About awareness

My baby girl, M, is a month old now. It is amazing to watch her - to watch her move, to listen to the noises she makes, and to just be with her. I have been told that it is a great experience to watch our kids grow and I already know what that means.

M moves her arms, she kicks her legs and makes these cute noises. Sometimes she smiles but it is an involuntary smile. She is not yet old enough to smile consciously - that will come soon. She is not yet aware of her smile or her movements. She is not aware of her arms and legs even when she is moving them vigorously.

But soon she will realize that they are her arms and legs. She will learn to move them consciously and she will learn to use them for different purposes. At first her movements will be tentative and then with practice she will become adept at doing certain things.

This is the way with all human beings. Slowly we learn to use different parts of our bodies while taking inputs through the various sensory organs. These are our tools - our body parts and the sense organs. As we grow from infants to babies to young children to young adults, we become aware of these tools and get better at using them.

However there is a tool that we, human beings, do not quite become aware of: our mind. And this is the most important tool that we have! Under normal circumstances, for most people, the mind continues to work, jumping from one thing to another without too much control. This is very much like the movement of an infant's arms and legs - except that in the case of mind, most people never become completely aware of it. Even sometimes when a few people catch a glimpse of this fact, they don't know what to do or get scared and run away from it.

Awareness includes: awareness of our body, our limbs and our sense organs; awareness of the inputs from the sense organs; awareness of the movement of our body. The biggest part of awareness is awareness of our mind, how it functions, how it reacts to the inputs from sense organs and how it directs our thinking, behavior and actions.

It seems to me that to live our life fully, to be fully alive, we need to be aware of all the tools and to develop them as much as we can and then use them to the best of our abilities. Awareness of this is the first step towards awareness!

Are you aware?