on your purpose and priorities whose py-product is happiness.
In doing the things that make you happy, how do you truly get the most out of them? The answer is to be completely present in all our engagements so that we can fully experience them.
How can we be completely present? By developing unwavering focus.
Manifesting the life we want
Life is a manifestation of where you invest your energy.
Dandapani
Whatever we invest our energy in will start to grow. Energy works in exactly the same way like water where we water a garden bed, both weeds and the flowers will both grow as water do not differentiate between weeds and flowers. If I invest my energy in something positive, it will grow and become positive. If I invest my energy in something negative, it will grow and become more negative.
We are the total sum total of where we have been investing our energy our entire life. If we choose to follow a well-thought through diet and an exercise routine, we will be investing energy in creating a healthier physical body. If we choose to affirm only positive statements to our subconscious, filter out negativity and meditate, we will be investing energy in creating a healthier mind for ourselves.
Most people are not conscious of where they are investing their energy each day, primarily becase they lack clarity around their purpose and thus lack clarity on their priorities in life. Consequently, there is no clear point of focus directing where their energy should go. As a result, not much of what they desire manifests in their life.
Death
Analysis of death is not for the sake of becoming fearful but to appreciate this precious lifetime.
Dalai Lama
By embracing the fact that we will die one day, we come to realize the preciousness of life. Death is not to be feared, but rather embraced as a natural part of our existence on this earthly plane.
People’s understanding of death is often based on the religious upbringing they have had, and every religion or philosophy has a different perspective on what happens after the point of death.
Life is NOT short. Life is finite.
When we realize that our life is not short, but rather that our life is finite, we also come to the realization that life is in fact quite long. Replace the phrase “Life is short” with “Life is finite.”. There is a clear, definitive end to life. We just don’t know when that end is.
Death should and must drive us in making it a priority to know our purpose in life. We learn to focus so we can discover our purpose. Our purpose defines our priorities and our priorities guide us in what to focus on. The by-product of this is that we live a fulfilled life.
How does death help us prioritize what we focus in life?
When we feel like we and our loved ones will live forever, by avoiding the topic of death in any way or form, then we naturally take everyone and everything that is not important to us and place them on top of our priority list, and move everything and everyone that is important to the bottom of our list. Our focus now is directed toward the top of the list — those that matter less to us. We do this because the people we love, and that love us back, have a greater tolerance leve and breaking point with us. We can push the boundaries of that love a lot before the cracks start to show or before it breaks.
Once you realize that life is finite, your priorities change. When you shrink time, you increase the clarity of focus.
We have all been endowed with two of life’s greatest gifts—time and energy. The clarity of focus will help us prioritse how should we best use of our time and energy.
As their time shrank, they inevitably became clearer on who and what is important to them. This simple mental act of shrinking time allowed them to very quickly bring to the surface of their mind who the most important people and things in their lives are.
Death can provide tremendous clarity on life and is, ultimately, the greatest impetus for leading a focused life. Death brings everything into perspective. Family, friends, work, life itself, all fall into a natural order of priority when death beckons.
To be honest with you, I hardly ever think about dying. But what I do think about almost every day is that my time on earth is finite, and because it’s finite, I remind myself to focus on my priorities in life.
Dandapani
Life is finite. We have one life. Make it count. Live it in a way so that on our deathbed we can look back on our lives and say to ourselves: “What an amazing life I lived!”
The law of practice
When it comes to practice, two things are essential: practicing the right way and consistency. The first step is learning it, and the second step is practicing it.
Stay narrow and deep. As we progress and become successful, we will be faced with the temptations to do many things and grab at many opportunities. This is how many fail. It is a way to remind ourselves to stay focused on our purpose.
We always start with the big picture but we should approach our study of focus in small bite-size pieces, patiently and methodically. Small things lead to big things. Small things are doable. Small steps are achievable. Small steps create no pressure. Small goals create no pressure.
Part 2: The ineffable mind
Chapter 3: Understanding the mind
The mind is the most powerful tool but it did not come with any manual or guidebook.
The mind is defined as a vast space with many different areas within it.
Awareness is defined as a glowing ball of light. An untethered glowing orb, so to speak, that can float around.
- The first step in understanding the mind is to understand that awareness and the mind are two distinctly different things.
- You are not the mind. You are pure awareness traveling through different areas of the mind.
- Awareness moves, the mind does not.
- Whatever area of the mind awareness goes to is the area of the mind that you become conscious of.
- By using your willpower and powers of concentration, you can move your awareness, this glowing ball of light, to any area of the mind you want to go to.
Awareness is like a traveller.
- Awareness can travel the mind and have many types of experiences.
- Awareness can only be in one area of the mind at a time.
- Whatever area of the mind awareness visits, it is not that area. It is simply experiencing the area that it is visiting. It always is pure awareness.
When we feel angry, no longer think or say, “I am angry.” This is an incorrect statement. Rather say to ourselves, “We are in the angry area of the mind and experiencing being angry. We are not angry, I am pure awareness having angry experience.” Similarly, when we feel happy we can say, “We’ve travelled to the happy area of the mind and we are having a happy experience. We are not happy, we are pure awareness having a ppay experience.”
Most people surrender this decision-making process to their environment. The environment in this case is defined as the people and things around you. They allow their environment to dicatate where their awareness goes in their mind and as a result, to dictate the type of experiences they will have.
Chapter 4: Where awareness goes, energy flows.
Instead of saying “My mind wander all the time,” the correct statement would be “My awareness wanders all the time.”
Most people unknowingly give their environment, the people and things around them, permission to move their awareness from one area of the mind to another all day, every day. For most people, the people and things in their lives become the director of their daily experiences. Their environment dictates where their awareness goes, causing them to have a myriad of experiences throughout the day.
When we allow our environment to dictate where our awareness goes, we essentially become a slave to everyone and everything around us. Our awarness can bounced aound the mind like a ball in a pinball machine.
Unfortunately, this is how the majority of people live and go about their daily lives. They hand over control of their awareness to everyone and everything around them. The inability to sufficiently control where your awareness goes in the mind results in you living as a slave to your environment
We can take control of our awarness and choose exactly where we want it to go in our mind. When we decide to do this, we gain freedom, because when we direct our awareness to where we want it to go, we are choosing what we experience. Once we take control of our awareness, nobody can decide how we feel unless we give them permission to do so.
Whatever we invest energy in, be it something positive or negative, it will start to grow and manifest in our life. Energy has no ability to discriminate between what is positive and what is negative. Our life is a manifestation of where we invest our energy. Where our awareness goes is where our energy flows, and where our energy flows is what manifests in our lives.
If awareness, this glowing ball of light, travels to a particular area of the mind, then that is where energy is flowing. The more frequently I send my ball of light to the happy area of the mind, the more energy flows to this area of the mind, and the more energy I deposit in this area of the mind.
Control where your awareness goes, and you will control where your energy flows. Control where your energy is flowing, and you will control the area of the mind that is being strengthened and, essentially, what is manifesting in your life.
Awareness –> Energy flows –> Control the are of the mind to be strengthened –> What is manifesting our life
Energy is magnetic. As energy builds in an area of the mind, that area strengthens and becomes more magnetic. The more magnetic it becomes, the more power it has to draw awareness to it.
Emotion is energy expressing itself. Emotion is energy and energy is magnetic. The more the emotion, the more the energy, and the more its magnetic power over awareness. The stronger or more intense the emotions that are tied to the experience, the greater its magnetic pull over awareness.
Awareness is concentrated energy. As you focus your awareness, you focus your energy. As energy gets ramified, so does awareness. That is why when you regulate your breath and withdraw energy into one place, you feel more centered. As you withdraw energy, you withdraw awareness. As you center your energy, you center your awareness.
Failure to manifest is largely due to one’s inability to harness and focus awareness, hence one’s inability to harness and focus energy.
Mastery of awareness in the mind is imperative. Everything manifests in the mind before it manifests on the physical plane. And it begins with where awareness is consistently going in your mind. Similarly, if you want to remove something from your life, take energy out of it, and it will naturally start to fall away. How do you take energy out of it? By moving your awareness away from it. Once you move your awareness away from it, your energy starts to flow away from it and it no longer grows. That is how awareness and energy works.
Awareness and the mind work the same way. You can look at awareness as the explorer and the mind as the jungle. The more awareness travels up and down this path, the more defined the path becomes. Eventually, a groove starts to form. The consistency and frequency of awareness travelling this path is what shapes the path. The deeper the groove, this mental rut, the easier it is for awareness to stay on track to get to the area of the mind that it frequents. A new trail need not be created each time and all awareness has to do is travel down this well-formed trench to its destination. Awareness can get to wherever it was in the mind to a particular area of the mind (angry, happy) quickly because there is a well-defined, unhindered path to it. Awareness travels there with so much ease and with no resistance whatsoever. When awareness reaches the angry area of the mind, so does energy. And here this energy is transformed in its vibrations to the frequency of anger and thus expresses itself as angry emotions. The mind is filled with paths, paths that we created consciously or unconsciously.
The lack of conscious mastery of where awareness goes in the mind surrenders the fate of awareness and its destination and experience to these established tracks in the mind.
- Energy accumulates at the location that awareness goes to;
- This area, strengthened by the accumulation of energy, is highly magnetic;
- A well-defined path to this area is created.
It is easy for awareness to succumb to the combination of a well-defined path and an area of the mind that is so magnetically charged.
We can create and build new paths within the mind. The path is critical, the destination even more so, because it is the destination that defines the path. So define the destination first, then build the path to it. Once the destination is known, conscious mastery of awareness in the mind is necessary, and only then can the process of building paths begin. It is, however, critical to know that any repeated actions, conscious or unconscious, will begin the process of creating a path within the mind.
To summarize, a highly magnetized area of the mind and a well-paved path to it, born of awareness’s frequent visits, is the destination of choice for awareness
Chapter 5: Mastering awareness
The goal is to gain a conscious mastery of awareness in the mind—to consciously choose where in the mind you want to move awareness to at any given moment. The purpose is many folds: improving your ability to concentrate, overcoming fear and worry, eliminating anxiety and stress, being more observant, experiencing higher states of mind, and more. It is important to understand what conscious mastery of awareness in the mind means. It means having the ability to choose, at any given moment in time, where your awareness resides in the mind. This also means having the ability to overcome any internal or external forces that may be attempting to move awareness to an area of the mind that is not of your choosing.
When you have little control over your awareness, your state of mind is at the mercy of everyone and everything around you. You can go from feeling happy to angry in a matter of seconds. The extreme polarity of emotions that one can go through on a daily basis as a result of not managing awareness is exhausting and debilitating to the nervous system, and energetically draining. The harnessing and focusing of awareness in the mind are of utmost importance in the journey of staying aligned with one’s purpose in life.
You used your willpower to move your awareness and then you used your powers of concentration to keep your awareness in each of those areas for an extended period of time.
Willpower to move awareness; concentration to keep awareness in an area
- Awareness moves, your mind does not. The fact that that we can take our awrareness to a few different areas of the mind shows that awareness moves within the mind and the mind itself does not move.
- Awareness and the mind are two distinctly different things. The ability to move awareness within the mind shows that the mind and awareness are not the same thing. They do not move together.
- We are not the mind. We are pur awareness moving through various areas of the mind. And whatever area of the mind you go to, that is what we experience. Wherever your awareness is in the mind, that is what you become conscious of.
The first step in controlling where awareness goes is to bring awareness to attention.
Awareness being aware of itself.
Gurudeva
Awareness can be in one of the two states.
- Awareness can be aware of what it is observing or
- Awareness can be absorbed in what is observing.
First state: Awareness can be aware of what it is observing. The ideal scenario is: Awareness is aware of what it is that it is observing, and then has the ability to choose if it wishes to get absorbed in it or not. The prerogative is always available to you and it is yours and yours only, though this may not always be an easy choiice.
Second state: Awareness can be absorbed in what is observing. The process of bringing awareness to attention is the process of separating awareness from that which it is aware of or absorbed in. To do this, you need to (a) bring awareness to attention and then (b) pull awareness from what it is observing (example: the movie screen) back to you.
Learning to separate awareness from that whch it is aware of is an art and one that we should strive to master.
Observation is awareness being conscious of what it is being aware of. Observation is the ability to separate awareness from that which it is aware of and be aware of the experience without being absorbed in it.
In order for awareness to separate itself from what it is being aware of, awareness first needs to be aware of itself. The ability to do this comes from the ability to be observant. Observation is a by-product of prolonged states of concentration.
The better you learn to focus, the more observant we become. The more observant we become, the better awareness gets at being aware of itself. As we get better at this, we get better at separating awareness from that which it is aware of or absorbed in. A person who cannot fous very well does not have well-developed powers of observation. As we learn to focus and become good at it, our awareness will get better at being aware of itself.
There are two forces that control our awareness: us and the environment. The ideal is for us to be in charge of where our awareness goes. When we dictate where the awareness goes in our mind, we are having conscious mastery of awareness in the mind.
The majority of people allow their environment to drive where their awareness goes in the mind. The people and things around them could take their awareness to uplifting areas of the mind or to not-uplifting areas of the mind. When they surrender the control of awareness to the environment, they are surrendering the experience and consequently the state of mind to the environment. It will also dictate where the enegy is flowing and consequently what is manifesting in our lives.
Most people are unable to create what they want in life because they have very little control over where their awareness goes each day. As a result, their energy is flowing to places their enviroment dictates and what is manifesting in their life is not what they had intended. Their awareness runs rampant throughout the day, driven so much in today’s world by social media algorithms and technology. Their finite energy is dispersed across vast areas as opposed to being harnessed and focused on a few specific things. As a result, none of their goals manifests in their life. Frustration brews, eventually boiling over into discouragement. Persistent discouragement dampens the will, leading to the eventual evaporation of hope.
The conscious mastery of awareness in the mind is an education and a skill that must be taught to every individual.
Those of you who are wrestling with the mind in your many endeavors to try to concentrate the mind, to try to mediate, to try to become quiet, to try to relax, keep trying. Evenry positive effort that you make is not in vain.
Gurudeva
Afirm to ourselves each morning as we wake up and each evening right before we go to bed, “I am the steward of my awarness!”
Part 3: Wings of the mind
Chapter 6: Unwavering focus
Concentration and willpower are the wings upon which awareness takes flight on its journey through the mind.
Concentration
Concentration is the ability to keep awareness on one thing until you consciously choose to move it to something else. Concentration is not only dependent on (a) the duration that you can keep awareness in one area of the mind, but also on (b) your ability to consciously choose to move awareness from one area to another. It is not simply the duration of concentration that matters, but, more important, it is the conscious choice you make to move awareness from one thing to another that is key.
Distraction is our awareness being controlled by any external or internal source without conscious approval from us. Distraction costs everyone time and energy but not everyone feels the loss of them equally. The purposeless person has all the time and energy in the world to squander. The person with a purpose has finite time and energy and for this person, distraction is too high a cost to bear.
To be good at concentration you need to integrate the practice of concentration—the practice of keeping awareness on one thing at a time until you consciously choose to move it to something else—into your whole day; every aspect of the twenty-four hours in a day.
One of the best ways to integrate the practice of concentration into your life is to identify the nonnegotiable recurring events in an average day and integrate the practice of concentration into these events. Gurudeva taught not to classify one as more important than another, but to view each of them as an experience we chose to have as part of our lives. How we act and react in each of these experiences determines so much of how our minds are shaped and our lives unfold. All support one another.
We have countless opportunities to practicve concentration each day. The goal is to clock as many hours as possible of concentration practice in these nonnegotiable recurring opportunities throughout the day. The more hours in each day we practice concentration, the better we become at concentration. By approaching it this way, we are not adding any additional tasks to our lives but rather leveraging the tasks we are already doing daily by doing them differently—as opportunities to practice concentration.
Start small, incrementally and keeping score to track the progress.
Chapter 7: Willpower — Life’s greatest force
Willpower
Will is the fuel which carries awareness through all areas of the mind, that spirit, that spiritual quality, which makes all inner goals a reality.
Gurudeva
The greatest thing you can develop in life is willpower. With willpower you can accomplish anything that you want.
Gurudeva
Willpower is the “channeling of all energies toward one given point for a given length of time.” Like a muscle, the more you use your willpower, the more you develop it. Nothing in life happens without will. Realize that the more willpower one develops, the stronger its hold over awareness, and hence the greater the need for a conscientious mind and nature, without which it’s highly conceivable that awareness may be led astray for iniquitous use.
Life is a testament of the application of our will over our awareness. To control awareness is to control our lives.
Gurudeva taught three simple but highly effective methods to develop willpower:
- Finish what you start;
- Finish it well, beyond your expectations, no matter how long it takes;
- Do a little bit more than you think you can.
The source of willpower is within us. The discovery of the source of willpower will empower us with a resource beyond comprehension.
Long-term exercise 1: Identify five projects in recent years that we began but yet to complete.
Long-term exercise 2: Identify five occasions where you told someone you would do something but have not done it.
Work hard, strive to accomplish, strengthen the will by using the will.
Gurudeva
Chapter 8: Cogitations on concentration
Technology and concentration
What is ruining people’s lives is their inability to exercise discipline around the use of their smartphones. We always have the decision-making power to choose whether we wish technology to have control over our awareness or whether we prefer to have complete dominance over our own awareness. Technology is distracting only if you allow it to be so.
A few practices involving smartphone that we can consider:
- Abstinence: Refraining from unnecessarily picking up the phone. A great practice to exercise our willpower. Use the willpower developed throughout the day and apply it here. Every time our awareness drifts away from what we are doing and goes to the phone, use willpower to bring awareness back to what we are engaged in.
- Purpose: Conscious interactions as opposed to mindless ones. Let each interaction be driven by purpose. Prior to picking up the phone, decide exactly what we will be engaging in. By doing so we are training ourselves to be intentional. This help to develop further clarity in other parts of life and ultimately in life itself.
- Focus: With intention comes focus. Pick the app that we want to engage in, focus just on that and put the phone down. Refrain from being a digital monkey that jumps from one app to another.
- Time: Define the duration. Set a time and use the willpower to stick to it.
- Managing energy: Choose what content we allow awareness to see and engage in. It can give or take energy away from us. It can also empotionally upset us, rob us of our peace of mind and shake our awareness unnecessarily.
Wheels of the mind.
When awareness wanders aimlessly in the conscious mind, a mirroring pattern is created in the subconscious. The subconscious mind records what is happening in the conscious mind. As we allow awareness to be distracted from what is meant to be focused on and be off on yet another saunter in the mind, we reinforce this distracted pattern in the suvbconscious. Repeat this process over and over again, and we strengthen the pattern in the subconscious.
People who practiice distraction throughout the day are spinning the wheel of distraction. A pattern is created and reinforced until it becomes strong enough to take over. People struggle to concentrate when the patterns of distraction in their subconscious mind are so strong and are perpetually getting stronger as they are reinforced by the pattern itself and by the repetition of distractive behaviour.
You must also be very careful what you allow your conscious mind to experience, meaning where you allow your awareness to travel in your mind throughout the day, because all experiences, whether remembered or not, get registered in the subconscious mind. Repetitively listening to music that makes you sad takes awareness to the sad area of the mind, creating a pattern of sadness that then has the magnetic power to pull awareness back to it, thus creating a cycle—a wheel of sadness.
The Wheel of Distraction occurs when awareness wanders unharnessed in the conscious mind, thus creating a mirroring pattern of distraction in the subconscious, which then subsequently governs awareness in a distracted way in the conscious mind.
The Wheel of Concentration works in exactly the same way. If awareness is in a state of concentration in the conscious mind, it creates a mirroring pattern of concentration in the subconscious, which subsequently governs awareness in a concentrated way in the conscious mind.
The subconscious registers what is going on in the conscious mind. These patterns of focus that are created in the subconscious will in turn govern awareness in the conscious mind in a concentrated way, causing awareness to be focused while it is in the conscious mind. So if you are not in charge of your awareness, then your subconscious is governing where your awareness is going. If the patterns that have been created in your subconscious are focused, your subconscious will govern your awareness in a concentrated way.
Concentration becomes effortless when it become a habit. Concentration becomes the default setting for our awareness. Awareness is in a state of concentraton all the time and it is very difficult for it to become distracted. Eventually, we will find ourselves in a state of concentration throughout the day — we are present in every experience.
Concentration has several aspects and the two of the greatest are the ability to give another person our undivided attention and the power of observation.
The more you concentrate, the more you develop the power of observation. Similarly, the more you develop your ability to concentrate, the more observant you become. Being observant, you are able to see pitfalls and opportunities in your life.
Problems are not problems. They are subconscious patterns that need to be adjusted.
Gurudeva
The first step in making these adjustments in your subconscious is to be obsevant of them. We cannot change something hat we are not observant of. this is another reason wh learning to concentrate is so important: it helps to become more observants, allowing us to see the patterns within us that need adjustment and begin the process of doing so.
Observation helps us to see the bigger picture and because we can see the bigger picture, we have the possibility to make better decisions in our lives. When we make better decisions, we have better outcomes. One of the by-products of that is happiness.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a by-product of concentration: a mental state that results from being focused. Mindfulness and observation are states of mind that come as by-products of awareness being trained to be concentrated for prolonged periods of time. In other words, concentration is necessary to experience the state of mindfulness or observation.
When you hear someone say, “Practice mindfulness,” technically they are making an incorrect statement. What you can practice is concentration, and what follows is a state of mindfulness.
Part 4: A panacea for the mind
Chapter 9: The four foes
The four foes that terrorize many minds: worry, fear, anxiety and stress.
People spend much of their lives working to earn an income that will provide them with the opportunity to create experiences for themselves. These experiences can range from having a meal at a hawker stall with friends to cruising on a private yacht and everything in between. Regardless of what the experience is, one thing will determine how much you get out of that experience, and that is your ability to be present in that experience. Sadly, many painstakingly manifest unique experiences only to squander them with their distracted mind.
Time
We can divide time into three parts: the part, the future and the now or present.
Now is the reality.
Gurudeva
There are those who spend the majority of their time in the present, engaged with unwavering focus on whatever it is they are doing. They are the creators. The manifesters. The leaders. The ones who know that all things are created in the here and now, in the eternity of the moment.
Summary on the steps to get to living in the moment. First, know there is a clear separation between awareness and the mind. Then understand that in any moment awareness can be in the past, present, or future. For awareness to be anchored in the here and now, the present, use your willpower and powers of concentration to hold awareness on who and what it is engaged in. Doing so ensures you are living in the moment, that you are completely present.
Our ability to focus allows us to live in the moment, which then allows us to fully experience all of life’s experiences. Not a moment is wasted. Life is lived to its fullest.
Worry
The level of your mastery over awareness in the mind determines how much you subject yourself to worry.
Worry is future based. It is awareness going into the future, creating a problem in our mind that has not happened, then returning to the present and being distressed about that problem.
Hold awareness in the present, to prevent it from heading off into the future and creating uncalled-for worrisome situations — the ability to focus and faithfully commit to building each day.
Every time you worry, observe what is happening in your mind. Observe awareness leaving the present and venturing into the future. Observe it crafting stories, creating situations, fabricating outcomes, all distressing in nature, for you to worry about upon its return to the present moment.
First understand that awareness and the mind are two distinctly separate things. Then know that awareness moves and the mind does not. Realize that willpower and concentration can be developed to harness and direct awareness within the mind. Now, if awareness goes into the future to create worrisome situations in your mind, use your willpower to rein it back to the present and use your powers of concentration to hold it in the present. This is the key to eliminating worry from your life.
The future and the past
It is not saying that we should never allow our awareness to go into the future and create negative scenarios. Doing this can be helpful at times, as it allows us to figure out solutions for potential problems that may arise.
The past, on the other hand, is not where worry lives. You can’t worry about anything that has happened in the past because it has already happened.
The past leaves nothing to worry about. But the future is where worry lives and thrives.
Fear
The only place fear lives is in the future. When our willpower and powers of concentration lose their grip on awareness, we essentially throw awareness to the wolves. Past experiences in the subconscious that have not been dealt with can cause awareness to repeatedly experience fear.
As with worry, bringing awareness back to the present is the key to overcoming fear. If you leave awareness unharnessed and allow it to go into the future and create situations in your mind that cause you fear, you put yourself in a mental state of being absorbed in fear.
The fear state of mind has no capability to make rational decisions.
At times, the fear we experience is a self-protective mechanism. We can use it to avoid a harmful experience. But if we allow that fear to grow and dominate our awareness, that is when things start going to hell in a handbasket.
Where awareness is in the mind determines our perspective. It determines how we see things.
The first step in overcoming fear is moving awareness out of the fear area of the mind with our will and powers of concentration. You can’t understand fear while you are in fear.
Be wisely discriminating as to what you allow into it and what you allow to breed in it. Then there are bullies, instinctive-minded people who relish making others feel fear by repeatedly taking their awareness to the fear area of the mind.
In summary, every time you find awareness going into the future and creating a situation in your mind that causes you to feel fear, use your indomitable willpower to bring awareness back to the present and use your powers of concentration to hold awareness in the here and now. By all means do not let your awareness reenact that situation repeatedly and compound the feeling of fear in you. If the fear you see in your mind has a strong possibility of manifesting itself, then find solutions to ensure that it does not happen. Seek support if needed. Affirm to yourself, as Gurudeva did as a child, “I am all right, right now!”
When awareness leaves the present, heads to the future, creates a negative outcome in the mind, then returns to the present and worries about what it has created, it is worrying about an anticipated ill. The more awareness repeats this process, creating a variety of negative outcomes, the more one feels uneasy and worries that something bad is going to happen.
The state of anxiety is also created when awareness is allowed to go from one unfinished thing to another in an uncontrolled way. Prolonged states of anxiety lead to stress. Your level of stress is an indicator of how little control you have over awareness.
It is the repetitive process of allowing awareness to jump from one thought to another in an uncontrolled way that led to her feeling anxious.
Pressured means he feels the anticipation of his team, the fans worldwide, and everyone watching the game, but he has complete control over his awareness. Stressed would mean he is losing or has lost control over awareness.
The ability to control awareness in the mind and hold it on one thing at a time in unwavering focus is the key to eliminating anxiety and stress from your life.
Chapter 10: Tools in action
The better we can control our awareness, the better we can control our reactions, and the more say we have over our state of mind.
It may benefit us all to set up a traffic light on the highway that connects our mind and our mouth, guiding us as to when to speak freely, when to reflect before we speak, and when to simply hold our tongue. Control of speech is deeply intertwined with managing our reactions.
One reason for our uncontrolled speech is our inability to control our reactions, which is an outcome of our inability to control where our awareness goes in our mind. The most common reason for uncontrolled speech is people’s reaction to what is happening to them or around them.
Anger, as an emotional state, is a state of temporary insanity. When we are angry, the words used and said will be highly charged with angry emotions. The emotion in our words transferred energy to the recipient’s awareness, causing it to vibrate at the frequency of our emotion, anger. The recipient’s awareness then functioned in the angry area of the mind and reacted accordingly.
Emotion has massive power over awareness. Emotion embedded in words has the power to move awareness to the area of the mind that vibrates at the frequency of that emotion. To not react to the words, your willpower must be greater than the power of the emotions coming at you.
When what you say results in more uplifting outcomes than complicated emotional outcomes, this is one sure sign. And progress in this practice of speech control is a sign of progress in the practice of controlling awareness in the mind.
Often the cause of a mental argument is a misunderstanding you have with someone. When this issue is not resolved, it sits in your subconscious, and every time awareness interacts with it, you run through the argument again. The more emotion this unresolved experience contains, the stronger its power to draw your awareness to it.
Unresolved emotional experiences in the subconscious mind are land mines awaiting the presence of your awareness. The key to overcoming them is to resolve the issue. They will reside in the subconscious and we have the choice whetherto go to that area of the mind or not. We can also conclude that if we have sufficent willpower, we can redicrect awareness to any area of the mind that we want to go to and use the powers of concentration that we have developed to hold awareness n the area of the mind that we want to be in.
The better your ability to control awareness in the mind, the more you empower yourself to choose when to engage with an unresolved issue in your mind. The better you are at this, the significantly fewer mental arguments you will experience.
Summary
- How to control where their awareness goes in their mind which in turn is …
- How to control where their energy flows, and thus what is maniesting in their lives (including their projects);
- To apply the three principles of developing willpower in everything they do;
- To be present in all engagements;
- To manage and overcome worry, fear, anxiety and tress by hanessing awareness;
- How to manage reactions and responses.
