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Awareness of our own mental process or “internal” streaming can go on without end; we may be aware that we are aware of being aware that we are aware that…, like YouTube infinity images which zoom into details that become bigger and reveal further details which in turn grow larger and reveal even more details, endlessly. But I’m getting ahead of myself here – already moving ahead into details that may be interesting but offer no practical perspective on the nature and importance of awareness, so let me illustrate how awareness occurs, or doesn’t in everyday life by offering a fictional scenario:

Rob and Susan often walk their dog, Merlin, together through their neighborhood on Wednesday evenings. They usually walk after dinner around the time of the setting sun. During such a walk the other day, they were engaged in a discussion of recent happenings with friends, events at work, and other current events. Their discussions were interspersed with pauses, when something around them might catch their eye, or they considered quietly what was just said, or even making private segues to other topics. The world for them at that moment, during the walk, contained many things to observe, things they might be aware of, but usually were not, as the content of the conversation dominated their attention.

Their conscious attention was focused on the discussion, and mostly included the thoughts and reactions they have to their partner’s comments and questions. They were largely unaware of other aspects of their experience, such as the changing colors of the setting sun on the horizon, Merlin’s movements and sniffing stops, or even the feeling of their limbs moving and the soles of their feet touching the ground.  All of these events registered at a level out of conscious awareness. This is normal, of course.  It is an example of the narrow range of our awareness, often given to our private feelings and verbalized thoughts and imagery, while the rest of our movements and perceptions are on “automatic.”

As they discuss the recent events, they focus on Susan’s annoyance at interactions she has had at work. They form various opinions and judgments about handling the problems she perceives at her office. Susan thinks that Jerry, her co-worker, is inconsiderate and takes advantage of her willingness to be a team player.  Rob agrees but states that Susan does not stand firm in refusing to help Jerry and is anxious about interceding with the boss.  Susan sees his critique as a lack of support and as pinning the blame on her.  Rob tries to explain that is not what he meant.  And so they proceed to have a lively exchange of their differing viewpoints.  At some point, the discussion becomes argumentative and Susan accuses Rob of taking the side of the coworker.  Rob in turn accuses Susan of always rejecting what he says to try to help her.  Neither of them realizes that they have their own agendas that work at cross-purposes.  

Meanwhile, they are not aware that they have stopped while the dog investigates a very compelling odor emanating from what turns out to be the rotting carcass of a rabbit in the tall grass of a shallow ditch along the road. At the same time, the sun is setting beneath distant crimson clouds against a golden horizon below a pale blue sky.  A loud motorcycle then zips by, passing a slow-moving SUV on the road where they are walking.  They both turn their heads toward the road and their faces briefly show surprise at the unexpected loud noise, but without further thought, they return to making their arguments.

They are not really conscious of these events while engaged in the discussion. They each are also not really aware, at a deeper level, of what the other is saying, for they are automatically formulating their arguments rather than listening fully. It is only when Rob attempts to walk again and the dog, Merlin, does not move that he looks back and sees him writhing on the ground and rubbing his shoulders against something in the grass, that his attention shifts.  Up to that point, much of their existence was on automatic. They made adjustments in posture, depending on the shape of the ground under their feet, the movements as they turned and walked. They changed position according to how the setting sunlight hit their eyes as they spoke to each other. Their bodies adjusted their breathing and heart rates, according to how much they moved and talked. Rob’s hand continued to grasp the leash firmly every now and then to check its tension and attempt to move the dog along.  It was only when he encountered resistance to his pull on the leash that he looked, also without initial conscious awareness, to Merlin, rolling over what Rob suddenly realized was rotting roadkill.

In this case, Rob’s attention shifts instantly to the more urgent matter of the dog bathing in carrion, awareness of thoughts concerning cleaning the dog, the awful smell he can expect, and the instant reaction of yelling at Merlin all take precedence. Everything else falls away, for the moment, including his previous firm stance with Susan regarding the best course of action to take with her coworker, Jerry. Susan, of course, experiences her own shifting attention and awareness of all the ramifications of the disgustingly stinky dog.

This is a brief scenario that describes how our attention, and correspondingly, our awareness shifts from moment to moment.  It highlights those aspects of our experience that are fully out of our awareness most of the time.  We shift attention to compelling stimuli in a more-or-less conditioned way, as do other species. Most of the events that actually impact us and affect our health and relationships occur outside of our conscious awareness; that is, occur automatically in a preconditioned fashion. Emotionally stirring ideas, narratives, or experiences capture our attention, and in so doing, limit our awareness. Moved by emotion, we may then slip into pre-conditioned defensive postures, or possibly into an angry “attack” mode.  We like to think of ourselves as conscious beings, exerting free will, and living in a purposeful, self-directed way, but for the most part, that is not the case. Most of what involves living is actually conditioned reaction, out of our conscious awareness, which is usually narrowly focused on a particular idea, memory, or aspect of our surroundings. Awareness is often given most readily to stimuli that have an emotional appeal, especially emotions of fear and anger, usually in response to a perceived or actual threat of some kind. We are not aware that we are unaware until we are “woken up” (Yes, woke! haha) by some compelling event or stimulus, or until somebody else points it out to us, or until we have the advantage of hindsight.

We react to our environment, to other people (also part of our environment) in highly conditioned ways.  How we react or act depends on the context. We often falsely attribute our reactions and actions to ourselves. By “selves” I mean our personalities or characteristic behaviors, whether involuntary or voluntary. We attribute our actions to conscious self-directed will. But much of what we consider free will or conscious, deliberate action, is myth. We live under the illusion that we are sufficiently aware of ourselves and our environment to direct our actions in a way that makes sense, that moves us toward meeting our goals in life, or, more precisely, to what we believe we actually value. In reality, however, there is little coherence to what most of us do, as we are buffeted by circumstances to react mentally and behaviorally in ways that are determined by our conditioning in those circumstances. The conditioning may mesh with our goals and values in some circumstances, but may not in particular circumstances, especially those that impact us emotionally. For example, our reactions to our parents, children, and spouses often have a strong emotional valence which can easily derail us from intended or valued behaviors, or how we really wish to behave (if we have dared to even think about how we would really like to behave!). How often have you realized that despite telling yourself that you were determined to have a nice holiday visit with mom or dad, that you end up in some kind of dispute or argument, as usual? Or if not with mom and dad, someone else in some other context?

If we want to change and be more consistent in our endeavors to create the type of life we really value, it takes a broader awareness. The first step is gaining an awareness of how conditioned we actually are, an awareness of the conditions that bring about automatic responses and how they conflict with our stated purpose, values, and the intermediate goals consistent with such purpose and values. If you are not aware of what the triggers (i.e., stimuli) are or that you are even responding to those triggers in a conditioned way, how can you possibly expect to change your behavior? Building awareness is a key tenet of psychotherapy, for example, but psychotherapy is not a necessary condition for developing it in most cases.

Ultimately, the lack of a deeper, more encompassing awareness of who we are and how we think and feel and act, prevents us from satisfying our human needs. We are forever trying to do something in the tangible world to achieve such needs, but at the same time we are compelled to act in our old programmed ways, usually defensive ways, which perpetuate the very obstacles to those goals.  I do not mean fundamental survival needs for water, food, or shelter from the elements, but rather the needs that are natural to human beings.  These include, at least for most of us, the need for happiness, or contentment, emotional connection, belonging, and spiritual satisfaction, once basic needs have been met.

Many of my former patients came for help to find not only solutions to problematic behaviors and interpersonal conflicts in their lives, but also to find happiness and a better way to live, generally speaking, even though most had no clear idea about how that might actually look or what it would involve.  The irony is that the “self” that recognizes a desired personal change goal during quiet introspection and resolves to achieve it is usually unable to act consistently in accord with that goal across different situations.  Though we may feel a strong desire to act in a different way, more consistent with a “good” or virtuous view of ourselves, and perhaps even feel joyful and unburdened at the idea of acting that way, we often act contrary to our resolutions when we find ourselves in situations that demand allegiance to other desires (say, to eat something not on our diet, or to yield to sexual temptation despite a vow to be faithful to our spouse, or arguing instead of listening). We are essentially “hijacked” by our previous conditioning to act in a certain way.

So, what can we do?  Initially, just observe yourself.  Make a conscious, deliberate effort to observe, notice your actions, your thoughts, your feelings as they shift and morph, moment by moment.  Of course, you will not be able to do this all of the time, but even if you do for just a little while, for a few moments initially, you will become gradually more aware of your reactions, and how your mind works; that is, aware of your conditioned, automatic reactions and impulses, of your judgments, and of your particular sensitivities, of how your mind addresses provocation or what it perceives to be provocation.  That’s a start, anyway.  Don’t expect any change, but just observe yourself without analysis or judgment, to the extent that is possible, and if a harsh or critical judgment occurs, notice that. 

What I have presented above is based on the wisdom conveyed by different spiritual teachers, traditions, and psychological perspectives which have influenced my thinking over the years. I would not claim that my thoughts are original, only the way I integrate and present them, perhaps. A sampling of those who have influenced my thinking can be found in the Related Readings page of this website. I will add to it or modify the list from time to time.

Have you ever had the experience of feeling that you are waking up out of a dream, even though you were awake already? Say, for example, that you are driving, and you suddenly realize that you were unaware of where you actually were, and even had difficulty recalling what you have just seen or passed on the road, even though it was a familiar route to you. This type of experience occurs when you are “lost in thought” to such an extent that you are not consciously registering the environment around you. This actually happens more than we realize, though it may become obvious when we are moving along a road or otherwise engaged in some activity where the environment changes as we move along. We are totally absorbed in our thoughts and simply not aware at a conscious level of what we are seeing, hearing, touching, or smelling – what the world of our senses provides us.

We may even intend to focus attention on some aspect of the environment, but our attention often drifts back to our thoughts or inner experiences, such as thoughts, feelings, memories, triggered by the environment or recent events. When the feelings are aversive, we attempt escape them and their associated thoughts. There may be a variety of ways in which we attempt to relieve ourselves of such unwanted thoughts and feelings.  We may try to organize them, look for causes, force rationality on them, or integrate them in some way that makes them coherent and meaningful in our lives.  These methods may have some temporary effect in shifting our thinking or attention, but they do not necessarily calm or even suppress the feelings and do not extinguish the underlying conditioned nature of our emotional and mental reactions that lie ready to spring forth automatically when provoked.   We find that even though we move through our surroundings automatically, perhaps with brief periods of awareness, we are often, if not mostly, immersed in our internal world and largely unaware of the physical environment around us. We are responding to our own narrative histories, our beliefs, and conditioned mental habits and are mostly oblivious to our immediate environment, though, at a subconscious or unconscious level the environment may trigger such mental activity.

I know it sounds as if I’m using the words attention and awareness interchangeably at times, and though they are indeed alike, they are also quite different. Without delving into various subsets subsets of attention as they relate to our daily functioning, attention broadly implies an active agent that shifts perception to some object of import. This can happen quite automatically, such as when we are looking at the sky and a bird suddenly flies into our periphery and our vision shifts towards that movement. Conscious attention broadly implies will, an intentional shift in mental focus, which may be discrete or expansive and usually also involves thought. Awareness is passive, receptive. It suggests passive observation rather than active focus. Attention, when directed towards an object in some relationship with yourself will lead to awareness, though you may be aware of more than that specific object. On the other hand, one could say that if your field of attention is very broad, such as directing attention to “the present moment” it opens the door to an equally broad field of awareness. Think of attention as the spotlight or the camera lens and awareness as what that light or camera reveals. The light or the lens may be wide-angle or it may be narrowly focused.

Although we seem to have control of our attention, attention is often automatic, as noted above.  It often functions outside of our conscious control. This happens not only in the case of movement or other stimuli that capture our perceptual attention in the moment, but also happens when we are dealing with problems, other individuals, or our own mental ruminations. A bird flying across the blue sky will capture our attention and our eyes shift immediately to it, without conscious control. Similarly, a thought “flies” into the mind and also immediately attracts attention at some level, but often without full awareness. It captures our attention and away we go, as if we were passengers on the wings of the bird flying off into the blue yonder. We become “lost in thought,” as the saying goes, and we follow a certain path based on our own biases, preconceptions, and conditioned mental habits. Because we are so often lost in thought or otherwise automatically directed to particular things – usually mental “things” – much of our life experience passes us by, at least as far as the physical environment is concerned. We are frequently rehashing past events and perceived mistakes, anticipating future goals and plans, and rarely attend to, much less have awareness of, the present moment. 

These issues are also discussed at length by teachers and practitioners of mindfulness, which is, at its core, a way of directing attention and cultivating awareness. John Kabat-Zinn, a psychologist who has taught mindfulness meditation and other techniques for reducing mental stress and pain, as well as fostering present-centered awareness, has defined mindfulness as “moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness, cultivated by paying attention in a specific way, that is, in the present moment…” (Kabat-Zinn, Coming to Our Senses, 2005).   In that book, he provides an account of the legacy of mindfulness, nurtured by various traditions of meditation, with an emphasis on vipassana meditation.  He also brings focus to a mindful awareness of our senses, which bring us into direct contact with our environment, as a way of practicing mindful awareness.  The book, Coming to Our Senses, is a very thorough consideration of mindfulness but focuses much on the way that our senses open the door to present-centered awareness when we attend to them precisely. 

It makes “sense” then to build self-awareness by focusing on what is more immediately available to us through our sensory experience.  What we see, hear, smell, taste, or touch is more concrete and accessible to us and less fleeting and elusive than feelings and thoughts.   Just being aware, or mindful, of ourselves in the present moment has the effect of freeing us, if only briefly, from our typical conditioned habits and responses to stress, pain, or other adversity.  Such awareness can be difficult to sustain because we are so easily pulled back into our habitual behavior, including thought patterns, ego-preservation efforts, and mindless reactions, all of which perpetuate the stress and problems in our lives.

It can be easier to focus attention on what our individual senses are giving us from the environment, focusing in ever greater detail on what we see, hear, smell, taste, or touch in various contexts.  Kabat-Zinn provides some very detailed exercises for developing this ability, which also helps foster a mental state of awareness. At the same time, focusing on our sensory input naturally shifts our attention from much of the intangible, “story-world” of our thoughts, opinions, judgments, and beliefs to the tangible world around us. In general, awareness of our immediate environment, brings us back into the present. And when we are in the present, even briefly, we are not thinking of the past or anticipating the future. In fact, there may be little to no thinking if we are fully engaged with our sensory experience at the moment.

So, to foster this type of awareness, based on what our senses are delivering to us in the present moment, you can direct your attention to discrete sensory aspects of what you observe around you at the moment. This process is not a “meditation” per se, but an effort to attend fully to the input of one sensory modality at a time. For example, you may start by just noticing visual details. Pick an item hanging on your wall or even a detail of the wall’s surface and focus on that. Pinpoint your attention on a particular color, blemish or detail.in texture, with the intention of maintaining that focus.

One of the first things you may notice is that such focused attention is difficult to sustain without your mind attempting to make something more of it or simply becoming bored and searching for something else to occupy itself with. Without judging yourself, struggling, or getting lost in whatever content begins to occupy your mind, just make a mental note of it and gently, without struggle, shift your attention back to the point of focus. While you are doing this, observe, or be aware of your experience; that is, feelings of effort, slight frustrations that may arise, changes in your posture, blinking of the eyes, and the mental content that captures your attention. This practice of focusing on one sensory modality expands your awareness of what your mind is doing all of the time and “clears the field” to make it easier to notice.

Yes, the process described is very similar to meditation, but more informal. You can also focus on other sensory modalities of course, such as hearing, smell, tactical, or kinesthetic sensations. Kinesthetic sensations refer to those physical sensations inform you about posture, body positioning, and how one part of your body relates to another at any given moment. I would emphasize that there is no “correct” way of doing this. Although many religious practices have institutionalized methods to accomplish the same thing as what I am here describing, it is not necessary to follow any particular procedure, such as chanting, meditating, or praying.

The point is to increase awareness in the present moment and simply observe what naturally unfolds, and staying with the process, as much as possible without struggling, and without judging.  It is the element of mental focus and otherwise quieting your body and mind that allows space to notice things without your attention caroming off of the many different sources of stimulation, both mental and physical stimulation, that keeps the mind disordered, in chaos, and obscures what is actually happening. It is much more difficult to think in the midst of an argument or during a storm, but these are the states we are often in throughout the day. We don’t have the resources or the attentional capacity to effectively deal with all the details of what is happening and so “bounce” from one thought or sensation to the next.

As soon as judgment or struggle occurs, conflict occurs, and then it is about resolving the conflict and not about noticing the present experience. Krishnamurti makes this very clear in his writings – how the process of thinking and holding onto and selecting experiences leads to division and conflict that both interferes with our ability to be fully aware of the present moment and perpetuates our daily life struggles.

Another more encompassing way of purposefully attending to the present moment is suggested by Thich Nhat Hanh, who recommends fully attending to a mundane task, such as washing the dishes, and performing that task deliberately, with full attention and awareness. He emphasizes that living a full life is living fully with each thing that we do, performing it with complete attention and awareness. This is also a way to practice living in the present and fostering heightened awareness of our lives as they unfold moment by moment. Your life at any given moment is what you are doing at that moment, so give your full attention to it, noting all of its sensory dimensions, your movements, and even how the mind may want to drift away from such automatic activities out of its habit of restless searching for something more. Even though our minds wander to other thoughts during the process, we can recognize that as just another aspect of living in the present moment. Rather than see our mental wanderings as interference, we can observe the process of our mental movements, of our conditioning, and treat the process and its thought content non-judgmentally and without personal attachment to it.  Of course, this type of full attention to whatever we are doing at the moment is difficult to sustain because our minds are not used to it. To get a taste of it, just focus on one simple task for a while and see what happens and what you observe.

Such practice tasks might include eating, brushing your teeth, showering, shaving, folding laundry, or washing dishes, for example. It is easier to start out by picking such simple tasks and simply observe, in the present, nonjudgmentally, the details of what you see, hear, feel (through touch), or smell. Notice the richness of the experience. Deliberately focus briefly on one sensory channel at a time, and then move to another. For example, focus on what you are seeing in the mirror as you brush your teeth, then move to what you are feeling, including the touch of the toothbrush in your hand and against your gums, the temperature and feel of your mouth, or the movement of your arm. Then noticing what you hear, such as the running water, the sound of the toothbrush moving in your mouth, and so on. Catch the movement of your mind back to thinking during this process, for it will happen often. For example, as you are brushing, the thought occurs that “oh, that’s really interesting… I haven’t noticed that before” followed by a thought about that particular blemish on your chin or discomfort in your gums. Before you know it, your thoughts are moving you away from the task completely and into concerns about health, your next dental appointment, and so on.  The thinking process never stops but briefly, so to be fully aware, also note the thoughts that arise, and do your best to notice them without getting carried away by them. The train of thought is always running in one direction or another, so just notice that and then come back to the sensory experience of the moment.