My question to you is “do you practice deceptive awareness?”
We all like to think we know more than we do and behave better than our actions show. However, I believe most humans are not only fooling humanity but the world at large.
Consciousness awareness refers to your individual awareness of your thoughts, memories, feelings, and sensations, according to VeryWellMind.com.
I believe this is a good starting definition of awareness. Many people think that they are aware of all that is going on, but they fail to see the full picture. It is what I refer to as deceptive awareness. They are deceiving themselves, so they appear in a normal fashion to their own consciousness and that of those around them.
Most of it isn’t on purpose. People practice deceptive awareness unconsciously. It isn’t like many set out to do this, but it happens through life experiences, challenges, and blinders to going further than current conscious awareness.
When fear, challenge, past trauma, and stress come into our path, one of the things that the mind does is try to compartmentalize it so we can handle it. In the process, the mind body is very good at looking past what has happened and creating something we can live with in the moment. It is how the mind attempts to make the best out of a difficult situation.
How I Practiced Deceptive Awareness
Take my life, for instance, as an example of what I draw upon to write about deceptive awareness.
For years, I was blinding my conscious awareness to function in life. I had no clue I was doing this until, in 1991, I went through conversion disorder. Here I was, a healthy guy working hard one day, and the next day I could not stand or walk. You can read more about it in my book, Overcoming A Mysterious Condition.
At the time you could not have convinced me that I was not conscious of my life or the behaviors I put forth, but I was so blind that I could not see. That is often the way it goes for people. They don’t see what they think they see.
It took me going to the point of almost losing my life before I began to take a long hard look at where I was. It was a painful and difficult process that not only forced me to deal with a physical reality, but the trauma I endured.
Oblivious In The Job I Held
Not long ago, I had a job where I was busy traveling more than I was at home or sleeping. It was a grueling schedule and pace that I kept. Little by little, it began consuming me until one day I couldn’t function anymore in life. You would have thought that after going through the conversion disorder in 1991, I would have learned my lesson. However, I must not have. I was practicing deceptive awareness.
Until my world came crashing down, and until I went to a Unified Therapy session, I didn’t know just how much I had slid down the proverbial hill of life. Yes, my back hurt, but then everyone gets back pain is how I would justify it. Yes, I was tired, but isn’t everyone tired?
In that therapy session, it became apparent to me that I needed to slow down, and I needed to do it immediately. If I didn’t, I was headed for a much worse fall than where I was at the moment.
Humans Are Good At Deceit
You see, as humans, we are very good at practicing deceptive awareness. It is part of our biology because the mind and body work to help us survive. It doesn’t matter what needs to happen. It doesn’t matter what the cost is, as long as our mind and body survive. If you don’t believe me, it would do you good to check out my book.
These days I see so many in this state. I, too, am struggling not to go fully into an unconscious awareness. It isn’t easy because of the challenges in everyday life, pandemic stress, political stress, and financial stress.
Yes, this can be a result of living in survival mode because, let’s face it, dealing with all that 2020 threw at the world is not easy. It is overwhelming for many, and those that say it isn’t must be asleep.
If we stay in this state, with stress, fear, and numbing becoming our everyday friends, we’re asking for significant difficulty in the days ahead. Your mind and body can only deal with so much before it snaps. When it snaps, the challenge of coming back to a life of conscious awareness is much harder. If we could stop and reverse things now, we would prevent so much agony and pain in the future.
Have We Forgot How To Be Human?
These days I see so many people portraying one thing to the world, but their actions say something else. I see people preaching love, acceptance, and tolerance, but then they turn around and do that which they despise. All the time, they are sitting there high and mighty as if they have the answers and everyone else does not.
From shootings to skirmishes in many cities, there is deceptive awareness being practiced in all spectrums of humanity. Everyone is right, and they are willing to scream it from the top of the mountain, but no one will stop and listen for a moment. No one stops to hear the other person’s point of view. It is all about screaming the opinions of your ego while portraying that you have a heart full of love.
You can quickly spot the deceptive awareness that takes place on line. There are so many people with advice and memes and platitudes. Many tell you how wrong you are while puffing themselves up in a declaration of how right they are. Some are religious, and others are not, but they all do the same basic things. They have a different belief system and philosophy in how their actions show it to the world.
What Can You Do?
One of the best ways to stop practicing deceptive awareness is by becoming conscious. It means you take the blinders off, and instead of judging others, you begin to see yourself with all your imperfections and deficiencies.
Another way you can begin to do this is by stopping the numbing in your mind body and becoming aware of the felt sense. The more you feel, the less you are numbing. When you feel you can heal, and to heal means you need to feel. Most of the human population is walking around in a state of numbing and survival, not feeling and sensing like we lead ourselves to believe.
If you want to stop practicing deceptive awareness, you can stop being part of the problem. Engaging at every turn on social media with everyone doesn’t always help as much as we think it does. No, I’m not saying that you should hide your head in the sand, but so much of social media is unconscious. We lead ourselves to believe that we have to respond to that person talking nonsense when sometimes we would be better off to let the flame burn itself out. Yes, I know that it is far easier to respond than to be the bigger person and walk away, but our world desperately needs this.
The End Result
When we practice deceptive awareness, we shortchange humanity. We rob others of a full experience because we aren’t all that we can be. It isn’t fair to them, and it isn’t fair to us.
This world is hurting, and it needs people to wake up, be conscious, and stop practicing deceptive awareness. There are many challenges in this world, and if we keep walking in the truth of our ego, we will not make it as a civilization.
We can no longer proclaim that we are in touch with our hearts, or that we are full of love, while having our actions prove the opposite is true.
No longer can we sit in judgment of others and claim what they do is wrong, when we are doing what we so quickly point out in others. We must pull the blinders off and see our truth, no matter how painful and challenging that may get.
When we practice deceptive awareness, we rob ourselves of much-needed energy to deal with the challenges of the day. We make life more difficult, and we invite mind body conditions that challenge our health to the limit. Stress becomes our main friend.
It all begins with each one of us taking a look through the eyes of conscious awareness into our innermost selves to find the truth. The more we do this, the more empowered we are. The less we do this, the more doomed we are to failing and dragging humanity down with us.
Let’s find a way as humans to stop practicing deceptive awareness and start consciously living life.
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