The first lesson I learnt from my mentor was self-awareness. Long lasting joy originates from self-awareness. Self-awareness is stratified in our conscious as well as subconscious. And as I was guided towards it deeper and deeper, I became peaceful in my own self.
Self-awareness is achieved in steps. One step after the other. The more you travel inside, the more aware you become.
The first level is becoming mindful. Whatever we do, we have to be consciously aware of our acts. True awareness comes from cellular level of neuro-responsiveness. Having tea while working on a lap top is one thing. Having just tea is another. Knowing that you are having tea is further another level, but knowing you are having tea, and you feel the parts of the cup, the heat of the liquid, the taste on your tongue, the whiff of its leaves, the sip by sip feeling of the temperature, the color of it and the feeling of moving it down your throat: that is mindfulness.
Becoming mindful makes a simple act of orange peeling and eating as an experience of pure joy. Alas, most of people never get to this height of joy in their lives. They shall perhaps never ever feel the bliss of becoming mindful in a continuous routine.
Make mindfulness a habit and you shall start living a life of unending joy.
The second level comes with living in the present. It is like living in now only. It is when we do not woe for any past event and do not fear for future. Again, most of the times most of us are stuck in either the past or the future. At picnics how often we hear: “But the last time it was wonderful” or “Next time we shall go to Deosai”. What about now?
The third level is being aware of our thought process. How we think what we think? Why we do what we do? Why we did what we did? Sometimes we pick thoughts from people. We pick thoughts from others from their sentences, which seemingly sound magnificent but all they are but words. We switch our whole identity against those thoughts hidden behind some words we heard someone saying. Very few have a thought process initiated by their own selves. Well, we always pick ideas and thoughts in work, business, professional lives etc. which is OK, but what I am emphasizing now is that we must not turn our lives around on a basis of few words we heard from someone which sounded pretty amazing.
The fourth level comes from silence. Silence is when you say one part out of tenth and that too when its needed. It ought to be an iceberg with only one tenth of it afloat.
The fifth level of self-awareness comes with detachment from thoughts and our emotions. It is not becoming emotion-less or love less. Detachment is different. We can only know our real selves if we are not attached to it. We know we love someone. We know about our emotion of love for that person. We have accepted it, but at the same time, we are completely detached.
The sixth level comes from divine knowledge.
The seventh level comes from the understanding of the balance between two types of existences:
1. Existence and non-existence. 2. Existence in duality.
Let me quote it this way. No physicist has ever seen an electron. Yet every scientist knows it does exist. The electron has almost negligible mass and its speed so immense an electron microscope cannot trace it for a focused observation. Yet we know it does exist, because it leaves its traces of electrical charge. It exists on the verge of existence and non-existence.
We are so tiny as compared to this universe, that we can perhaps say we do not exist. Yet we exist.
2. We exist as a duality. Light is a wave as well as a particle. Is it a wave? Yes. Is it a particle? Yes again. Light has duality in itself. We are a body and a spirit: both have almost opposite characteristics.
Are we a body? Yes.
Are we a soul? Yes, nothing could be truer.
We are angels and animals.
We can raise ourselves to soar above angels. We can stoop lower than animals. We are people and gods at the same time. We can be people, who we are. Or we can depict in ourselves qualities of godliness. That is what he meant when Prophet Muhammad said: ” Try adopting ethics of God”.
The eighth level comes from the understanding of the four questions: Who we are? Where we came from? Why we are here? Where to we shall leave from here? As a warning here, knowing these is not enough. This level can only be achieved if we have spent genuine time contemplating these four questions, to my knowledge at least more than a hundred hours.
The ninth level comes from apotheosis. When we truly know how tiny we are? When we really really know it, we stop efforting without vision. We stop resisting. We find our egos no more in existence. When we truly accept, we claim apotheosis. We become godlike.
The tenth and final level of self-awareness shoots out from the roots of “fanaa”, a term in arabic, which would translate into “becoming nothingness”. As Caliph Ali in his speech said: “There are three levels of ILM (the knowledge). At first you are able to say now I know it. At the second, you say you know nothing. At the third, you say: I do not exist.
Here…. you do stop using the words: I, me , mine from your speech!
This is the stage termed as “masti” in spiritual texts and “hama dam masti” meaning: “every breath a masti”. You become so much of self aware, you are immersed into self.
This is a journey that starts from being highly mindful to becoming “mast” , going unaware of everything but one.
Are you self-aware?
From the collections of Hassan Bukhari. Read the opening pages of The Happiness Manual — free, or explore the coaching programs.