Developing inner awareness · a path towards a freer state of being

Have you ever felt like there is just too much going on? Like there is a bit too much to handle, feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. It’s those times when nothing you do feels ok, or maybe you can drown yourself into tv, food, socialising, anything to numb out the feeling of unrest, discomfort, contraction, or pain even.

I know this place very very well, and with time I have managed to become able to notice what I do to escape or numb out the feelings that come when in it. In the beginning I was completely unconscious about it all, and I had developed many behaviours that I had told myself that were normal, or ‘what I was supposed to be doing’. Like spending all my money on short purposeless travel to feel better, emotional shopping of all kinds, partying a bit too much with all the self-destruction that comes with it, analysing and strategising every part of my life according to expectations I had put on myself to please other people.

Or I had bought into the story I inherited from the culture that it’s normal to be stuck in a career that completely doesn’t resonate with my heart, as long as it was giving me a sense of safety and social recognition. And that it’s the right thing to do to always be there for other people’s needs, in the expense of my own. I was suffering holding the idea that life is hard, and that I was unlucky to not have been given more, or not have what other people have (more money, more friends, better parents, better looks..and the like).

A lack of inner awareness was causing me to look outwards for ways to feel better, and that is all the ephemeral things that we do most times unconsciously. Now, there’s nothing wrong with having fun - in fact we need to have way more fun than we think or allow ourselves to have normally. But when we engage in things that give us fun unconsciously, and as a way to escape our reality, that’s when they become normal, and we don’t question them anymore. Then we can easily lose ourselves in them because of the temporary hit of happy hormones that we get out of them.

In the case of thoughts, beliefs and ideas we hold that are keeping us from making changes in our lives, it is again the lack of inner awareness that causes us to reach to external concepts of safety to anchor ourselves. (“I need that job because I can’t find trust within myself to create the life I really want and get paid for it”, “I have to work hard if I’m to be considered a good parent”, “I can never take a holiday because time is money”) It is the absence of this trust which comes with a solid inner foundation of intimacy with our own experience on all levels, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, that leads us to look outwards to fulfil our needs.

We weren’t taught this stuff at school

Why is all this happening, well, most of us simply didn’t learn otherwise growing up in a culture that runs on excessive materialism, instant gratification, complete lack of anything sacred or spiritual to give us a sense of true purpose and interconnectedness, of self-power and sovereignty.

By learning to always look outwards for what we need we have really been conditioned to give away our power. Something that is heavily used, as you probably know, by the media, marketers, advertising, pharmaceuticals, entertainment, politics, and the like. And it’s a lot, it’s a lot to handle. No wonder why people are having a hard time. I’ve been there and I know how it feels. Add on top of it the rise of digital and the constant messaging telling us that we need to get something external to feel good, safe, complete, happy.

It’s a lot of information and we simply don’t have the capacity to be able to pick the information that we want, need or is good or useful to us, and chuck the rest.

We get overwhelmed with everything that we could be doing that we’re not doing because we’re doing something else. And then we feel guilty for not doing enough, for not having achieved it all yet, for not being ‘how we’re supposed to be’.

The path of inner awareness

This is not a very fancy title, like ‘how to make money’, ‘how to find a partner’, or ‘how to have anything you want’ kind of heading. But the truth is, that all these, all the happiness in the world, all the things that we want, are the result of a more aligned sense of self, which as you guessed it, starts from within. You can also call it a state of peace, being calmer, more grounded, more present in the here and now.

And how does this help me get what I want?

Because when you are more calm, present and aware, you are more likely to put your time and effort doing things you need to do to achieve the things you want (the work, the relationships, the finances) instead of worrying about what you haven’t achieved yet, what you’ve done in the past that you feel guilty about, or numb out of these feelings all together by engaging in some mindless fun activity a bit too much to the point that it becomes an addiction.

And how does one get more calm, present and aware?

One way is by engaging in practices that help us develop inner awareness. This means learning to be more intimate, more sensitive to your own experience of being alive in every moment. How the body feels, our emotions, our thoughts, everything that ‘is happening’ within our field at any moment is our experience of being alive. It is our experience, but not who we are. Too often we simply identify with our experience in the moment, we say ‘I am stressed out’, ‘I am guilty about what happened’, ‘I have back pain’, when a more accurate way to describe this would be ‘I’m experiencing stress, guilt, pain’. Why this is important is because when we place ourselves in the position of the observer, we don’t identify anymore with what is happening, and therefore we can more easily let go of it. Because all that is happening, the thoughts, the emotions, the bodily sensations are ephemeral, unless we identify with them, then we keep them going on and on as part of ourselves.

Practices to develop inner awareness

If you’ve been living on planet earth in the past thirty years or more you probably have noticed the speed in which everything is changing. This is truly fascinating and we live in unprecedented times of innovation and also consciousness rising. There is certainly an acceleration going on on all fronts, and whether you’re going to move with it or try to resist it will determine your levels of wellbeing. Above all making peace within your mothership which is that of your own body-mind system is the first step in having a positive impact on the outside world.

deep rest ·

To start the process of becoming more aware of ourselves we need to drop into the body, turn the focus inward and allow for relaxation to take place. This is because when there is no relaxation we are inevitably in a state of alert (another way to say fight or flight mode, or on sympathetic nervous system activity). In this state of alert, the hormones that are running the system are basically numbing us out of feeling (namely adrenaline) because the body mind system thinks we’re under attack, therefore we need to be ready to act in order to survive. In this state we simply don’t have the capacity to feel.

You may think, ah great, I just need to sleep more, or go on holiday for a week or so, but relaxation is not a break - it’s a practice. When chronically in a state of alert (what we call ‘stress’) we lose our ability to go into relaxation mode all together, or we get addicted to the adrenaline that we get from being ‘on’ and we simply can’t stop. Eventually the system overloads and something happens that causes us to stop (burnout, disease, nervous breakdown, and any other kind of disastrous life event that may seem like ‘bad luck’ but in reality is a self-inflicted outcome of chronically inadequate self-care).

feeling it all ·

Once we start practicing deep rest, our system gradually learns to soften up, the hormones running on stress are flushed out and our ability to feel comes back. This is where we start to unearth feelings and stories our mind has been running on unconsciously causing us to identify with our experience and therefore keeping ourselves small and trapped in ideas that we didn’t consciously choose to have. (all the things ‘you’re supposed to be doing’, all the ways ‘you’re supposed to be’ etc.)

When we start to feel our emotions, notice the sensations in the body that come with those emotions, notice the emotions that come with the thoughts in our mind, we allow for the flow of energy to occur, which means we can more easily take the place of the observer. This is not necessarily a very pleasant part of the process, feeling the feelings we haven’t felt in a long time can be very tough, and this is partly why we’ve been avoiding to feel them in the first place. Which bring me to the next part of this process:

acknowledge ·

When the feelings come up we need to allow them, acknowledge them, even welcome them. This doesn’t mean necessarily expressing them - in the current era of more openness and accepted vulnerability a lot of people go into putting their expressed feelings onto situations and other people - this is not what I mean. To acknowledge the feelings means to know they are there, and from this place make the conscious choice of whether we want to express them or not, and in what way we wish to do that.

Acknowledging also means not resisting, or judging our feelings. When you understand that feelings are just energy that is being experienced in any moment, judging yourself about having them doesn’t make sense anymore. Therefore you can stop resisting having them, and just feel them - which is what allows them to run out and free you.

shift·

From the inward perspective, acknowledging the feelings allows the energy to flow, and that’s what we need to do to let go of what isn’t in our best interest in any given moment. Say you’re frustrated with something that happened at work and you come home and you have to take care of your kids, but you’re still feeling the unrest from earlier. Instead of carrying it with you and pushing it down so that it doesn’t show (inevitably spending a lot of your energy doing that) causing you to not be fully present with your kids, you have a choice to go into the practice of letting go.

By taking a few minutes to acknowledge the feeling that is there, let it run its course (about 10-14min) to then be able to carry on with your day and put your mind and energy where it really matters for you.

Need some extra support in navigating this terrain?

Any meditation that focuses on body awareness, relaxing the mind and bringing attention to sensations in the body to become more sensitive to the full expression of our emotions will be helpful here.

My online portal the Home Practice includes recorded practices of meditation, breath and sound healing that can help with this process of letting go. To know more about it go here.

ABOUT ELENA ZOE

Welcome to my online portal!

I am a former Googler reborn as conscious & self-aware living advocate.

I’m a speaker, writer and coach passionate about helping people live their best lives by tapping into the Source of their truth, power and true desire.

I offer individual mentoring and online programs, and I lead transformational expeditions in nature.