At the Awareness Living Academy we teach and encourage daily mindfulness practices for stress reduction, to improve attention span and communication skills, for the cultivation of inner and outer awareness, and to develop a higher perspective of life. We teach meditation as the primary tool for developing awareness. When we start cultivating awareness, we bring ourselves more and more into the present moment. The five physical senses become more present (i.e. bodily awareness), the mind becomes more alert and focussed (i.e. mental awareness) and the intuition becomes more awake (i.e. As our awareness grows, we become more alive and balanced, more focussed and effective, more insightful and intuitive, and more responsible for our decisions and choices. There are only three fundamental factors that contribute to health and happiness: The first is the quality of the food we eat (i.e. our nutrition), the second is the quality of the thoughts we have (i.e. our mental state) and the third is the quality of our relationship with the Universe (i.e. our spiritual connection). Meditation is helpful to evaluate all three fundamental aspects and thus, cultivates bodily, mental and spiritual awareness. Most people live in a mental prison. We create this prison by seeing ourselves and life as our conditioned mind (ego or false self) describes it, without realising that our thoughts do not accurately describe reality. In this mental prison, we do not question our thoughts and are mostly unaware of them. That is, we are ignorant of our thoughts and we respond to them as if under a spell – as if we have no free will. We become like puppets, with our conditioned software pulling the strings, asleep to life and reality, and living mostly an unexamined life. The ego mind is the source of all unhappiness and human suffering. The ego is nothing more than thoughts we identify with and we feel that it reflects who we are. It keeps us prisoners of our own fear, anxiety, anger, guilt, jealousy, shame, sadness, selfishness, resentment, envy, lies, hopelessness, worthlessness, depression, limiting beliefs, sense of lack, opinions, judgments, fantasies and other lower emotions. The ego paints a picture of reality that is anti-life and anti-love. When we follow such a philosophy, the result is suffering and unhappiness. The ability to be aware of our thoughts distinguishes human beings from animals, whose ability to do this is elementary. This is where free will and choice is vital. We not only have the ability to be aware of our thoughts, but we also have the ability to choose what we think about, what we believe and how we define ourselves. Moreover, we have the ability to choose how we want to respond to our thoughts! In other words, unlike animals, we can override our software if we choose to do so. We have the ability to choose what serves us best. This ability allows human beings to evolve by leaps and bounds and thus become co-creators with Life or destroyers of life. Yes, free will allows you to destroy life, destroy love, destroy peace, to be hateful, make war, be greedy, damage your environment, be afraid and destroy happiness. Thus, free will comes at a cost: It allows you to make choices that lead to terrible outcomes. Because of the Law of Cause and Effect (or Karma), we have to suffer the effects until we learn to use our free will more wisely. Meditation is the practice of awareness – also called mindfulness. When we become more aware of our thoughts and emotions that do not serve us, we can make better conscious choices that will guide us away from suffering. Spiritual evolution (or ascension) has a certain trajectory: It always goes toward love, peace and happiness. If our choices take us away from love, peace and happiness, we will suffer. But the benevolence of Life is such that suffering will always point you back home and therefore even suffering is a gift. True and lasting happiness doesn’t come from getting what you want. It comes from realising that who you think you are (i.e. who your ego tells you who you are), isn’t who you really are. By letting go of the false self (ego), we can experience the truth of who we really are! True happiness comes from experiencing your true self by learning to live in the present moment. As long as we are spellbound by the ego mind and its ideas about me and its many desires, we will not become aware of the love, peace and happiness that are available in the present moment. The process of waking up out of identification with the false self and living a life in alignment with your true self is called spiritual awakening. Once we wake up, we will discover that there is (and always has been) another force present and unfolding in our lives besides the false self and its conditioning. Once the existence of this force is realised, we can choose to align more with it instead of letting our false self runs the show. As we align our lives more and more with our true self, the Universe responds by infusing us with the energy of grace. When grace fills our lives, it makes our minds come alive with clarity, vision, determination and the strength to act. We become more aware of synchronistic experiences in our lives and the guiding hand of the Universe. Grace illuminates our path by strengthening our intuition, and so influences the choices we make and guide our actions in the right direction. Grace gives us an inner compass that gently guides us in the direction of love, peace, happiness and fulfilment.
