Wake Up!

A friend of mine, who knows awareness has been important to me, recently gave me these reminders.

First he suggested that I ask and answer questions like these a bit more often:
What's going on with me?
What's going on around me?
Why do I need to be more awake?
Hey, what's happening here?
Why am I doing this?
What am I doing?

He suggested that when I was less than happy with my answers, I might benefit from giving some consideration to a couple of the following sentences:
~ In a world of change and diversity, the more asleep I am, the more out of touch I am with what I am doing.
~ The more asleep I am, the more unaware I am likely to be of the consequences.
~ The less awake I am, the more unaware I will be regarding how what I am doing is effecting me and you.
~ The less alert I am, the less I know how often I create my own problems.
~ The more awake I am to the reality of the situation, the more power I have to alter it.

He reminded me that being awake to what I say to myself, gives me opportunity to consider its probable importance. He suggested that I occasionally interrupt my my inner conversation by interjecting phrases like:
~ Waite a minute.
~ Hold on.
~ Let me think about this.
~ I can't believe I said that!
~ I better believe I did that!

He added that he sometimes tells himself believable things that he can do.
He says, I can:
~ give myself another instant of awareness.
~ give myself and instant of self-awareness.
~ give myself another moment of self-conscious awareness.
~ give myself a chance to appropriately change approaches, attitudes, directions.
~ give myself and edge at this decision point.
~ stop this thought, talk, doing.
~ decide that it is good to continue thinking, saying, doing, this.
~ modify or change that which I have been doing.
re-view and re-evaluate that which I am doing.
~ learn to be more aware.
~ train and teach myself.
~ be more alert to what I am saying to myself and to others.
~ practice being more aware of that which is going on around me.
~ practice being more alert to that which is going on with me.
~ learn a new skill.

By the time he got this far I had fallen asleep.

Wake Up Affirmations

~ I am ready to learn to sleep well today.
~ I am ready and willing to learn to give myself abundant sleep here.
~ I am ready, willing, and able to get plenty of relaxation now.
~ I propose to be relaxed here and now.
~ I intend to know what is going on with me right here and right now.
~ I seek to know what is going on around me this year.
~ I choose to know how I benefit by being awake enough this season.
~ I plan to be conscious of what I am doing this month.
~ I expect to know what is happening this week.
~ I am ready to practice being aware of why I am doing this.
~ I am ready and willing to practice being a bit more aware that this world is diverse and changing this day.
~ I am ready, willing, and able to practice knowing what it means to be more in touch with that which I am doing this hour.
~ I am ready to be more aware of the likely consequences this minute.
~ I am ready and willing to be more aware of how what I am doing is effecting me and you this second.
~ I am ready, willing, and able to be more aware of how I create difficulties for myself this moment.
~ I know that the more awake I am to the reality of the situation the more power I have to alter it this instant.
~ I give myself a bit more time to think it over today.
~ I consider why I said that here.
~ I give more consideration to why I did that now.
~ I give myself another instant of awareness here and now
~ I am right here right now.
~ I am ready to learn to give myself another instant of self-awareness today.
~ I am ready to learn to give myself a chance to appropriately change an approach, an attitude, or a direction of mime right here and right now.
~ I am ready to learn to give myself and edge at this decision point this year.
~ I am ready to learn to stop this kind of thought, talk, or doing this season.
~ I do less and less until all is done.

Your Personal Relationships

Marriage is a relationship.
Are you in that kind of relationship?
What is a strong relationship?
To strengthen your relationship and to keep it strong, try some of the following:
a) Experiment with ways of speaking with each other. I recommend a soft respectful voice and eye contact.
b) Be more aware of the activities you share. Talk over the way you are doing what you are doing and how you feel about it. You might find yourselves working together more effectively.
c) Listen to your partner and ask questions about anything that either of you might have misunderstood. Be willing to talk about it and make time to do so.
d) Figure out, together, whether the way you are doing things is fair. Aim toward ways of doing things that feel fair to both of you.
e) Neither of you has to do anything and that you can choose to change something.
f) It's good to return to an area of conversation. Avoid all blaming, shaming, and fault finding. Consider your own responsibility.
g) Remember that this try is no more, or less, than a step along the way.
h) Hugs, kisses, smiles, and chuckles are usually just fine. Laughing together is wonderful.
i) It is important to find a way to talk it over. Keep trying; both of you.

Self-Awareness

I suspect that some self-awareness is good for me, perhaps very good.

Maybe I can stir my interest in developing self-awareness by trying to stir your interests. Perhaps in trying to persuade you I can persuade myself.

The process of gaining self-awareness has seemed a bit revolutionary to me. I'm not sure why. Maybe it has something to do with my understanding of 'self' seeming slippery.

Anyway, I am convinced that ignorance is a great danger to me and to all mankind. Awareness seems akin to knowing, understanding, illumination and the like; so may stand in opposition to ignorance. Awareness also seems like that alertness which keeps me from falling into a hole.

Configurations of energy have a growing part in my understanding of being. Energy seems to be a part of self. Are you thinking a bit more about self-awareness yet? I am.

Maybe there are some questions which can motivate us to act on our stirrings of interest. Motivation seems to be a component of self, doesn't it. Stirring is an evidence of energy, isn't it?

Are you thinking of something to say about self-awareness?

What might we say about 'self,' 'awareness,' or 'self-awareness?'

How is motivation connect to self? How is it connected to awareness?

Some people think of questions like these are attractive little doors you can open and look through to new and beautiful happenings. Some people thing of them as part of a string that they can take hold of and follow to healthful doings and understandings.

What suggestions have sages of old made about self-knowledge? How does knowing differ from awareness? How is it the same?

Why might expanding our awareness be good for us? How might that include self-awareness?

What process of evolution might we note in our life. What revolution? What patterns of activity might we note in our life?

What part might our understanding of 'opposits' play in our life?

What sort of reality can we see through pairs of opposites?

What does awareness have to do with creativity?

How might we observe a creative process within ourselves? Why would we think that there is one to observe?

What does creativity have to do with awareness.

Instead of motivating myself I may have overwhelmed myself. Well, just in formulating these questions I have stimulated a flow of meaning around their 'subjects' and objects.' Maybe if I sit down with one of them for a time I'll come to see an attractive little door or the end of a little string to follow.

Affirmations

~ I am ready willing and able to respond to a desire of mine more promptly now.
~ I ready, willing, and able to learn to be a bi more aware of a wrong of mine here and now.
~ I choose to say, "Thank you." when someone pays me a compliment now.
~ I seek to keep working a self-maintinance program here.
~ I am ready, willing, and able to learn to tell myself specifically what I am doing right now.
~ I am ready willing, and able to learn to tell myself specifically what I am doing correctly now.
~ I am ready and willing to learn to be aware that I m capable of cheating myself and of depriving myself this season.
~ I am ready, willing, and able to learn to be aware that the fatness of my body is a wrong of mine now.
~ I am ready and willing to learn to exercise all of my larger muscle groups more regularly now.
~ I am ready and willing to learn to smile a bit more here.
~ I am ready to learn to be well aware that self-development is facilitated by good health here.
~ I plan to smile right here and right now.
~ I am ready to learn to choose an appropriate response to whatever occurs here.
~ I am ready, willing, and able to learn to take a position that puts me in a win/win situation this season.
~ I am ready to learn to act from love here.

Affirm Benefits

~ I am ready and willing to learn to benefit a bit more from an idea of mine here.
~ I am ready and willing to learn to benefit from integrating knowledge clearly here.
~ I am ready and willing to benefit from communicating more clearly today.
~ I am willing to be more aware of the benefits today.
~ I am ready and willing to learn to benefit from organizing more effectively today.
~ I am ready to learn to benefit by solving a problem in a way another finds useful here.

Assumptions? continued

Earlier I began to look at my budding understanding of the nature of our assumptions. Below I continue to bud without flowering. I continue in the expectation of sweet fruit.

I believe that I have an assumption of which I am unaware. I believe that I have adopted an assumption without realizing that I had done so. I suspect that you and I have assumptions that neither of us are aware of. I feel certain that you have an assumption that I am unaware of. How might the state of our knowledge of our assumptions effect our understanding? How might it effect the quality of our communication? I remember hearing one person say to another, "I don't get where you're coming from." I now understand the person was probably indicating that he didn't know the other person's assumptions and so could not put his opinions into perspective.

Even though I am pretty sure that there are assumptions of which I am unaware, the fact is that I am also pretty sure that I am well aware of many of my own assumptions and some of yours too. That awareness of assumptions helps(allows us)to communicate. The greater our awareness of each others awareness the better we can communicate. It also helps me when I am aware of my own assumption.

I remember my elders saying, "Define your terms." Defining terms doesn't exactly get a a person's assumptions, but it seems to be a move in that direction.

A friend of mine was having a relationship problem. In a discussion his significant other had several times said that she thought that he did not love her. Finally she said to him that he did not know what what love was. So, he asked her what she meant by love. Then she asked him what he meant by love. Their discussion about the meaning of 'love' lasted, on and off, for a couple of days. In those two days they came to understand and respect each other more that they ever had. It looked like love. They were lucky. Maybe they knew something about 'fair fighting.' I think that they probably uncovered an assumption or two.

An assumption is a bit like underwear.  Putting on your underwear may be called assuming your underwear. After you putting them on you usually give them little thought.  You probably don't typically spend much time thinking about the underwear of other people. Without thinking much about it, you might suppose that theirs is much like yours. That may, or may not, be the fact. You could be making an unconscious mistake. That mistake could lead to future difficulty. It is possible to make an unconscious assumption and then to act a though it were a fact.

You'd think that the world was complicated enough without assumptions. But aren't you glad that the cook from whom you order a cheeseburger doesn't assume that you want cheese ground up to look like burger?
His assumptions about the nature of a cheeseburger may not be exactly like yours, but they are often good enough. Thank goodness that we do clarify some of our assumptions

Power

There is power.
You have some.
Take charge of it.
Get better at directing it.
Recognize it.


Power manifests as movement.
You can detect movement.
You have all you need to detect enough of it.
You can detect it.
You can recognize it.


Power is everywhere.
It is inside and outside.
It is above and below.


The power in you seems to vary.
You may feel a vibration within your body.
Or feel a movement finer than a vibration.
You may feel it in certain areas.
You may feel it along your spine.
You are aware of flexing your arm, of running.


You may have felt the power of your car as a kind of vibration.
The car may become mobile with power.
You can learn to drive.


There is a power with which you think.
That power worked before you thought about it.


You can learn to direct you thinking.
You may, for example, purposefully think rationally or logically.


You may note that your ability to detect power is less than perfect.
You may know that your ability to see, touch, smell power is less than perfect.
You may have heard talk of atom power without having heard the actual power.


Have you thought of tree power?
Have you detected the movement of that power? the process?
Have you seen the actual power?
You know something of the power of burning wood.


You may known that your vision of the tree is not a true vision of tree power. It may not be a true vision of treeness.
You understand that there is more to reality than your vision of tree.


Your ability to understand and use power can improve. You do not have to perfect it. It is likely to get a bit better on its own.


There are those who purposefully learn to better know and use the force with which the function.
There is an ongoing tendency to do so; something like growing up.
That ongoing tendency is a process with which one may learn to cooperate.


Not to fight against the process may be wise.
There is a functioning force with which a caterpillar becomes a butterfly.
The butterfly seems to go with the flow and so may we.


Cooperation is a human way of dealing with power.


What can you and I learn about cooperation, 

Learn

~ I am ready, willing, and able to learn to become aware of an inappropriate behavior of mine more promptly this season.
~ I am ready, willing, and able to learn to look under my thick layers of self-justification this season.
~ I am ready and willing to learn to bring out the best in myself by myself today.
~ I am ready and willing to learn to help myself to realize a goal of mine this year.
~ I am ready, willing, and able to learn to catch myself doing something right this year.
~ I am ready and willing to learn to give myself a minute of praise this year.
~ I am ready to learn to praise myself for doing something right today,
~ I am ready to learn to do it with less stress today.

I Don't Have To

~ I intend to make room for happiness today.
~ I am beginning to take better care of my body here and now.
~ I can be a bit more conscious of tat which I am doing today.
~ I am ready and willing to learn to be healthy and virtuous for the fun of it here.
~ I am ready and willing to acknowledge that acting more gently and generously with myself and others would be an improvement here.
~ I am willing to report my observations as accurately as I can today.
~ I can smile equally on assertion and denial here.
~ Letting go of resentment and attachment make room for happiness today.
~ I aim to be helpful right here and right now.
~ I can become habitually more aware today.
~ Self knowing is good knowing here.