The Art of Awakening Awareness

By Rita Rivera Fox

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

The ancient Toltecs were Master Dreamers. They knew that they were dreaming all the time even when they were awake. They understood that the function of the mind is to dream and that this dream is not real it is only an interpretation of life. The world of form that they saw with their eyes was only one way of perceiving life and there were many other worlds or dreams that were possible to experience in what was not visible with the eyes.

Living in their ancient pyramid city of Teotihuacan in the heart of Mexico, the Toltecs communed with the source of life by going into silent dreaming states deep within their bodies. From this point of perception, they learned that the mind projects images that come from a collective “program” and all humans were programmed the same way. This program does not convey, “life as it is” but rather places conditions, judgments and fear onto life. The humans believed their program was real and began to dream a dream of fear. In other words they fell asleep, even though their eyes were wide open.

The Toltec Master Dreamers were charged with helping their fellow beings awaken to the erroneous nature of the mind and its beliefs. To awaken inside a dream, meant that the world was not always as it seems. They knew it was possible to wake up in the dream and once again experience the truth of being one with all that is. Today, we also have the opportunity to awaken from the dream and live life with eyes and hearts wide open in a state of awakened awareness.

Many people are called today to embark upon a journey of self discovery, one that it is motivated by the desire to live life from a truer and more authentic place – to awaken to a life filled with more happiness and love and with less reaction and fear. This inner desire to ”wake up” is growing in more and more people as they turn within to discover that the belief system is what creates how you perceive the world and us in it. The desire to live life more fully from the heart creates the need to see what the content of our belief system is. You can only create from your beliefs. The beliefs are the raw material of what you manifest in your life. The process begins by becoming aware of the unreal or false nature of the mind and by seeing what you create when you are not in awareness. You can then recognize how your beliefs determine what you create. When you learn the practice of awareness, you can become a powerful co-creator with Life, no longer empowering beliefs that limit and alter your perception of yourself and your abilities but instead making the choices that reflect your infinite nature.

You are creating in every moment. The magic tool you use for creation is the word: the words that you use with yourself and with other people; the words that you use to describe yourselves and the world around you, and words are what your beliefs are made of. Your power to create is so strong that whatever you believe, what you think and speak, comes true. You can put yourselves to sleep with your words or you can inspire yourselves to come to attention with words. Your thoughts are so powerful they have the potential to manifest in whatever direction you choose. It is interesting to discover that your words and the thoughts they convey originate from the beliefs that are behind them. What are the results of your thoughts? This question is easy to answer by simply looking at your personal life and the dream of mankind as you see what is happening in the world around you.

It might seem as though the world determines how you perceive your experiences. This is an erroneous belief. By taking responsibility for choosing how you perceive and interpret the world at large is the first step in changing the quality of your life. Your power comes from choosing what you will believe about any situation. Awareness of the choice you have in how you interpret anything, allows you to no longer be at the effect of life or a victim to what life brings. How can we begin to exercise this power? Learning to choose a new interpretation of events in your life is where practicing the art of awareness becomes most apparent and the rewards are the greatest. You have accepted many collective agreements about how an experience should be interpreted. All you have to do is look to the media, conversations with co-workers, family or friends, and there are ready-made interpretations of everything that is going on in your lives with both personal and global events. Opinions are freely shared. Soon you are agreeing with how someone else is seeing an event without ever asking yourself, “Is this how I choose to see this situation? Is there another way to interpret this? How does the way I am looking at this circumstance contribute to creating happiness and overcoming fear in my life?”

These collectively shared interpretations often come from a very limited and fearful point of view. These days there is much uncertainty in the events of the world - war, extreme weather, unimaginable acts of violence, and threats to the environment. The uncertainty is activating a lot of fearful beliefs and reactions. If you respond with fear to what is happening globally, you are not making the best choice on your own behalf. When you create fearful conclusions and stories to what life is presenting, you give this type of energy to your lives. You create more of the emotional energy that helps to create these situations. This energy creates the emotional quality that then colors your existence. Your combined fearful responses have the power to manifest the very circumstances that frighten you. The results are that you feel helpless and powerless in a constantly changing world and it can seem like a challenge to bring positive change forward in your life.

The power to challenge the interpretation of what your mind says about current events, whether personal or global, comes from exercising the power of choice. First, use your awareness to see how you are interpreting an event. If your story creates anxiety or distress in the body, victimizes you, or steals your happiness, you can decide to challenge that interpretation and change your choice to agree with it or not. Consciously choosing your interpretation means that you begin to challenge the old existing points of view, which then gives you the freedom to consider other ways of looking at the same thing. Shifting your point of view about anything is the process of awakening and expanding awareness. These old points of view usually reflect a lack of faith in the divine order of life or your lack of faith in your own truth. When you make an active choice about what you believe and how you tell the story, the quality of your life experience changes. The more you do this the more you shift the quality of your life attracting more life affirming energy.

You can significantly alter the quality of your life by not only becoming aware of how you interpret global events but by also becoming aware of the beliefs you have about yourself. Everyday we fill our minds with erroneous concepts about ourselves. Often the stories your thoughts create speak of self-rejection and self doubt and drain the joy of living from your hearts. If you believe that you are “less than” someone else or doubt your divine connection, you create a personal reality or dream that reflects this erroneous thinking. The result is you don’t feel so good. Your emotional states are directly related to the thoughts that created them. As you learn to reinterpret your personal stories, you learn to shift the emotions you are creating, and begin to enjoy life as it is, and leave judgment out of your new interpretation.

A shift in your awareness can occur when you take the time to become aware of the internal dialogue in your mind, and then question that dialogue to see if a new choice or another way of looking at the situation is possible. When you do not believe everything you think, you can awaken from a distorted dream, creating an opening to new ways of seeing the world and yourself that can increase the openness of your heart. The simple action of consistently observing the process of thinking will begin to transform the way you perceive. The result of observing will be a new experience, or sensation in your body – potentially one of more peace, joy, and happiness.

Emotions that enhance your experience of life come from your integrity. This is the part of you that is accessed when you rely less on thought and more on feeling. Love, or the experience of being one with what created you, results in an enhanced emotional experience of life. You are interacting with that force all the time. What brings the greatest happiness is allowing life a clear channel to flow through you and out into world, expressing your self as the unique individual that you are. This is only possible when you challenge your fearful and self limiting beliefs and choose to not believe everything you think. While you may not have control over the events occurring in the outer world, you certainly do have the ability to choose your response to it with awareness. What beliefs do you choose to create your life with? What is the emotional quality you choose to bring to your life? Asking these questions can awaken new awareness within you and expand your experience of yourself as a conscious co-creator with Life.

Posted in Everday Awareness |